A Writer Afoot

Last night, I made pizza from scratch.  Roasted peppers, and garlic, tucked in a small steel dish and drizzled with olive oil and covered with foil, and the surprisingly delicious roasted fennel bulb leftover from a salad two days ago.  Whole wheat dough, rolled thin, and smeared with olive oil, kosher salt, the smashed tender garlic. (Garlic, softly dripping, sliding out of its jacket like a hearty lover).   

It's been a challenging week--nothing directly personal, impacting my life, but sad things swirled around and fell in lumps around us, and I felt them.  The empathy that is such a friend to a writer is not such a friend at times like that, when there is nothing to be done and no way to fix anything, and just those simple, stark, sad things lying there.   Writing is too much, too pointed and sharp, for times like that.  It takes me closer, not farther away.

So I found myself in the kitchen, looking through ingredients, tossing through cookbooks, hunting for the actions that would soothe, satisfy.  A can of pineapple, hiding at the back of the fridge, leftover mozzarella from a party last week, the garlic and onions and red peppers I keep in stock, and just enough white flour left to lighten up the whole wheat.  Bread dough to knead and punch and leave to rise, coming back later to see the speckles of grain, two balls rolled out, one for me and one for CR, to create our own masterpieces.  His was a some beef sausage and pineapple and lots of cheese and a base of red sauce.  Mine was mainly the vegetables and garlic and pineapple wiht a little cheese.   

Outside, the cold winter wind blowing. Inside, the smell of comfort and love and peace, all wrapped in a bit of dough and leftovers.

Red chile and pork tamales

In honor of the holidays, a beloved recipe for one of my required holiday undertakings.  Adapted from a recipe I found long ago in Martha Stewart Magazine--but I have served them proudly to anyone who loves The Real Thing and have been mightily praised, so you'll find them authentically wonderful.

Be warned--this is a time consuming process. Start early.  It is also very difficult to do the first step without a blender.  I once used a very small coffee grinder out of desperation, but I wouldn't recommend it.

RED CHILE AND PORK TAMALES

1 package dried corn husks (6 oz)

For the filling:
6-8 dried New Mexico red chiles
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1- 1/2 cups water
1 T olive oil
1 lb pork shoulder, cut into stew size pieces
1 tsp salt

For the batter
5 oz lard
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1- 3/4 cups masa harina mixed with 1 cup + 2 T hot water, cooled to room temperature
2/3 cup fresh chicken stock

1. In a large container, place the corn husks and cover with hot water.  Put a plate or something on top, or they'll float and won't be reconstituted when you need them.  Soak for an hour.

2. To make the filling, break off the top of the chiles and shake out the seeds.  Tear each one into four or five pieces, and put them into the jar of a blender.  Add garlic, pepper, cumin, and water, and blend into a smooth puree. 

Sear the pork quickly in a medium sized heavy saucepot, then pour the chile mixture over it, add another 1-1/2 cups water, and salt.  Simmer until pork is tender and the sauce is thick, about an hour.  Shred the meat into the sauce and set aside.

3. While the meat is simmer, prepare the masa.  In a bowl, mix the lard, baking powder, and salt. Beat until the mixture is very light, then add half the masa harina mixture and half the chicken stock, beat well, and add the rest of masa and stock.   Beat until very fluffy.   Refrigerate until ready to use.

4.  Assemble the tamales.  It will be easiest if you have a fairly large surface to work on--if not a counter, use the kitchen table.  Before you begin, tear one or two of the corn husks into thin strips for tying the tamales.

     Line up the corn husks, masa, and filling in a row.  Traditionally, this is done by a row of women, but you can do it yourself with patience and a lot of good music on the Ipod.  (Breaks to dance are definitely good for your shoulders!)

     This is my method:

Put the corn husk on a dry cup towel with the pointed end at the bottom, and dry with another towel.  Scoop about a 1/4 cup or a little less into the center of the husk and smooth with a large spoon to a depth of about 1/4 inch, leaving about a 1/2 inch all around the edges. 

Spoon a line of meat into the center of the masa, top to bottom (if you think of the way you like to eat tamales, meat in every bite is important).

Pull the sides of the husk to the center, and let the masa meet inside, then roll the husk around the filling until it feels nicely dense but not too tight.  Fold the bottom point up and tie it in place with one of the husk strips you tore earlier.   Tie another one around the top, about an inch down.

Repeat.

To cook, put the tamales, open side up, into the steamer, and steam for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.  You'll know they're finished when the husk pulls away from the batter cleanly.

Makes about a dozen tamales, so feel free to double it.

Variations:  are endless.  Use your imagination.  I absolutely adore plain, simple, traditional tamales like this, but I love to play with them, too.  I'm still experimenting with vegetarian forms, and CR will slay dragons for the duck and cherry version. 

I'd love to hear of any you've tried!

Friday night special dinner

Gotta love the food internet. The weather is so lusciously moody and foggy and now snowy (hooray!!) that I couldn't resist the urge to cook and cook and cook.  Last night's menu:

Roasted Garlic Soup
Yogurt Biscuits
Wine-Braised Pears

Happily, I found the exact recipe I'd been longing for--it was at an  Emeril restaurant and I found the recipe here.  I also made the chicken stock from scratch, though I used skinned chicken thighs in place of chicken bones. Deep, rich flavor.  I'm going to make another batch today for my tamales.

The crowning delight were the poires roties avec syrop de vin rouge, which I found on a food blog that's an absolute delight to read, Ms. Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.  Her photograph is ever so much more beautiful than mine, but I must say they were fantastically delicious and very easy and so pretty to serve!   

CR has been pining for duck tamales, so I'm going to spend this snowy weekend making a big batch to freeze, along with my own favorite traditional tamales, and a couple of experiments for the vegetarians coming to visit over Christmas. A cilantro-green onion sauce with almonds looks promising.  We'll see.

Health(ier) macaroni and cheese

As promised.  I wanted a macaroni and cheese recipe that was healthier and lower in fat, and this is what I came up with.  Really nice.

Macaroni and cheese
Serves 4

2 cups (dry measure) whole wheat corkscrew pasta (Barilla and Rotini both have good flavor and plenty of protein and fiber)
2 T olive oil
2 T flour
1-1/4 cups skim milk
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
1 slice low fat American cheese
3 T grated full-fat, strong-flavored cheese (Cheddar will do, but play around and use what you have in the fridge)
3 T. grated low-fat Mozzarella
1/3 cup Parmesan-flavored bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 375 and spray olive oil on a square 8-inch baking dish.

Boil pasta, being careful to avoid overcooking.

Heat milk until hot but not boiling, and add the Parmesan, the American cheese, and 1 T each of the strong cheese and the mozzarella, stir to start the melting.  Have this ready to add to the skillet on the next step.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat (careful to keep it from getting too hot) and lightly brown the flour.  (I burned it the first time, which always irks me, and had to start over.)  Add the milk/cheese mixture, stirring continuously as it thickens to a good consistency.  Add salt and pepper to taste.   

Drain the pasta and settle it into the baking dish, and pour the sauce over it.  Top with the remaining cheese and the bread crumbs and back for about 30 minutes.  Let stand for a few minutes before serving. 

Here's the happy part: divide into four hefty servings and get away with:  387 calories; 13 gms fat; 18 gms protein; 46 gms carbs; and a lovely 6 grams of fiber.

Compare that to a regular serving of homemade mac and cheese:  548 calories,  34 grams fat;  1 gram fiber.  (The full version is a little higher in protein, but worth the trade off, no?)

WWW roundup

Really in love with the new material, which is seducing me back to the other computer, so just a little bit of fun for you this morning.

An excellent writer blog:

Tess Gerritsen keeps an insightful and honest blog about the writing life, and a post this week was particularly honest in a way you don't often see from writers, many of whom are always worried about keeping up appearances.   A snippet:

Over the past twenty years, I’ve had twenty books published.  My career has been a see-saw ride, and there’ve been times when I thought my career was, if not dead, then headed for oblivion.  My first nine books were paperback romantic thrillers, eight published by Harlequin, one by Harper.  None of them earned out more than $12,000 in their first printings.  Since I’m a slow writer, and couldn’t turn out a book any faster than every eight months, I knew I’d never get rich as a writer.

And then a little later....

By the time GRAVITY was released, it was clear that my sales were in a downward spiral.  Despite publisher enthusiasm and rave reviews, GRAVITY could not find an audience among women readers.  That doomed it in the marketplace.  And once your sales start to slip, the pre-orders for your next book, and your next, begin to plummet.  Just as depressing were my foreign sales, which had been so bad that I was having trouble finding anyone to publish me in the UK. I took off a year to re-group.  I wrote my next book entirely on spec, without a contract.  This time, I was writing just for myself.  Read the whole piece.

I have written whole books several times for various reasons, most often because I was frustrated by the external market and needed to connect back to myself and my own body of work.  It has always been a Very Good Thing.  One was In the Midnight Rain, which has become one of the most beloved of my romances.  Another was Heart of a Knight, a medieval romance that won the RITA.  The most recent is Elena's story, working title Cooking for the Dead.  (We're all batting around title ideas still.)

It's also something I highly recommend to my students. Often. Published even more than unpublished, and especially if they've hit a wall--internal burn out or publisher disinterest or a need to change direction.  Have you ever done it?

Cooking and travel

I've been thinking it might be fun to go on a cooking holiday, and what popped up in my email this morning? A link to a travel-cooking site that has some lovely, lovely trips.  Wouldn't it be cool to go to Morocco and cook?   Of course, the coming year is already packed with travel, so it will have to go on the back burner, but I really think I'd have a blast.....

Vegetarian week

I 'm sure I've mentioned that my eldest son, his girlfriend, and virtually all of their entire circle of close friends, are vegetarians.  This happened one week when Ian and his former debate partner did research for a case and read about the meat industry in the US.  The both became vegetarians overnight.  I kept thinking they'd go back, but it's been years now, so I think the change is complete. 

And while none of them proselytize, their commitment intrigues and impresses me.  I'm also working on deepening my yoga practice, and often vegetarian eating is a part of that.   

So I've been keeping a vegetarian kitchen this week.  Experimented yesterday with a lower fat, healthier version of that wintertime comfort food fav, macaroni and cheese.  Turned out spectacularly well, enough that Christopher Robin gave it the British stamp of approval. I'll post the recipe Friday.  If I can read all my notes. 

Three greens lasagna

CR loves lasagna, a dish at which I am quite skilled, and all that pasta and fat are great for his very lean runner body.  My own body would just turn into a big round ball if I ate it, so I'm always on the prowl for healthier versions I can freeze for myself. 

In honor of my vegetarian day this week, here is one I made when craving that depth of tomato taste we found in Naples.  Because our tomatoes were only a pale imitation of theirs (I am going to grow a million tomatoes next summer), the sauce didn't quite match the Naples version, but it is quite fine, nonetheless.  Adapted from a recipe in Shape magazine and one for tomato sauce I had stuck in a book.  Highly flavorful, very healthy lasagna.  The sauce takes a bit of time, but really worth it.

THREE GREENS LASAGNA

Tomato sauce

6 T. extra virgin olive oil
2 onions, diced
8 garlic cloves, slice thinly or crushed
1 cup fresh basil
1 cup good red wine
salt and fresh pepper
10-12 good tasting fresh tomatoes (the blander the tomato, the blander the sauce)

Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water until the skin is loose, then cool in cold water and remove the skins.  Dice and set aside.

Saute onions and garlic over low heat (the idea is to infuse the oil with flavor while releasing the flavors) lightly, then add basil and saute for five minutes, stirring gently.  Add the wine and reduce by half.  Add the tomatoes and salt & pepper, then let simmer until tomatoes are tender and liquid is again reduced by about half.  If you let it cook for about two hours, you will lose some color, but the flavor is stunning.

Lasagna

12 oz crumbled goat cheese
2-3 T. skim milk
1 T each  fresh thyme, fresh basil, fresh oregano, chopped
Tomato sauce, above
6 whole wheat lasagna noodles, cooked
1 10-oz box of kale, collards, or mustard greens (I only like collards, which I find to be much less bitter than the other two, but it's your choice)  or use 4 cups fresh collards, well scrubbed, if you can find them
4 cups fresh spinach
4 cups fresh arugula
1 cup roasted red peppers, drained and diced
1 cup sun-dried tomatoes, cut into julienne strips
1/4 cup shaved Parmesan cheese

Preheat over to 375

Boil noodles.

Mix milk and cheese, thyme, basil, and oregano.  Combine red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes. On the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish, spread a layer of tomato sauce and cover with three noodles.  Layer on the greens in alternating layers (and you can scatter some more fresh basil through it if you like), then scatter a layer of peppers and tomatoes, top with a layer of tomato sauce, then cheese.  Repeat, ending with cheese and sprinklings of Parmesan cheese. Bake for about 40-50 minutes, and let stand for 5 minutes before cutting into eight generous slices.     Freezes and reheats beautifully.

Rough nutrition estimates (I have to figure this out for various reasons, but I'm NOT a nutritionist, so don't hold me to it):  Calories 397, fat, 22 grams, fiber, 4.2, protein, 14, carbs, 19.   Not bad as lasagnas go.

Happy weekend to you. 

Best meals on the tour

---First night in Naples, a margherita pizza.   This is the simplest of things--only dough and tomato sauce, garlic and basil, but I swear to you I have never tasted tomatoes before that, as if all the days of sunlight and a few sea-laden winds and some nights of rising moons were all packed into crushed red sauce.   I am determined to grow tomatoes that taste like that.   It didn't hurt to eat it overlooking the Bay of Naples, buzzing with jet lag, with the moon rising over Mt. Vesuvius and tourists from the cruise ships marching down the promenade in their capri pants and straw hats and motorcycles by the thousands roaring by.

(Photo:  Mt Vesuvius and that show-off moon)

The breakfast at our hotel in Naples, served on a patio four stories above the street.    Jam croissants, coffee with milk ("What is milk in Italian?" I asked CR fuzzily.  Oh, yeah...latte. :)), yogurt and rolls and cheese and butter and a spread of fruits. 

--A fruit at the cocktail party in Matera.  I have no idea what it was, though someone said maybe persimmon.  It was about the size of a Roma Tomato, and it even looked a bit like a skinned tomato, with that red, grainy sort of flesh and lots of little seeds.  The color was a little more purple than most tomatoes, however, and the fruit itself was lightly sweet and enormously refreshing.   Any guesses?

--The breakfasts every morning in Matera, at the Hotel Sant'Angelo, served in the back of the long cave of reception, cool and mysterious and very quiet, lit with lamps and the bold sunlight pouring in through the front door.  Pear juice and more jam croissants, sun-dried tomatoes on little toasts, strong cheese in cubes and fresh cafe, served however you liked--con latte, cappuccino, Americano.  CR drank tea with milk.  I drank the latte, and the girl who served us was part of the great pleasure.  A little dynamo with beautiful eyes and a very pleasant way of speaking English.

--A happy hour feast on the piazza in Matera.  Dry-cured olives, soft red wine, almonds in a crisp, baked dough, and two beautiful creatures playing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.

--Roast rabbit, a swordfish steak, a spinach orchiette with butter that so delicious it made me wish to lick the plate.

--Finally, a Sunday dinner served by Neal's mum.  Mainly the banofee pudding.  I'm still dreaming of it.

Oh, and happy news: after all that pasta and dessert and wine and croissants for breakfast every morning and gelato (oh, gelato! Melon. Peach. Peach and melon), I was terrified to step on the scale, but walking 5000 miles a day must do the trick because I only gained a couple of ounces.  Seriously? I can live with that.

Do you have a favorite holiday meal memory?   

Ambling to Bari and Matera

Ambling because that is what one does here, at least on foot.  Amble through the streets, through meals, through tiny cups of impossibly strong coffee, through lazy glasses of wine.   Not much time, since there is an American man waiting rather pointedly for this computer (and funny how much pressure his tidy shoes makes me feel) , but a few notes to keep you current....

---Bari is a small city on the east coast, decidedly un-touristy, though it appears there is a large port from which ferries and cruise ships sail.  We arrived by train (Eurostar, not the locals, which would have meant changing three times).  I felt quite cheered by navigating the purchase of tickets and accomplishing our transfer and the comfortable ease of the train itself, a chance to read and rest and observe the endless miles of valley through which we traveled, mountains to the north and to the south, and between, vast vineyards and olive orchards, with hilltop towns in the hazy distance like watercolors of wine labels.   

--we spent Tuesday meandering around Bari's old town in the gentle rain.  We had good umbrellas and decent shoes and the clerk at the hotel said there had been no rain for 150 days, to it was hard to mind it.  In truth, it lent the day a certain moody grace.  We ambled around the warren of medieval streets in the walled old city (which was notorious for pick pockets and petty crime until recently, when it has been cleaned up). There is an enormous old castle, remarkably well preserved, which delighted me for the dual wall construction (curtain wall and inner courtyard) plus the Norman keep.  It was not possible to see a lot of the inside, nor climb the tower, but it is remarkable nonetheless, with a now grassy and enormous moat.   

--Tuesday night (the man has left, exasperated that his sighs did not make me type any faster), we went to the book event at Feltrinelli, and that was quite an adventure.   A crowd gathered for the discussion of Il profumo delle Oro (Madame Mirabouàs School of Love here), where I met several gracious and interesting readers.  One in particular, a beautiful woman with a cloud of silvery hair and the elegance of a model, asked most intriguing questions.  An interpreter translated for us.  I signed some books and we drank some coffee, then a driver picked us up in the now pouring rain, and drove us south in the dark and we to Matera.   My first glimpse of the sassi will stay with me, as we rounded a narrow, twisting road and suddenly, there were the tumbles of pale yellow stone studded with lights, as fantastical as something from a half-remembered dream or a book read long ago, and across the ravine, a black darkness, vast and impenetrable. T We lugged our suitcases up a series of steps and across a cobblestone courtyard, getting soaked, and tumbled into bed in our long, churchlike cave....

---In the morning, emerging like children from ensorcellment, we came into the bright blue morning, and the ruined and renewing tumbles of the town of sassis, stairs trailing hither and yon, climbing into dark passages, emerging into dazzling sunlight, and churches upon churche upon churches.   A cathedral whose roof fell down last summer, cave curches carved into the mountains, and across the river rushing through the valley far below, an austere bluff with tiny ant figures on the top, staring back at us. 

I have eaten amazing food.  Orchiette (sp) with spinach and butter and tomatoes.  Rabiit (rabbit! me!) roasted to such savory tenderness it melted on my tongue, served with potatoes cooked to buttery perfection.  CR had lamb and sausages today, while I feasted on mashed fava beans and roasted cheese and drank a big hearty glass of red wine (which we shared) and came back to nap in the hot of the afternoon.

Oh, and one final note: last night, the cocktail party was held at a small cafe on minor piazza, facing a larger piazza (that backs up to another piazza).  Handsome waiters served white wine and proscuitto and two beautiful young creatures enacted the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in Italian, she curving over the edge of the balcony above, he earnestly looking up to her from the square.  Old men leaned on the walls to watch, and the evening shoppers paused to smile tenderly, and it was piercingly, wildly beautiful, so much so that I had to look away and recite the words under my breath, for I memorized it entirely at the age of thirteen and still can whisper every word....But soft? What light from yonder window breaks?

Ciao!

Of biscuits and Sunday mornings

Wandering around the internet last night, I visited one of my favorite cooking sites, Pinch My Salt (the American in Sicily who takes such fantastically gorgeous photos of food (and a volcano erupting).  She had a post about  biscuits, which linked to another post about the best biscuits ever, and the truth is, I've been longing for biscuits lately.  Not sure why.   I do love them--is there anything as tender as a biscuit fresh out of the oven?--and I've been thinking about the boxes of my grandmother's recipes a lot lately. I haven't had a good one in awhile. 

As long as I live, biscuits will be associated with the childhood of my boys and their father, making biscuits on Sunday mornings.  He liked cooking, and rituals, and early in our marriage, he established the habit of cooking on Sundays.  A full Southern breakfast in the morning, all according to his particular plan--country potatoes with the skins still on, first boiled, then grilled in a cast iron skillet with salt and pepper to a perfect combination of crisp and tender.   Bacon, always, which he carefully cooked flat on an electric skillet (which, intriguingly, I ended up with in the big Division of Things).  Sometimes patties of hot country sausage.  Scrambled eggs.  And buttermilk biscuits, of course, slathered with butter and my plum jam, made from scratch. Coffee, orange juice, milk if you wished, all of it piled up on the dining room table, steaming and fragrant. Other people had dinner parties.  We had Sunday breakfast parties--that's when we added leaves to the table and stuffed guests with all the special tidbits.      

He also cooked supper every Sunday--pork chops and mashed potatoes or the like in the winter, barbeque with his special sauce (the recipe for which you can find in No Place Like Home) in the summer, but breakfast was the marker of our family life. 

It's the biscuits I sometimes yearn for.  They're tangled in a thousand memories, and maybe it's that younger me I'm thinking about, a nostalgia for those days when I could protect my babies from the vagaries of life so much more easily, when the Best Dog In the World still walked the earth, when life seemed fairly simple and straightforward and Ram made biscuits on Sunday morning, listening to a special combination of blues and soul and rock and roll as he cut biscuits with a bottle from our wedding, a tradition he learned from his parents, and his own father, who cooked biscuits for his children.  He said that cooking on Sunday morning was his church. 

I don't actually have his recipe.  Perhaps I should ask him for it.  Pass it on to the boys, who will--because this is what children do--one day find themselves wanting to make Sunday breakfasts for their families.  I hope they do, anyway. 

Biscuits and southern cooking are somehow weaving themselves into the brewing new book.  The best biscuits ever.  I wonder what that particular recipe might be?  What makes best?   Is it Sunday morning light in early summer, slanting just so through that eastern window?  The sound of The Persuasions singing "People Get Ready?" while bacon sizzles on the grill?  The arranged faces of families and friends at a table drenched with light coming through lace curtains and two dogs pretending that they are not begging and two boys scarfing down biscuits--Ian with jam, Miles with honey?

This is what I know about R's biscuits: a pile of flour, baking powder (only half as much as you think you need when you deal with high altitudes), salt, a little sugar, butter cut into the mix (or use your hands to squish it all together if you're in a hurry) then buttermilk to make it all stick together, and roll it out on a counter and cut biscuits with something you like, that has some memories, and bake in a very hot oven for 8 or 10 minutes. Extra points if you're wearing cutoff jean shorts and sweat socks with little lines around the top and an apron somebody brought you from a trip. 

Mmmm.  What's your best family food memory?  Do you know how to make that dish?

Beef

I've had a pound of ground beef in the fridge for a few days.  I keep meaning to make krautburgers for CR because he loves them and my recipe is really, really excellent. 

But I don't seem to be able to cook the beef.  I have more or less given it up over the past couple of years.  I didn't like it anymore and it bothered me that there were so many hormones and chemicals in most beef, so I chose to stop eating it.  More or less.   

Truth is, though, I like the way cows look.  They have pretty eyes and they're so calm and they never seem to have a mean bone in their bodies.  There are a lot of cows in Colorado, okay?  It started to bother me every time I cut into a piece of beef.

I didn't make a production of it or anything.  I just kind of stopped eating it 99% of the time.  Then, weirdly, I became very sensitive to dairy and had to start eating all organic dairy, then almost no dairy at all.  And no bacon, even though I do think it tastes very, very good, because it's too fatty.  And, well, if you'r e not going to eat bacon, there's not much about pork I find appealing.  Which leaves the white meats, and it's silly, but I don't mind eating birds for some reason, even though it really, really, really bothered me when my cat murdered a baby the other day.  (Not only murdered him.  Left him half dying just outside the office.  My sister said, "Next time, just break his neck.  It's the kind thing do do."  And she's right...but break a baby bird's neck? Reach out and turn its little head and let it snap?  And you think I would ever sleep again?")

Which is so very hypocritical but all I started out to say was I think this beef is never going to get cooked because I'm really not going to be able to cook it.  I might have to learn how to be a totally vegetarian foodie, of which there are many.   

I do not mean in anyway to say anyone else should ever feel badly about chowing down a steak right in front of me.  I think eating lobster is gross, too, and don't even get me started on all those "delicacies" like livers and hearts and intestines. Not. In. This. Lifetime.   But I don't need to make everybody love the same foods I love or avoid the foods I avoid. 

What is something you love to eat that others hate, or you hate and other adore?

Lovely sugar

I have a taste for sugar.  I know, I know, it's the Evil Enemy these days, especially with low-carb diets, but I'm never going to give it up for an imitation.  Sugar is beautiful. It tastes good.   All by itself, it isn't terribly high in calories (15 calories per teaspoon).   I have a friend who once threatened to put my sugar habits in a book, they were so stylized and precise. Since then, I've cut way back, but I still love the real thing, especially turbinado or raw sugar, all grainy and sparkly and brown.   It adds such great flavor to a cup of coffee.

Which is why I'm happy to point you to a post on Paris Breakfasts.  She's posted some fantastic photos of sugar presentations in Paris, along with a link to Can a suc, (sorry, can't figure out how to put the accent in), which is such a treat you really just have to go see it for yourself.   It's in French, but that doesn't matter. 

Sunday salad lunch

Working on food photography.   This one turned out better than most of my recent experiments.

The salad itself is simple.  Spinach and mixed baby greens, cucumbers, green onions, tomatoes; chopped walnuts and dried cranberries with sprinkles of low fat cheese.  Oh, and mixed spicy sprouts, which were odd and delicious with the cranberries. Excellent with olive oil and a squeeze of lime juice.   

I know it's spring because I filled a container with mixed green and spinach as the basis for my lunches this week.   Yay summer.

Mmmm...pancakes

Last night for supper, I made buckwheat and pecan pancakes with grilled apples.  With one fried egg.   I didn't bother to make the pancake batter from scratch, since I very much like the buckwheat mix made by Krusteaz.   Chopped the pecans and stirred them into the dry mix, then sliced an apple very thinly. While the pancakes baked on the electric griddle, I let the apples, sprinkled with nutmeg, carmelize on the other side, and just when it was all nearly completely finished, fried the egg. 

The egg was fresh, the apples not too sweet, the buckwheat hearty and nutty.  Wonderful! It made me start thinking of pancakes. 

Pancakes have always been one of my big favorites.  When we were children, my parents sometimes took us to IHOP and we'd all go insane over the choices---blueberry! No, chocolate! No, silver dollar pancakes, those adorable little things, that came neatly stacked in piles of ten.  My favorite was always buckwheat, which I liked for the flavor and color, but even more because it astonished adults that a girl, a little girl liked them.  That astonishment made me feel clever, intriguing, mysterious--Who is that little girl there, the one who likes buckwheat instead of chocolate?--but mainly, I just loved the hearty smell and flavor, the substantial depth of a buckwheat pancake on my plate, in my mouth, hot and solid in my belly. In France last summer, I feasted on a buckwheat pancake near the Normandy beaches and they set up my passion for them again.  I've been making them a lot.

Pancakes are given short shrift, I think.  The very first thing I ever learned to cook was pancakes in the shape of letters and animals, out of my Betty Crocker's Cookbook For Boys and Girls (how adorable they were! Bears and C's and little faces!).   As a college student, I often took my books to Denny's and studied over a supper of pancakes and endless cups of coffee.  It was a treat, a way to be alone and not alone, eating something that gave me comfort while I crammed for finals.   

When my boys came along, I cooked a hot breakfast for them every morning.  Now, this was not some self-sacrificing obnoxiousness on my part.  They were very picky eaters. They needed to have a good breakfast because sometimes I knew they didn't eat school lunches at all.  And it is also true that I am a naturally early riser. In those days, I was often awake and moving by five, so by the time I needed to get them up for school, it was no problem to have breakfast ready and hot.  (I'm also not, for the record, one of those people who think eggs are suspicious.  They're a power food, packed with nutrition, and a really great way to feed children.) 

I cycled through a small selection-scrambled eggs and broiled cinnamon toast; French toast with vanilla and cinnamon, and pancakes.  My younger boy, the pickiest eater on the planet, didn't like fancy pancakes, but the older one loved sophisticated offerings like a recipe I found in Martha Stewart magazine for pancakes with carmelized pears in the middle of them-they were so lovely! (Who is that little boy who likes the grilled pear pancakes?)  I've actually lost that recipe and would like to find it again, if anyone knows it. 

Happily, Christopher Robin also enjoys breakfast for supper, and he was delighted by the buckwheat, apple, and pecan pancakes when he came in late and tired and ready to relax.

As I washed up the dishes, I thought of how much I love pancakes, and I ask you:

Do you have a favorite pancake or pancake story?  Do you have a family pancake recipe that's to die for?  What did you pick at the International House of Pancakes when you were ten?

Spinach soup

The fastest, easiest soup I know.  And it makes me feel virtuous and elegant because it looks beautiful in the bowl and has such healthy vegetables.

2-3 T olive oil

1 small yellow onion

2-3 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

4 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth if you'd rather)

1 15 oz can diced tomatoes (I like the basil flavored ones)

1 pkg cheese fresh or frozen tortellini (smallish package)

1 bag fresh or 1 15 oz bag frozen spinach

Heat the oil.  Lightly brown the onions and garlic. Throw in everything else except spinach, cook for ten minutes, add spinach until wilted or hot and serve. 

Anyone else have a very fast soup with lots of veggies?

Still. Not. Done

I keep thinking I must be almost done with this book, but like some funhouse tunnel, it suddenly stretches out again.   

Eating weird things.  Yesterday, sesame crackers were the food of choice.  And sprouted brown rice bowls because they're easy and fast and nutritious.  It is so important to eat nutritiously on this kind of end of book marathon, and it's hard.  Last night, I made the superfast spinach tortellini soup I love so much. Ten minutes and sticks to your ribs very nicely. 

Tonight, duck tamales, leftover from my cooking spree a week ago.  The cherry mojo wasn't preservable, so I'm going to try some roasted red pepper jam, which I bought at the farmer's market in Pueblo.  Should be great, actualy.

The day I bought the jam, along with some Rio Grande Wild honey (a favorite of Pancho Villa) which the woman collected from wild flowers at the headwaters of the Rio Grande.  It's as dark as molasses and very rich.  Mostly, I loved buying those artisanal jars of elegant jams and honeys from a character who could subtitle honey like that. 

Which is a great reason to frequent farmers markets.  Characters. Good honey.  Stories.

Midwinter Festival Day

One of my favorite places in the neighborhood is the produce department of the local Whole Foods.  Banks of flowers to the left, produce to the right and front, piles and piles and piles of beautiful green and red and orange and yellow foods.  It's almost too much for me, honestly--I am drunk on the colors in seconds and then wander the store flushed and dazzled and without thought.  Great for an artist's date. 

(photo is obviously not whole foods, but a market in Spain.  Nice, huh? Photographer is Robin Elaine: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinelaine/)

This afternoon, I stopped in to buy smoked fish for Christopher Robin's Valentine's Day supper.  Smoked red trout, crab cakes, salad with cranberries and goat cheese, and dessert of giant red strawberries with parrano cheese.  My favorite cheap Chardonnay (Barefoot) to go with it.

The checker was a middle-aged woman sliding toward wisewoman status, her hair long and dry, her voice the worn rasp of a longtime smoker.  "Is it Wednesday or Valentine's Day for you?" she asked. 

"Oh, definitely Valentine's Day.  Why not?" I said. "How about you?"

Her sigh was weary.  "Only Wednesday. Even though they make me wear this rose."  She turned her head to smell it on her shoulder, a giant red bloom, just opening, as velvety and sexy as a boudoir.  She muttered something I didn't quite catch and I wondered if she was lonely.  If she didn't like the holiday because it was about lovers and she didn't have one.  Her hands were bare of rings, but that means nothing.

Feeling apologetic for my fish and strawberries, which seemed suddenly seductive, I said, "Well, it is nice to have a holiday in February.  The days are so short, and it's been so dark lately. It's just nice to have something to cheer us up."

She stopped and blinked at me. "That's true! I never thought of it. Because people have been coming in all day, buying things and they're happy and it's making everybody cheerful."  She scanned my milk.  "I'm just going to keep thinking about that! A midwinter holiday. Right!"  With a flourish, she rang out my order and presented me with my receipt.  "You," she said with particular emphasis, "have a very nice day."

Yes.  You, too, my dear.

And all of you. Celebrate the dark days of winter with some red flowers and candy hearts and fuzzy kisses.   Remember, there's no law that says the love has to be for a sweetheart.  Buy your dog a bone, your cat a fish, your mother a flower, your body a luxurious bath bomb.  Just go love something or somebody. 

KISS!

No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain

I have a cold and haven't worked for a couple of days.  Instead I'm reading for the RITAs and my column and watching lots of television.

Oh, and I made tamales on Sunday.

For the foodie and travel addicts out there, you should be catching No Reservations.  Anthony Bourdain is the author of KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL, which I've praised here before as an earthy, intelligent, well-written look into the world of professional kitchens.  (He's also written food-related mysteries, which I've not read). 

No Reservations is as much about travel and people as it is about food, and the free-form flow of the program gives it an intimate feel--I always feel like I'm hanging out with Tony, checking out the locals.  I particularly enjoy it when he is disarmed by a local, and the true spirit of a place or culture comes shining through.  He's an ironic and irreverent host, but the bad boy angle is ripened by his genine curiosity and intellligence. The episode when the cast gets caught in Beirut is especially harrowing and insightful.

Part of the appeal is the Mick Jagger bad boy angle, of course.  He's good looking and wry. In real life: way too much trouble.  On TV: a lot of fun. 

My notes: I'm not a particularly adventurous meat eater.  It's always the meat dishes that give me pause.  Goat? No.  Sashimi, octopus, even chicken livers....no.  I'd like to do the vegetarian food tour--only vegetarian cultures.  It's hard to think of too many vegetables that would be inedible.  I might not like them, but I doubt I'd choke on them, either.

Cooking up a book

A snowy Saturday.  (Surprise! That's five in a row if anyone is counting.) The installers came to put in the new window. I cooked.  Because, well, that seems to be what I do these days.  I cook to write and write and cook and then write some more. 

First, a velvety chicken stock from a leftover rotisserie carcass. Wings, skin, half an onion, 3 sliced garlic cloves. Boil till velvety.  I had no celery, so used celery salt, which worked just fine.  I did have some fresh whole mixed peppercorns, red and white and black, and they're great in everything. 

(Scribbling, as I cooked, on a yellow notepad for MIP. Wiping hands on chile pepper apron bought in Santa Fe for Valentine's Day last year. Splashes of stock smear the ink a little, but I can still read it.)

Next up, the creme anglais or custard for the apple galette that was meant to be my main event. CR will eat custard by itself, and his mother sends packets of dry custard that's really not bad, but I wanted to give it a try from scratch.  Confession: I'd never used real vanilla bean before, and it was so interesting!  What a delight to discover those teeny specks in vanilla flavored things are seeds!  I loved the smell of it, and the stickiness.   And I've never met an egg I didn't want to separate, so that was fun too.   When I finished it, stirring as instructed, over a pot of ice water, I carried a spoonful up to CR and his eyes widened satisfyingly. "That's good!"

Since the guys were not finished, I decided to make the pastry for the galette, too. Here is another confession: I love cutting butter into flour with a pastry cutter.  It's such a satisfying job.  I love adding ice water, too, and using my granite rolling pin, which stays so cold.  (A friend of mine gave me the rolling pin when I was divorcing.  It was a joke, but it's fantastic, one of my favorite things.  If I had to leave my kitchen with five things, it would be in the box.)  This dough recipe uses apple cider vinegar, and I loved the way it smelled. 

The window was finished (oh, happy day--it's beautiful) and I went upstairs to write.  Last night, I made some new charts and noticed some things I hadn't realized about the main idea.  I made a work list of things that need doing, which things must be rewritten now and which can wait until the end of the rough draft.  A scene suddenly appeared ripe--as if the Girls sent up a whole script--so I wrote it, and it didn't even have anything to do with food.  A motivation appeared, rooted in something much darker than I knew. 

I ended up with eight solid pages in about an hour and a half, plus one of the tough scenes rewritten. 

Then I ran and went back to cooking.  The chicken/corn chowder simmering while I sliced apples and thought of a book I'm reading: Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings, by Edward Espe Brown.  Cooking as an exercise in mindfulness: when you wash the rice, wash the rice.  I sliced the apples and measured flour and stirred the soup and tasted a pinch of dough, a misshappen piece of apple, admired the falls of peel from the scraper.  I tried to get the peels off in a single curl, but didn't succeed .

We ate the chowder.  I strongly considered starting with the pie, it was so beautiful. We resisted, but not for long.  We ate it warm.

Oh. 

That crust, glistening with sugar, was flaky and perfect.   The surprise dazzle of oranges in the apples instead of lemon made the flavors explode in our mouths.  We ate tiny bites, admiring. Stopping. Looking. Tasting again.  Those apples. That crust. The custard with its teeny seeds of vanilla (a wee bit too much, methinks, cut it back a little next time).  Outside, the wind battered the trees again, and snow is falling again, but here inside, we had hot soup and warm pie and cold custard, made from scratch, and really a person could not ask for much more.

Buy this cookbook: DESSERTS THAT HAVE KILLED BETTER MEN THAN ME by Jeremy Jackson.  I cooked and wrote like a madwoman over the chocolate torte last week, too. 

The muddy middle and why to bake a cake

I've reached the middle of the book.  The muddy, muddled, mucking-about middle.   I'm not particularly cheerful. (This is the point where I will start making drama in the world to save me from trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing with the book.)  What I know, after doing this so many times, is that this is a normal stage, if not a particularly pleasant one.

That flashy, dazzling, Venus flytrap of the beginning is a long way back there now.  And the giddy, shaky pleasure/relief of the end is still way, way ahead.  There is just now, slogging away, trying to believe that it will be a book.

This is hard on writers, and it's hard to explain to others how it feels to be a creative person in progress. There's no product, and there won't be for a long time. 

So, last night, I baked a chocolate torte from scratch.  Five simple ingredients. Many satisfying steps.  Really excellent cake, which I'm trying to ignore.

The small goals of running a little longer each each week, of actually going to my yoga class every Tuesday and not just doing some work at home, also help me get through this stage. The massage therapist asked me if I was shoveling a lot of snow, which made me feel buff.

And artist dates.  Just getting out and breathing air is good.  Hikes feel like an accomplishment, but everything is still very icy, and promises to be worse after this weekend.

And well...a blog is a finished thing, too.   

Now, off to the muddy middle.....

Indulgences

On ARGH INK, Jenny Crusie writes a list of Indulgences for 2007 and urges us:

Make your 2007 Indulgences today, people. Because tomorrow, you're going to be stuck making those damn Resolutions and after that it's all diet and exercise and no flamingo bunny ears in sight.

Since I'm essentially a sybarite of the highest order, this strikes me as a delicious way to start the new year. My Indulgences for the year are:

1. Add more music.  There's a lot in my life already, but this is indulgences--I love music. Sing every day.  Take cello lessons.  Download more music and listen to the things my children (and their friends) recommend so I can be dazzled by new artists.

2. Take more photos for the pleasure of it.  I got a nice shot yesterday in all the holiday madness.

3. Cook something spectacular every week--French or Italian or Indian, or whatever else looks cool.  Play with food.

4. Order really excellent staples and ingredients once in awhile, like an array of salts from around the world and fantastic vinegars.

5. Throw a party every quarter for some ridiculous reason like the second Saturday in April.  With a theme I make up and all the good food I want to cook and plenty of wine or something to make people laugh.

Well, that wasn't hard.  Go read Jenny's and post your own.  If you blog about it, come back here and post your blog address. 

Green Chile Jones

      I've been aching to get to a project that's been forced to a back burner for more than a year.  The collage has been turning into a work of art all on its own. Finally, I've cleared some time and space to write the whole thing (there are elements I want to explore without showing it to anyone) and I've been drunkenly, happily letting it spring out for the past three days.

     For me, a brewing new book often means cooking.  No idea why cooking and books go together for me, but they do. And yesterday, I awakened with a marrow-deep hunger for fresh green chile.  Maybe it was the low soft clouds over the mountains, the night’s crispness lingering longer and longer after dawn, a crispness painting the edges of leaves yellow and red when it thinks I am not looking.  Autumn is coming, and for me that means I need chile in the freezer, stew on the stove, the hot smell warming the cooling days. 

            Until I moved to Pueblo in my early twenties, I did not eat hot food.  I loved my mother’s tacos, made with whole pinto beans and fried soft corn tortillas and I was a fairly adventurous eater, but I had somehow aligned myself with Those Who Do Not Care For Spicy Foods. 

          In Pueblo, where northern New Mexico cuisine reigns supreme, this is seen as something of a crime.  It also happened that I found a job in an upscale Mexican restaurant out of Albuquerque, called Papa Felipe’s (which I think still exists in Albuquerque) where I worked for five years.  The restaurant used a heavenly variety of authentic ingredients I learned to love, like carne adoba and blue corn tortillas and fresh salsas.  I learned to deseed dried red chile pods and never touch my eyes afterward.  I took home leftover sopapillas (and was crushed, years later to discover that the famed beignets of New Orleans legend, were only sopapillas with powdered sugar.  Better with honey, trust me).

         It took me a long time to even try a bowl of green chile.  It scared me. I was sure it would be too hot, that my lips would be burned right off.   One night when I had a bad cold, the bartender and the cook talked me into a hot toddy and a bowl of green chile. 

         One bite was all it took.  One bite of that rich broth swimming with tomatoes and onions and chopped Anaheim chiles (not so much hot as vivid, deep, wild) and jalapenos, sweet and sharp, and cheese, and a hot fresh tortillas, thick and lightly browned. 

          I still remember how it was, that first bowl of green chile stew on a hot winter night with a very bad cold in Pueblo, Colorado, in a deserted after hours restaurant with the dishwasher banging big pots and the smell of soap on the floors and my head pounding, and the chiles sliding into my belly with little chuckles.  From that moment forward, I have had an abiding passion for chiles. Their power, their sweetness, their somehow secret zest. 

         In Pueblo, I would already have had my chiles for the year, and I might have had some left from last year, but as I was moving last year, I didn’t have a chance to get any put away in the freezer, and have had to buy little cans of them all year long.  At $1.43 per can.  I use  lot of chile—just here and there, a bit in this soup, some in my eggs in the morning, a scattering over the whole wheat tortillas I’ve come to like, stirred into a quiche. I loathe paying so much when I know what I can get.

         So I’ve been finishing projects and had the big hike, but kept meaning to get to Pueblo and get some chiles. Haven’t managed to get there. Yesterday, driving down a busy street in Colorado Springs, I saw a sign, “Fire-roasted Hatch chiles!” but I was in the wrong lane and couldn’t turn, so this morning, Christopher Robin and I trekked back down there to get some. 

         We were the only ones there, but they had bushels for $20.  A little high, but she was just taking a bushel from the roaster and the sight of them, blackened and soft, tumbling into the bag she had for them, was enough.  I lugged them to the trunk and we drove home with the smell filling the car.  CR kept saying, “That smells really good.”

         Perfume.  Truly.

         We stopped at Safeway to buy tortillas and gallon bags. I skinned and sliced a chile for myself, tucking it into a tortilla with some cheese and leftover pork.  After lunch, I stood at the sink and skinned the entire bushel, remembering with so much pleasure how it is with chiles—how some shed their skins like a boy ready to jump in the lake to skinny dip with his friends, and others are stubborn, clinging to scraps of covering wherever they can. The scent of them filled the air, clearing my sinuses, easing my shoulders. Every so often, I’d grab a very ripe hot one and it would explode in my fingers, sending that particular fierceness into the atmosphere.  I wondered how I knew which ones were very hot by just their smell, and it was just knowing.   Some were put whole into bags, some chopped, some cut in strips.  (I’m sure everyone in the world knows this but me, but I also tried half-freezing some whole chiles before I bagged them and it worked very well. Much easier to just grab one later.)  Seeing the fleshy, firm beauty of these chiles, I know I’m going to try rellenos again.  Have not been terribly successful before, so if you know a great recipe for them (I like the thick battered ones), please share. 

            I feel smug and cheery tonight, like a pirate with a chest full of doubloons or a blue jay with a big stash of whole peanuts.            

           What’s your stash for the coming cold?  And, for the writers, how does that relate to sense of place for you (or a character if you'd rather)?