Tag: cooking

Creations a la Chez Nealo.

One Conversation

WE WERE DISCUSSING SYNAGOGUE FUNDRAISERS, and I suggested an egg toss.

E. G., who knows who he is but may not want you to, looked at me with the sad seriousness of the ex-military and first responder. “Eggs aren’t for tossing,” he said. “They’re for eating. It debases us to play with something that half the world is starving for.”

That was ten years ago. To this day, the sight of someone playing with or otherwise wasting their food still makes me itchy inside.

One conversation was all it took to change my mind about something I had never seriously thought through. What will it take to change yours?

Things Missed (80s)

GENERIC FOOD. FOND MEMORIES OF shopping the Lucky’s store in Concord c. 1981 wherein a vast wall of white and yellow cans, boxes and bottles severally proclaimed “COLA.” “CIGARETTES.” “CHILI.” “DOG FOOD.” “BREAKFAST CEREAL.” “ART.” (That last is ironic, but if they’d only let in Andy Warhol and a big Sharpie we could’a had us a time.)

(For that matter, I also miss “Repo Man.”)

Eats: Leisurely Eggs

IN ANOTHER LIFE, THIS DISH is what saved Prosatio Silban‘s buopoth from being the main ingredient in someone else’s meal(1); in this life, it’s what ballasts me at table long enough to read the Sunday morning papers. Leisurely Eggs assumes that the cook knows how to simultaneously brown a variety of different ingredients in a single pan, the denser the longer. (If you don’t know how, this is a good way to learn.)

Leisurely Eggs (Serves at least two, or one who won’t eat again until dinner)

First, arrange some nice background audio (Django Reinhart, say, or NPR’s “Weekend Edition”). Then add to a large medium-hot pan in the following order, and as art and experience dictates to balance facility with substance:

– Olive oil and/or butter (one keeps the other from smoking)
– Potato (diced)
– Onion (likewise)
– Sausage (sliced. I like chicken-apple and chicken-artichoke. Add this first to forego the olive oil/butter)
– Mushrooms (sliced or quartered)
– Capers
– Olives (kalamata or pimentoed, sliced or quartered. Stuffed with garlic is also good)
– Artichoke hearts
– Spinach
– Green onions (chopped)
– Garlic
– Black pepper
– Anything else as palate and physics suggests.

Meanwhile, scramble at least two eggs with a complementary cheese or cheeses (I prefer either very sharp cheddar or the “Italian blend” of fontina, asiago, mozzarella and Parmesan).

When everything smells and looks right, pour in the egg/cheese scramble and lower the heat. Stir briskly for less than a minute (to coat; you don’t want a frittata, although those are also tasty); just before the eggs are cooked to your liking, turn all onto a plate and garnish with rye toast (or sourdough or whole-wheat or English muffins) and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee(2) — tea or milk won’t stand up to the flavors — and don’t forget the newspaper!

– = – = –
(1) From the yet-unpublished “Light Breakfast”:

The dish could be thrown together in any fashion, and indeed looked that way on the plate no matter how talented its maker, but was also a time-honored test of skill. A bad cook would toss everything into the pan and hope for the best (including a forgiving palate); a good cook could use as many ingredients as obtainable in such order as to bring out the purest and most complementary flavor of each. So well-known was this principle and so beloved its application that Uulians frequently cited it as suitorial standard (“She’s beautiful, son, but how Leisurely are her Eggs?”).

(2) Actually, seltzer will clear the palate and aerate the esophagus. I like to have both coffee and seltzer, with sometimes maybe a glass tomato juice to honor the practice of the grandparents who taught me the importance of a leisurely Sunday breakfast. (I have no idea why they were into the tomato juice.)

Food: Absent-Minded Blueberry Pie

THE GENESIS OF THIS PIE lay in my reluctance to buy retail by way of an unintentional misreading of the directions in Betty Crocker’s Orange Tome. (I left out the flour and cinnamon, thinking the blueberries would make their own sauce like cranberries do. They didn’t, and while the results are rather a bit more runny than expected still it’s not too bad — worth a blog post, at least.

Mine Firster Pie
Fig. 1

I used:

– Two 12 oz. bags frozen blueberries from the whole-lifestyle store[1]
– Two 9-inch frozen organic pie shells from same (they come two to a package, complete with tin)
– 1 cup sugar
– 1 cup water

0. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

1. Put the blueberries in a big pot with water and sugar. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to a fast simmer.

2. When you realize they’re not exactly cooking like cranberries (about 10 minutes), be grateful that they’re at least nicely defrosted and ladle with a slotted spoon into one of the pie shells. (Reserve liquid for making deLICious blueberry sodas — just add seltzer!)

3. Invert the other pie shell atop the fragrant steaming blue mass; crimp edges and deflate, then poke a few holes in the top to vent. Wrap edge with a 2-3″ strip of cooking foil so it doesn’t brown horribly.

4. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil strip and bake another 15 minutes.

5. Set for an hour, preferably on a window sill to tempt passing scamps and hobos. Slice and serve with ice-cold, unskimmed milk. (Live a little. You’re worth it.)

_____
[1] That’s how it seems when I shop there. I feel simultaneously out of place and catered to in my 48-year-old-punk duds.

The Brotherhood of the Dunk

YOU SEE THEM CASTING FURTIVE kitchenward gazes after a good dinner of roasted chicken or perhaps beef or lamb, excusing themselves with a piece of bread and trying not to run. Shortly afterward, stifled sighs waft back to the dining room.

Did I say “them?” I mean we. The Brotherhood of the Dunk.

The Brotherhood is a fine example of what ethnologists call Mystery Schools. These institutions, which flourished in Greece and Egypt at appropriate times in their country’s histories, were religious cults whose worship was based on an initiate’s experience of something — something wordless and immediate, so all-encompassing and clarifying that it couldn’t be shared unless, perhaps, through the eye-spark of mutual recognition.

For in truth, no words can truly substitute for the experience of dipping a piece of crusted bread into warm rendered golden animal fat, swiping up the pan-cracklings and biting into the result. The tang of drippings-soaked bread caresses your nostrils; the smooth liquescence balances and softens the dry crunch; the mouthfilling chorus of bitter sour salty sweet; the elusive fifth flavor whose harmonies transform the products of baker’s oven and roasting pan into something akin to what the angels, if they exist, must eat. (And if they don’t exist, then there’s more for the rest of us.)

Great care must be taken with this art, whose practitioners flavor it according to personal taste: some dunk only the inner, soft parts of the bread. Others use the crust to dislodge from the bottom of the pan toothsome chunks of blackened goodness. Still others will press down the soft side like a sponge, gingerly plucking at the rapidly moistening crust and trying not to get their fingers too greasy. (Good luck.)

It is said that a man may be known by his dunkings, but I have seen little evidence to support this; some of the most otherwise timid souls I know dunk with a gusto and joie-de-vivre rivaled only by Paul Bunyan at a flapjack bar. Nevertheless, if a man tells you that you can find God in a piece of bread, don’t believe him — dunk for yourself.

Minute Mitzvah: You Are How You Eat

TUESDAY’S NOT TOO LATE FOR a Monday Mitzvah, unless you’d rather read something else.

Today: Don’t eat what’s not kosher (literally, “proper, fit”).

Let’s correct two misconceptions:

1. Kosher is hygenic.
2. Kosher is rational.

The basic rules from Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 are to eat nothing from the sea without fins and scales, nothing from the land that’s not a split-hoofed ruminant, and no avian predators or bats. From a particular perspective, they are both arbitrary and culturally specific as Western mores against dog or (mostly) horse. The only real reason for a Jew to “do” it, simply and honestly, is that it’s a Jewish thing to do — either as a mandate from God or cultural co-creation. Most Jews I know keep kosher to some degree (some through active opposition), and one consequence of its intentional practice is to reveal the tangible connection between you, the food, the people who grew it, the way it came to you and the world of which we’re all a part. And that’s not arbitrary at all.

Exercise: Look at what you eat today, and why.

Dinner: Beef Carbonnade

SONOMA‘S UNSEASONABLY COOL JUNE IS a good excuse to keep filling the kitchen with slow-cooked aromas. This one, I’m told, is something of a Belgian national dish, and if it isn’t it ought to be:

Beef Carbonnade

1 medium onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons flour
3 pounds lean London Broil, cubed
1-1/2 cups beef stock
1 cup stout (I use Guinness)
2 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

– Saute onions and garlic in oil.
– Dredge beef in flour, add to pot, and brown evenly.
– Add beef stock and stout; simmer until beef is tender (about two hours under the lid should do it).
– Add molasses and vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.

Serve hot over boiled new potatoes, and contemplate the goodness of Life’s little alchemies.

Dinner: Inadvertent Hobbitry

AS HOBBITS AND THOSE WHO love them know, nothing makes a meal like a heap o’ mushrooms. Around here, that usually means skilleted with garlic, onions, tomatoes and a big sausage and lovingly ladled atop fettucine or capellini. But last night, I forwent both garlic and pasta for a little something I call the Inadvertent Hobbit (serves 2):

– Two big Italian turkey sausages (sweet, unless you like spicy)
– Four slices turkey bacon, diced
– Vidalia onion, roughly chopped
– 12 crimini mushrooms, quartered
– Olive oil
– Sherry
– Pinch of rosemary, thyme, basil, salt

Brown sausage on all sides, about 10 minutes. Add enough olive oil to brown the bacon and turn the onions translucent, then do that too. Add herbs to taste (I use a smaller pinch of rosemary than of basil and thyme). Deglaze with sherry and add mushrooms. Revel in the homey aroma, then cover and simmer for another 10 minutes. Line two rustic-looking dishes with the non-sausage ingredients and put the sausage on top. Contemplate life’s simple pleasures, and enjoy.

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