Dog biscuits: The Recipe

I made some more dog biscuit dough yesterday, and this time I measured everything, and kept track of what I did. So here it is, because I know Linus wants some. It's kind of complicated and putzy, but you love your dog, right?

I did this the old-fashioned way, meaning I dissolved the yeast in about half a cup of warm water (about 110 degrees F) with one sugar cube and then let it stand until it's all foamy & bubbly. When you do it this way, it's important that everything else is about room temperature (or a little warmer, if you're like me) so that when you add the yeast you don't kill it. The modern sort of bread machine influenced way to do it is to add the yeast to the (room temperature) dry ingredients and then have the liquid ingredients a little hotter when you add them (I guess about 120-130 degrees F). Never tried it, but if you feel more comfortable doing it that way, go right ahead.

Also: The recipe below calls for 1 cup of cooked grain cereal. I used a cup of Ruby's special chow, which I made the other day by cooking oatmeal and rice in some leftover chicken soup with extra chicken broth. But if you have a cup of cooked rice left over, or oatmeal, or millet, or seven-grain cereal, or whatever, you can use that. If you have to cook something up just for this recipe, cook it in broth or stock; throw in some shredded vegetables (my dogs have seemed to especially like carrots and apples, but this is also a good way to get rid of any bits of leftover meat and/or vegetables), add some canned pumpkin at the end. You'll probably have more than a cup of it, but you can freeze it for the next time, or just add a small scoop of it on top of the dog's kibble every morning.

So here we go:

Dissolve 1 packet or 1 Tbsp. dry yeast in 1/2 cup warm water with 1 sugar cube. Set in a warm, still place for a while. I actually used a little more than a Tbsp, but less than you'd get in two packets.

While that's going on, combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl -- not the one you'll use in the mixer (if you're using a mixer). You'll need at least 8 cups, and some of it should be white flour. You may need a little more than 8 cups. Don't have a flour sifter? Me neither. I just put it through a wire mesh colander. You could also just stir it all up with a fork so that it's more or less evenly blended. Here's what I used this time, but last time I included bits of rye flour and millet flour and cornmeal and buckwheat flour and rolled oats and whatever else I had in the freezer taking up space.

• 4 cups all-purpose white flour
• 3-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup wheat germ

In the mixing bowl, combine the wet ingredients. If you're using a fancy mixer, you'll want to use the dough hook eventually, so you might as well start out with it. You can also just mix this up with a spoon or whisk or whatever. And again, make sure that they are room temperature or slightly warmer:

• 1 cup chicken stock* (of course I use homemade stock, which I have in the freezer, but you can use canned or boxed -- salt free! -- broth or stock
• 1 cup milk*
• 1 cup cooked grain/cereal (oatmeal, rice, 7-grain cereal, millet -- even leftover polenta)
• 1/4 cup shortening, butter, or lard
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp. garlic powder (NOT garlic salt)
• 1 grated apple (optional)
• 1 grated carrot (optional)
• 1/4 cup brewer's yeast (optional)

* You can use slightly more, like, say a can of broth and a can of evaporated milk, but you'll probably have to add more flour.

When that's all combined, and neither too hot nor too cold, add the yeast (remember the yeast? it should be all foamy and smelly by now), stir for a bit, and then add a couple of cups of the flour mixture. Keep adding the flour, 1/2 a cup at a time, until you've added about 6-1/2 cups. By this time, it will take a few minutes to incorporate each additional scoop of flour. Make sure that it's well blended in before adding the next scoop. Which, keep adding more until the dough leaves the sides of the bowl and starts to get smooth and elastic. You might need to knead in the last few scoops by hand. It should be a fairly stiff dough, not sticky at all. Keep kneading and every once in a while sort of pick it up and slam it onto the work surface and slap it a few times.

If you've baked bread by hand before, you'll know when it's ready to stop kneading and start the first rising. When you pinch it gently, it feels sort of like an earlobe, and it will keep the shape for a bit but start to spread back out right away. When you slap it, it feels kind of heavy and dense, but springy.

Place the dough in an oiled bowl and oil the surface of the dough. Cover with a clean towel or cloth napkin and leave in a warm, still place for at least an hour. I usually turn the oven on to low for about five minutes, and then turn it off while I am still kneading, then I put the dough in there to rise, with the light on. Remember to turn it off, though.

After an hour or so, check on it; it should be twice as large as it was when you put it in there. It's ready when you poke two fingers into it -- about to the first knuckle -- and the indentation stays. This part is fun: Punch the center of the dough and watch it collapse. Then knead it again, just for a few minutes. If it is at all sticky at this point, incorporate some more flour, 1/4 cup at a time, as you knead. If it seems too dry and floury, sprinkly a Tbsp. or so of olive oil on it as you knead.

At this point, I divided the dough into four equal pieces. I put three of them into plastic freezer bags and tossed them into the freezer.** I put the remaining piece into a smaller oiled bowl and put it into the fridge because I had to go do something for a few hours. You could also put it back in the warm place and let it rise again right away. It won't take as long to double in size this time, but when it does, punch it down and roll it out on a floury cutting board or other work surface. It should be about 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch thick.

If you have a dog biscuit-shaped cookie cutter, use it to cut them out, and then quickly place them on a lightly greased cookie sheet. You can put them fairly close together. You can use any old cookie cutter, or just take a knife and cut them into little rectangles or whatever shape you want. They're kind of hard to break, so you might want to make them bite-sized from the start.

You'll notice that once they're on the cookie sheets they start to rise again. Brush the tops with olive oil, or with a mixture of egg white and water, or with milk. Then take a fork and poke holes in the surface of the biscuits, about an inch or so apart. Let them sit on the cookie sheets for about 15-20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Bake them on the center rack for about 45 minutes, then reduce the heat to 250 and bake for another hour or so. Maybe more. They should be crunchy and dry but not very dark brown. Then turn the oven off and just leave them there until they are completely cool. Overnight is fine if it's late and you're bored with this project.

When completely cool, place in an airtight container or zippery freezer bags. They'll keep at least a week or so that way, but if it's going to be much longer than that, keep them in the fridge.

** To thaw them out, if you put them in the freezer, I usually take one out in the morning before I go to work and put it into the refrigerator. Then when I get home, I take it out and put it in an oiled bowl in a warm place and let it rise for a while, then knead a bit and roll it out and proceed as above with cutting out & baking.

And I didn't have to get married to get it

My mother has been going on and on about what she was planning to get me for Christmas for months now. I had my suspicions about it, that was probably some kind of kitchen gear, because she brought it up in every conversation about recipes. But I didn't really want to think too hard about it, because she was having so much fun and I didn't want to wreck it. And then there was all this drama about how on earth she was going to mail this item to me, how to get it to the post office.

She has a history of mailing bizarre things, and I've had to go to the post office before to pick up cardboard boxes full of pickle-flavored packing peanuts and broken glass. And some very large rocks that she thought I would enjoy using as bookends. Last time it happened, the post office manager called me to come and get a package that had been damaged, and did I know anyone at [my mother's address], and I said yeah that was my mom and how I hoped she hadn't sent pickles again. And she said: "Pickles! That's it! I was about to call the HazMat team to clean it up, but it smelled so familiar; I thought I'd check with you before I shut the place down, see if you were expecting a package."

It was a serious bummer, as her pickles are about the best anywhere.

So it makes me nervous when she talks about mailing things.

Apparently she'd been fretting about this difficulty to everyone who would listen. Someone suggested that she just have the store ship it to me, but she didn't want to pay the shipping charge. I suggested a gift certificate, but she said I'd probably just spend it on laundry detergent and bath towels or something, and she really really wanted me to have this item. I guess her neighbor finally got tired of hearing her fret, and took her to the library and helped her purchase it online. Free shipping & everything! Mom was stunned by the simplicity and elegance of this transaction.

"Have you ever bought anything over the internet before?" she asked me. "It's really easy."

But anyway, she went ahead and mailed it early, and told me to open it right away because she wanted me to have it in plenty of time for my holiday baking needs. It's a shiny black and chrome KitchenAid (r) mixer.

I could not be more thrilled. I've been wanting one for years, but it's one of those things that I just couldn't come up with a good reason to go buy it. Let alone come up with the big bucks they cost. I had sort of resigned myself to the idea that my decision to remain unmarried would mean that I would never ever get one.

Plus, if I get bored with the shiny blackness of it, I can get decals to decorate it, according to Biker News Online. Behold:


You can buy the decals on eBay. Right over the internet. It's that easy.

That's not a picture of my new mixer. That picture is from Biker News Online.

How not to have a relaxing afternoon

I hope youall had a pleasant holiday. I certainly did, except for the part about scorching the potato kale dish, same as I did last year. It's a tradition now, I guess. Except next year I am not going to cook it in the pressure cooker. Nor even on the stovetop at all. I'm going to put it in a casserole dish and bake it, even though it takes much longer, and you never get the perfect texture, the way you do with the pressure cooker.

I was able to salvage it, both last year and yesterday, by pouring it all into a soup pot and cooking it for a long time. Although last year it was way worse, and I had to add more kale and more potatoes. It's a total mess, and you leave behind the crust of scorched stuff and spend the next two weeks soaking and slowly scrubbing out your pressure cooker, bit by stubborn bit.

It's weird, though, because I've made this dish, or something very much like it, at least three or four times since last year's debacle, and it's worked just fine. But I think my pressure cooker can sense fear or something, because I was very nervous and watched the cooker and listened and lifted it up a bit to make sure it was still sloshing around in there. And I had spilled something on the burner that smelled burnt, so I was unsure about whether I was smelling that or the contents of the pan. Plus of course I was in a hurry to get done cooking, walk the dog, get dressed, and go to my friend's house so I could relax and be all festive.

It was almost a relief when I finally realized it was in fact scorched and I had to release the pressure and open the thing RIGHT AWAY. The kitchen still stinks, and the pan has started its long soak.

The original recipe, from "Cooking Under Pressure" by Lorna J. Sass (out of print, alas), is more or less as follows:

Kale And Potatoes

• 1 lb. kale
• 1-1/2 lbs. potatoes
• 3 Tbsp butter or oil
• 1 medium leek (1 cup)
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 1 large onion
• 4 scallions
• 3/4 cup water
• salt
• fresh parsely (optional)
  

Melt butter, then saute leeks, garlic, onions, and scallions. Add water. Alternate layers of kale, potatoes, kale, potatoes. Cook under high pressure for 5 minutes. Add fresh parsley before serving.

She does recommend using a heat diffuser to prevent a crust from forming on the bottom. Which I guess I'd forgotten about. I can't find mine anywhere. Seems like they're more useful on gas stoves anyway, if I remember correctly.

But I've been making this stuff, without incident, for years, without a heat diffuser. I've never had a problem with scorching it before. It's so yummy, and a great dish to serve to people who aren't quite sure what kale is. It's almost always popular -- even my dad liked it and he hates any green cooked vegetables at all. And my friends liked it so much last year (even partly scorched) that they specifically asked me to make it again this year.

Over the years, I've changed the recipe a bit. For one thing, I got a bigger pressure cooker than I used to have, and a few years ago I started eating meat again (after 20 years as a vegetarian). I had no idea bacon was so yummy. I hated it when I was a kid.

I keep chopped up bacon in the freezer to use when I need a little bit of fat to cook kale or spinach or collards in. Just grab a handful, toss them in the pan, and you're good to go.

I don't know why bacon always has one end that's practically all fat. And the way most of it is packaged and displayed, you can't see it when you're selecting which package of bacon to buy -- even the really thick cut, organic, nitrite-free kind of bacon seems to have this feature. It's like with bags of onions & potatoes, how there's on rotten one in every single bag. It's as if there's someone at the packing plant whose job it is to put one cruddy looking item in each 5 lb. bag.

But it grosses me out, that super-fatty end of the slab of bacon slices, so I cut about a third off & chop it up & put it in a freezer bag. Also, the skillet I usually cook bacon in is pretty small, and the shorter pieces fit in it better. Yeah, I could buy a larger skillet, I know. But this suits me just fine.

So here is my latest version of the recipe:

• 2-3 slices bacon, cut into bits (or 3-4 Tbsp olive oil)
• 1 large sweet onion, diced
• 2 leeks, finely chopped
• 2 shallots, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2-3 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock, or water
• 2 bunches kale, thick parts of stems removed, and chopped up
• 3-4 lbs. little red potatoes, halved and cut into fairly thin slices
• 1 lb andouille sausage, cooked & sliced (optional)
  

Stir in the following before serving, to taste, if desired:

• splash of cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar
• chopped scallions
• fresh dill
• tamari or salt to taste
• Texas Pete (r) hot sauce, which is more or less like Tabasco Sauce. But any kind of hot sauce is good, if you like that kind of thing.
  

Cook the bacon over fairly low heat until just before it starts getting crispy. Turn heat up slightly and add the onions. When they are about half done, add the leeks; then when alla that's almost done, add the shallots and garlic. Add the broth or water, then layer the kale and potatoes over it. I usually cook it in the pressure cooker for 6-7 minutes. Lower the pressure, open the pot, drain excess liquid, if any, and add the andouille sausage, if you are using it; the sausage doesn't do so well under high pressure. Or you can cook it all, including the sausage, in a very large saucepan or smallish soup pot. Takes an hour or so; don't use too high a heat or it will scorch. Stir it once in a while. You can also pile it all into a casserole (use only 1 to 2 cups broth or water) and bake it at 350 to 375 (F) for 45-60 minutes or so.

In fact, I highly recommend that you do NOT use the pressure cooker. I've only ever scorched it twice, but there is nothing worse than the stink of burnt onions & garlic.

The texture of the potatoes should be sort of mushy; you can leave the extra liquid in, or even add more broth than that & call it soup if you are in the mood for soup. Or it can be more in the chunky mashed potato consistency range.

Some things just don't work out like you'd hoped

Take Scotch Pies, for example. There are still six of them in the fridge; help yourselves. Maybe other people make them better, but these are not very good. I was so hopeful; they seemed like perfect cold-weather food, and easy to pack for lunch, etc. Crust, yummy filling, you can hold it in your hand: what could go go wrong? I mean, calzones, burritos, pasties -- all good, right? And, less portable, you've got pot pies, ravioli, pierogies, all kinds of yummy things stuffed into crust or pasta or some such.

The crust, mostly, is what can go wrong. I know it wasn't supposed to be light & flaky like a puff pastry, but this was tough & chewy.

I read about Scotch Pies on the BBC last week; there was a contest, with a record number of entries, and I was intrigued. I had never heard of such a thing as Scotch Pies, so I looked up some recipes, and it sounded easy as, well, pie. And I gathered that, traditionally, they are filled with a cooked ground lamb & gravy mixture, but can hold pretty much anything from meat & vegetables to leftover vindaloo to Italian sausage & pasta, which seems weird to me too, but it had to do with a soccer game (which Scotland lost anyway). Scotch Pies are frequently served at football matches, it turns out, and are sometimes even fried.

They are not exactly haute cuisine, it seems. But I liked the idea; I frequently make leftovers -- especially curry! -- into regular old pot pies, with either a biscuit crust or regular pie crust. Which is what I'll do with the rest of the filling I made for these.

But I made the first batch of filling the other night, and didn't have time to bother with the crust. It was too late when I started cooking, and I wasn't even hungry by the time I had the filling ready to go. Ruby quite liked it, and I tried a little dish of it; it was in fact yummy. We had some for breakfast the next morning as well. I fact, we'd eaten about half of it by the time I got round to trying the crust.

But finally last night I went for it on the crust, after making a second batch of a slightly different filling, just in case I ran out.

I followed a recipe I found online for a kind of pastry I'd never made before: hot pastry, which is regared as essential for Scotch Pies, as it holds its shape best. Apparently. All the recipes I found are more or less similar: flour, lard and/or butter, hot water, and salt. You melt the lard or butter in the hot water, pour it into the salted flour, and proceed as usual. Being careful not to let it cool to much, nor to overwork it.

Of course the recipes all had wacky English measurements, but I carefully converted everything, and then weighed it to make sure. I didn't use lard. It mighta been better if I had. It mighta also been better if I'd used more flour. Dunno. I definitely overworked it. And it probably got too cool. And it was difficult to get the sides high enough, so they ended up too short, resulting in a suboptimal crust-to-filling ratio, which was especially disappointing given how yummy the filling was and how chewy and lousy-tasting the crust was.

So here's the first filling recipe:

2 pieces bacon, cut up into tiny bits
2 cups random vegetables, cut into tiny bits (in this case I used a 2 cup container from the freezer which had carrots, celery, onion, parsnips, and shiitake mushrooms all mixed together)
3/4 lb. ground lamb (or lamb cut up into tiny bits the size of peas or smaller)
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 c. flour (more or less)
1-2 cups vegetable stock and/or water
dash of Worcestershire Sauce, which I would recommend leaving out, but I used it
tsp or so of balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

So you put the bacon in the pan, and when it's mostly cooked, add the chopped vegetables and cook until fairly close to done. Add the lamb (you could use a whole pound, and when it's cooked, stir in the garlic and the peas (which I microwaved a few minutes and then drained). At this point you could add leftover gravy and skip the rest, but I didn't have any, so I added 1/4 cup of flour and stirred it into the meat mixture; it makes a thick paste and you have to keep stirring for a few minutes, and then add your liquid. A cup is probably enough, but it will depend on how much moisture the vegetables released, etc. Then add your Worcestershire Sauce, vinegar, and salt & pepper to taste. If you don't have balsamic vinegar handy, use tamari or soy sauce (and omit or cut down the salt).

The second filling was pretty much the same except I used ground beef (I used ground sirloin - if you use something less lean you might want to drain off some of the fat, leaving about 1/4 cup, which includes the bacon fat from cooking the onions, etc., to make the gravy work) instead of ground lamb, onion & potatoes instead of all the other vegetables, and didn't use Worcestershire sauce. I cut the potatoes into little cubes about the size of peas, and put them, the peas, and a cup & a half or so of vegetable stock + water in the microwave for about four minutes and added them after I added the flour.

Put this into your favorite pastry shell, cover with a top crust, make some decorative holes in the top for the steam to escape, and bake for 45-50 minutes at 350F. Or go ahead and make the oil crust, fuss with it to make individual pies. Use pre-made refrigerated crescent roll dough, or frozen puff pastry if that's what you like.

Taking dieting to a new philosophical level

I gave up on diets almost 20 years ago, when I realized that I had -- no lie -- doubled my weight in my 16 years of increasingly crazed dieting. It was the best thing I could have done, and I stopped gaining weight almost immediately. Regaining my sanity took a bit longer.

But as I noted in a previous post, I have gained some weight lately as a consequence of some changes in my pharmaceutical regime. Well-meaning friends have offered dieting advice, but I'm reluctant to try anything radical or crazy beyond trying to eat well and exercise more, which of course I try to do anyway, just because one feels better doing those things. Or at least I do. And in fact, now that my, um, pharmaceutical issues have settled down, I've already lost a few pounds and am feeling much better.

I did, however, get a recommendation I'd like to pass along. The article is a couple of years old, but I somehow missed this book when it came out (finally!) in translation: Friedrich Nietzsche wrote "Fat is Dead" in the late 1880s, but his advice to dieters is surprisingly relevant:

"One must strive to eat dangerously as one comes into the Will to Power Oneself Thin," Nietzsche wrote. "What do you fear? By this are you truly Fattened. You must embrace your Fears, as well as your Fat, and learn to Laugh as you consume them, along with Generous Portions of Simple Salad. Remember, as you stare into the lettuce, the lettuce stares also into you."

The first part of the diet, I gather, is to identify the food(s) that you most deeply dread, and then to eat superhuman quantitities of each until you are no longer appetized nor frightened by them.

According to the article, "Dieters report that they are reveling in the powerful Nietzschean weight-loss message of self-realization, transcendence, and the personal freedom to eat certain foods which are not allowed on the Atkins and South Beach diets." Which, I mean, how cool is that? Naturally, no diet is without its critics.

Detractors say the diet's actual nutritional requirements are vague, that it provides no concrete plan for progression toward weight-loss targets, and that the book consists mostly of unclear and unusually harsh sets of inspirational logical lacunae.

"Those on Nietzsche's diet must remember that, while discipline and mastering one's fear are desirable, the specter of a man striving willfully and joyfully against a frigid universe while drinking deep of 'life's bitter broth' will not precipitate weight loss," nutritionist Dr. Frank Stearns said. "A few more non-allegorical recipes would have been nice, too."

"Stearns said it was worth noting that Nietzsche died depressed, delirious, and overweight in Zurich after 10 years of near-catatonia.

"Those wishing to begin a diet, let alone a highly moralistic pre-Freudian diet, should consult with their physicians," Stearns said. "Otherwise, they run the risk of long-term health problems—not to mention the possibility of their diet being misinterpreted by a rabidly cuisinophobic nationalist sect and used to justify a world takeover by diet Nazis."

Of course, it may already be too late for that last bit.

One of life's little mysteries solved

Porridge. I never really knew what it was, only that it's served in bowls and shouldn't be too hot or too cold. I figured it was something like cream of wheat, or cornmeal mush. You know, something porridge-y. Doesn't really sound like something I'd like.

But it's sort of like bon-bons. I mean, what the hell are they, really? I did ask around once, about bon-bons, and I gather that they are those awful chocolate things like you get in the heart-shaped boxes. That there's always one kind that is good and the rest are full of gross gooey stuff and you never know until it's too late. But I've never really been curious enough about porridge to look it up or ask anyone.

Curds and whey? I remember asking my mom about that, because I thought it sounded interesting; and because of its association with spiders, I thought I needed to know. I like cottage cheese, which is basically what curds and whey is. As a kid, I used to eat it hoping a spider would show up. Couldn't get mom to get me a tuffet, though. Or even to tell me what a tuffet is.

But thanks to the BBC, I now know what porridge is. It's oatmeal. Duh.

"A dozen cooks from across the UK had gathered in Carrbridge, in Strathspey, for the contest to see who can make the finest bowl of the oatmeal dish.

"Judges marked the entrants on their porridge's appearance, consistency and taste, before deciding on a champion.

"The winner of the coveted Golden Spurtle, or stirrer, was Maria Soep from Kilchrenan.

"Ms Soep, who reached the final last year, came out victorious after a three-way cook-off."

Her secret? Really good oatmeal and a pinch of salt, soaked overnight in some good water. How hard is that? I really love oatmeal made with those steel-cut Irish oats. But the rolled oats, or the instant oatmeal? None for me, thanks.

Said a spokesman from the contest sponsor: "The standard was incredibly high and the final was very tense."

I can only imagine.

[Update: Obviously mom didn't have the internets to help her out with my incessant questions. A tuffet is just a small hassock or ottoman-type thing. It's also an English unit of capacity, equal to 2 pecks, or half a bushel.]

Relic of an empire: Mulligatawny

This is a fabulous Anglo-Indian soup. Excellent in cold weather, and equally good in hot weather, especially if you use spicier spices. I hadn't made Mulligatawny in ages, so I looked up a few recipes and they seemed to differ rather wildly from each other and from what I recalled from making it before, so I mostly ignored them. The goal here is a rich, thick, stew type of chicken soup, with curry and apples and peanuts, although some of the recipes I found left out the apples and/or the peanuts. Which, I mean, what's the point? Some recipes call for heavy cream, or coconut milk, or tell you to thicken it with butter and flour; some recipes even want you to add rice (yuck) or noodles.

I did make some dumplings for this, on request, and they were pretty good. I just used the regular old dumpling recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I've never served this soup with noodles, but it's probably perfectly good. If I didn't make the noodles from scratch, I'd use plain old egg noodles.

As always, if you do add rice or noodles or dumplings, I caution you to cook and store them separately or you'll have yourself a gummy, gloppy mess. It'll taste OK, if a bit starchy, but it'll be ugly, and it will get gloppier and uglier every day that you leave it in the fridge.

I always make the chicken stock from scratch: for this particular recipe I wanted it a bit spicier than usual, so I put a couple of serrano peppers and one jalapeno pepper (all sliced in half) into the pressure cooker along with a whole chicken, a large onion, a couple of carrots, a couple stalks of celery, a few cloves of garlic (peeled and cut in half), some bay leaves, and some peppercorns. You don't have to worry much about how you cut up the onion, carrots, & celery; you're just going to toss them when they're done. Don't add salt until it's done (and in fact I don't add salt at all until the stock gets added into whatever I'm using it for, but I'm kind of a low-salt fanatic). Cover with water and cook at high pressure for 10-15 minutes (longer if the chicken is really big). Bring it up to pressure again for a few minutes if the chicken isn't totally done to your liking.

If you're not using a pressure cooker, just simmer the whole thing for an hour or so, until the chicken is tender and falling apart.

Take the chicken out and let it cool, strain the broth and toss the vegetables (add them to dog food for very happy dogs). When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin & bones and cut up the meat however you like it. You might use it all for the soup, or you might have some left over for chicken salad or something, depending on the size of the chicken.

You can use ready-made chicken broth or stock if you prefer. Just be careful that it's not too salty, especially if the curry powder or peanut butter you're using is really salty, and some of them are. I use the kind of peanut butter that's just ground peanuts -- no salt and no sugar, but I've used regular commercial peanut butter in this recipe before with no ill effects.

Measurements are approximate, at best:

• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 large onion, chopped fine
• 1-2 leeks, chopped fine (optional - but toss em in if you've got some)
• 3-4 ribs celery, diced
• 4-5 carrots, diced or cut in slices
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced (also optional)
• quite a lot of mild curry powder (and/or garam masala, if you have it) -- 1/4 cup or so, or to taste
• 1-1/2 to 2 quarts chicken stock
• 1 large-ish potato, cubed (you can use more potatoes if you want; that's all I had)
• 1 granny smith or other tart variety of apple; peeled, cored, and cut into chunks
• 1 cup or so of frozen peas (optional)
• 3-4 cups cooked chicken, bones and skin removed (I used all but about a cup of the meat from the whole chicken I used to make the stock)
• 1/4 cup (or more) peanut butter or ground peanuts
• part of a bag of spinach that you have in the fridge that needs to be cooked right away today (optional)

Saute the onion in the melted butter in your soup pot. If you're adding any leeks, add them shortly after the onion. When the onions are almost done, add the celery and carrots and saute for a few minutes. Stir in the garlic and curry powder right before you add the stock. Start with a quart or so. Then add the potato and apple. Add more stock if necessary to cover the potatoes.

Let all that cook for a while. Add frozen peas if you want them. Add the chicken when the potatoes & peas are nearly done. (Again, add more stock -- or water if you're out of stock -- but only if you need it -- the texture should be somewhere between a soup and a stew.) Then take a 1/2 cup or so of the broth out of the pot and put it into a bowl and mix it with the peanut butter; return that to the soup pot when it's all smooth and melty. This is also when you'd add something to thicken it, if you wanted to, or some milk or cream. Toss in the fresh spinach if you've got some. I'm not sure I'd bother with the spinach if I were using peas, or vice-versa.

Let it simmer gently for a bit longer and then serve. You can garnish it with snipped scallions or cilantro if you like that kind of thing. Salt and pepper to taste, etc.

Liveblogging: Blueberry Slumber

I'm over at Julie's house just now, and we're watching Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life." Julie decided to make some kind of dessert-type thing from this recipe she's got. It's in an e-mail that she printed out on Tuesday, October 8, 2002 at 5:17 pm, and it's called Blueberry Buckle. But she wanted to leave out the shortening and/or margarine, etc. and use applesauce instead. Except the topping called for some butter and we decided that we needed to leave that in. So here's the new recipe:

350 OVEN; SQUARE PAN (8X8), LIGHTLY GREASED:

Mix throroughly:

• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 c.shortening and/or margarine applesauce

Stir in:

1 lg. egg or 3 t egg replacer in 4 T. warm water
• 1/4 c. milk or soy milk

Mix & Add:

• 2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Gently Add:

• 2 c. blueberries (Fresh or thawed frozen - don't thaw)

After placing above batter in pan, mix & sprinkle on top:

TOPPING:

• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/3 c. flour
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 c. cold butter, cut in so mixture is crumbly, not smooth. (or substitute brown sugar)

Bake for 40-45 minutes -- 50 minutes if berries are frozen; until top crust is brown.

It's got about 5 minutes left in the oven. I'll let you know how it turns out.

UPDATE: Ta Da! Here it is! It's really pretty good, fresh out of the oven like this.

Julie says that it's a little chewier, with the applesauce, than it usually is. But nothing that a nice big scoop of vanilla ice cream doesn't cure.

Say Ramen, somebody

Via the excellent Jane Awake I learned of the passing last Thursday of Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant noodles. His last meal, apparently, was Chicken Ramen, enjoyed with employees of Nissin Foods, the company he founded in 1958 to market his convenient, quality noodle product. He was 96.

As a pastafarian and a onetime college student who has been unemployed, underemployed, and an occasional freelancer, I am of course deeply saddened. The humble block of dried noodly goodness has sustained me through many a budgetary constraint.

In fact, one of my favorite ideas for cookbooks I haven't gotten around to writing and probably never will is "365 Ways to Cook Ramen." Try adding some frozen peas and half an apple, peeled and sliced, as you cook the noodles, and stir in a spoonful of chunky (unsweetened, if you have it) peanut butter and some curry powder along with the flavor packet thingy. Instant mulligatawny in a cup!

The good news? There is a Momofuko Ando Instant Ramen Museum in Ikeda City, Japan. I'm going to start saving up frequent flyer miles and vacation time now.

In which the universe demands latkes

I'm having a party next week to celebrate the December Solstice, and I'm a little stressed out about it. I'm a bit of a recluse, especially lately, but I would like my friends to meet my new love interest. And I like parties OK.

Normally the food I serve at a party is the least of my worries. I'm a pretty good cook, and I used to do it for a living, so cooking for a crowd is not that big a deal. But I'm out of practice. I don't want any last-minute failures or surprises, so I've been testing recipes, even the easy ones. Well, maybe not the sour cream-plus-french-onion-soup-mix dip recipe; that one's pretty much idiot-proof, as long as you mix it up ahead of time so that the soup mix dissolves properly in the sour cream. And make a lot. I don't know why everyone loves that stuff, but they do.

So I was cruising through the fridge to see what I had on hand and found, rather bizarrely, that I have nearly ten pounds of potatoes. Why? I don't know. I live alone. I must have purchased them. OK. Potatoes. Potato salad? Nah, I don't really like potato salad all that much, and there's always so much left over. Yuck. Latkes? No way. Total pain in the ass. Huge mess, smell of frying all over the house, and I'll be standing in the kitchen all night instead of actually enjoying my guests. Or, more to the point, instead of wandering about fretting about all the other details and making sure everyone has enough to drink and the dog doesn't eat the misteltoe and stuff.

So I'm thinking that there's this appetizer at this one restaurant I go to occasionally that's sort of similar to latkes only it's just grated potatoes, made into a loose, lacy (yes, fried) croquette-type thing topped with sour cream & caviar. Sort of like a latke, but simpler. And you could grate the potatoes in a food processor instead of by hand. Could I make these in the oven? Are they any good if they're sort of cold from sitting around on the table waiting for people to pick one up? Could I make them ahead of time and heat them up at the last minute?

No, no, and no. Cooked in the oven they totally fell apart; it was like a pile of teeny tiny french fries. Fried on the stove and left to cool off a while they tasted like those canned shoestring potatoes. Reheating them did not help; it made them taste like warmed-up canned shoestring potatoes, and all the sour cream in the world wouldn't have helped.

OK, so I'll mix in a little bit of egg and milk, embed them in sort of a matrix to hold them together. Better, but they need a little something extra, so I grated an onion and that was a little better. Some salt & pepper helped too. And a few snipped chives. I'd given up on the oven idea by then, so I was frying them in a mixture of half butter and half mild-tasting olive oil. The egg & milk mixture was a little too runny, so I added some matzoh meal and let it stand for a while.

The result? Delicious. Perfect vehicle for sour cream and chopped kalamata olives. I didn't happen to have caviar on hand, but I think I might like olives better anyway. I let some stand until they were cool and they were still yummy and crisp around the edges. So far, so good. Worth the pain in the ass factor, in my opinion.

But can they be reheated? Julie, bless her heart, said that she would be willing to stand outside with an electric frying pan and fry them up during the party if they can't. But I'd like for her to enjoy the party too, so I put half of them in the freezer and half in the fridge, and then I called my mother, told her what I'd done, and asked did she think I could reheat them. She's a caterer, after all, and if something can be done ahead of time she'll know how to do it right.

"No," she said. And then, "Well, maybe." She suggested spreading them out on a cookie sheet and putting them in a warm oven (maybe 250°F or so) for a pretty long time, like 45 minutes, but turning the heat up briefly at the end. And flip them every ten minutes or so. And make sure that your oven is heating evenly and one end of the pan isn't getting overcooked or burnt. Turn the cookie sheet around a couple times just in case.

So I got up the next morning and did as she said, although I did it in the toaster oven rather than the big oven because there were only like nine of them and they were tiny, a little bigger than bite-sized. It worked! Although I did have to sort of blot a little of the excess oil off of them with a paper towel. And after work I tried it with the ones that I'd frozen. That worked even better! Except I left them in a little too long and failed to turn the baking sheet and while the crispyness factor improved, the ones on the end were a bit overdone. But they were still pretty yummy, even when they'd cooled off.

And I'd eaten the last of the olives and there was no sour cream, so I put a bit of yogurt and some horseradish on one, and that was really good. Also some chow-chow, which is good on pretty much everything.

I was talking last night to my sister the mailman while they were in the oven and asked for her opinion on reheating them and we got into a long discussion about the JoJo Potatoes from Ted Cook's 19th Hole Barbecue and how to reheat those, should you have any left over. A bout of homesickness for Minneapolis ensued, but then she that suggested a sheet of parchment on the cookie sheet might help with the oiliness, and/or to layer them with paper towels when putting them in the fridge. Both good ideas, and I'm going to test them tonight. Also, I'm going to try undercooking them slightly, to see if that helps. And I'm going to add some grated apples too, because there's a five-pound bag of apples in the fridge.

I said I wasn't going to make latkes, but you know what? These are really just plain old latkes. Happy Hanukkah, yall.

Recipe featuring pesto and roasted grapes

Chicken (or "Chicken;" or Tofu; or Zucchini; or even Paneer) Pesto Salad with Roasted Grapes

(this makes about 4 servings)

• two entire (cooked) boneless, skinless chicken breasts (or four portions of unseasoned fake chicken product, or cooked tofu, etc.), chilled or at room temperature
• 1 smallish red onion, coarsely chopped, roasted and cooled (see below)
• 1 cup (more is ok) seedless grapes, roasted and cooled (see below) - I think that the red ones look cooler, but the green ones work just fine too
• [optional: cubes of fresh mozarella or paneer]
• 1 large pile of fresh basil leaves, thick stringy stems removed, and washed and dried (oh, say, a food-processor bowl full, loosely packed)
• 3-4 cloves garlic, peeled & cut in half
• walnut-sized chunk of hard Italian cheese (e.g. parmesan or romano, etc.), broken into smaller pieces if you're using the food processor, otherwise grated very fine
• a couple of handfuls of walnuts or pine nuts, toasted briefly & cooled
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper

I've never tried making this with tofu, but you could cut some tofu into cubes and cook them in a bit of oil, either in a skillet (use more oil) or on the bottom shelf of the oven (just enough oil to coat the cubes) for about 30-40 minutes; the goal is to make them sort of chewy and less crumbly. They sell pre-roasted tofu, though it's usually seasoned with something.

There are some good fake chicken products on the market nowadays; the best ones for this recipe would be the gluten-based kind (e.g. seitan, although it might be a bit on the chewy side) that comes refrigerated in sort of a shrink-wrap package. The canned stuff is often too salty, and the frozen kinds that I've tried are the wrong texture for this dish. Just avoid the kind that is pre-marinated in ginger-soy sauce, etc. It's yummy, but not so good with the pesto.

You could also use chunks of grilled zucchini or patty-pan squash (cooked through, but not soggy or mushy) if you don't want dead animals in your lunch. What you want is something firm and dense enough to hold its shape, with a mild flavor that won't compete with the pesto flavor, and that contrasts with the texture & color of the grapes. I think eggplant might be too weird, but I could see trying it with paneer (see photo) or some kind of fresh cheese thing, esp. if you're serving it as a side dish.

If you're using chicken, just brush it with oil, sprinkle it with a bit of salt & pepper and grill it or broil it in the oven with the grapes & onions (see next step). I often grill a couple of extras & toss them in the fridge and/or use leftovers if I have them. Chop into generous bite-sized chunks.

Place the onion & grapes in a bowl and toss with some olive oil (enough so that everything is coated with it, but no more), sprinkle with salt & pepper, and spread it all out on a cookie sheet. This is where you don't want pools of olive oil all over the place or it might scorch. Put the cookie sheet on the top shelf of a pretty hot (425F or so) oven until the grapes start to pop and the onions are getting soft. Times vary. Start checking after 10 minutes and shake or stir as necessary.

Purists may want to keep the grapes and onions separate so that each can roast for the optimal time period, but I'm personally not going to get two cookie sheets dirty if I'm the one doing the dishes.

You can, incidentally, do that part in a toaster oven if you're making a smaller quantity, or if your oven doesn't work.

The next part is where you make the pesto. It's actually more of a pesto-flavored dressing; it's much runnier than regular pesto. If you don't want to bother making the pesto, or maybe you have some that you made already, just take about 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of it and stir in enough olive oil to make it the texture of salad dressing.

If you don't have a food processor, just chop (and chop and chop) the basil & garlic & nuts together with a chef's knife, or smash it with a mortar & pestle, or do whatever it is that you usually do to make pesto, then grate the cheese (very fine) and combine it thoroughly with the basil & garlic. Then put it in a bowl and add olive oil until it is smooth and sort of pourable.

Julie suggested in the comments recently that one should dry-roast the unpeeled garlic cloves in a skillet before using them in pesto. I've never tried this, but it seems plausible, and Julie is really smart. She's a librarian. Toasting the garlic lightly seems like an especially good idea in the late winter/early spring, when last year's garlic starts getting ready to sprout and is kind of bitter and a little too strong. You should definitely toast the walnuts or pine nuts and let them cool before using them in the pesto.

You can toast nuts in the oven on a dry (ungreased) cookie sheet, on the top shelf (temperature isn't really critical), stirring occasionally to toast evenly. But I like to use a heavy cast-iron skillet: spread the nuts evenly on the bottom of the pan (no oil, etc. in the pan) and turn on the heat - way up high until the pan is good and hot. Keep stirring the nuts so they toast evenly. Don't let them burn, or even darken very much. They'll release some oil as they heat up, and they scorch easily. Turn the heat down if they seem to be heating up too fast. They're done when they're very golden brown (pine nuts) and smell all toasty-delicious.

The nuts will hold heat after you take them off the burner (and so will the cast iron pan!), so I usually dump them into a shallow stainless steel bowl and toss them a while to help them cool off.

But back to the pesto. If you're using a food processor, please be sure you have washed and dried the basil. Why do I care? you ask. If there is water in the basil, and you are adding the oil while the food processor is going (which is half the fun!), the oil and water will congeal. Emuslify. Whatever they call it. In any case, you'll end up with what looks sort of like basil-flavored crisco, and you'll have to add more oil than you really need in order to make it pourable. If you do find this happening, just process in short bursts and take your time.

Anyway, you'll be using that chopping blade, the one that looks kind of like the satellite photo of a tropical storm. Fill the food processor bowl with the basil, the garlic, and the cheese and process it for a bit. Add a little oil to start with if necessary, just to get things going -- and then when it's all pretty evenly chopped, leave the thing running and pour olive oil very slowly down the chute thingy of the food processor.

Fun, no?

How much olive oil to use can vary. I've never even attempted to measure it. I'm going to guess that it's about half a cup, but it could be more if you used a lot of basil. It is possible to use too much, so stop every once in a while and stir it with a spoon to assess the texture. It should be pourable, but less runny than, say, olive oil. If you've used too much, add more basil (spinach will work OK too if you're out of basil).

Some folks like to add salt to their pesto. I don't. I find that the cheese is plenty salty enough, and the chicken & grapes & onions already have salt & pepper on them.

Once you've got everything prepared and cooled, put it all in a big bowl and stir in the pesto dressing, a bit at a time, to coat everything evenly and generously, but not to the point where it's all drippy. Add salt & pepper to taste.

You might not need all the pesto stuff. Save the surplus and use it like you would use pesto, or add more basil, etc. to it to make more of the regular kind of pesto. Also, if you have any of the chicken salad left, you might want to add a bit more of the dressing and/or a splash of lemon juice to freshen it up the next day.

This isn't the sort of chicken salad you would make into a sandwich, necessarily (although you can, and I have). You could serve it stuffed into a slightly warmed pita, with some shredded romaine lettuce. Or on a bed of some kind of greens. If you like those godawful "wrap" things, go ahead and wrap this beautiful salad in an enormous spinach tortilla & hide it from everyone. Hell, you can put sprouts in it for all I care.

I think it's especially nice with a Spanish or Portuguese white wine, nice & cold & refreshing.

I sure hope Julie remembers to bring some basil for me Friday. [Update: She did!]

Gardens, neighbors, vegetables

It's been ages since I had a garden. Like, twelve years, maybe? It was a ways north of Minneapolis, at about 47 degrees latitude, which put it in Hardiness Zone 3 (as opposed to the balmy Zone 4 I'd grown up with in Minneapolis). For perspective, the US-Canada border is at the 49th parallel; Minneapolis is at the 45th.

The growing season, in other words, was short. Daylight hours, however, were long in the summer, so some things (sweet corn, for example) did pretty well. Kale, broccoli, beets, potatoes -- great. Acorn squash did fine, and so did beans, and brussels sprouts and carrots. It was a respectable enough garden, considering. Zucchini, of course, took over everything. But watermelons, not so great. Tomatoes hardly ever ripened, even though I started them indoors. Twelve tomato plants might give me 10 or 11 ripe tomatoes and lots of compost. It was pointless to even try tomatoes. One year I tried to grow a row of sunflowers next to our little fake-redwood cabin. I started them inside -- they grow fast anyway, right? and we watched them grow very rapidly indeed once I put them out on the sunny side of the house. I'm totally not making this up: the day after the flowers opened, we had a hard frost and everything died. Except the kale.

I had a friend who'd moved to that area from Louisiana; every year she tried to grow okra. For seventeen years, it failed every time.

When we moved back to balmy Minneapolis, we had a house in an old, inner-city neighborhood with contaminated soil, according to the neighborhood newsletters: lead paint, traffic fumes, industry -- that kind of thing. My mom, an enthusiastic organic gardner, asked me whether I was going to put a vegetable garden in our new yard. Nah, I told her, the soil is so contaminated and I don't know how long we're going to be here (not that long, it turned out), and blah blah blah I just didn't want to bother with testing it and carting in new soil and alla that crap.

"Well what about pot gardening?" asks mom, helpfully.

"Mom, if I'm not going to eat anything grown in this yard, I'm sure as hell not going to smoke it!" I reply, annoyed.

"Containers, honey," she says. "On that big deck you have upstairs. Cooking herbs, tomatoes, that kind of thing."

"Um, yeah, right," I mutter.

Whatever.

We just grew flowers. The yard was full of gorgeous perennials, so even someone like me who isn't much of a flower gardener could easily make it look fabulous. I did have a couple of hanging pots with some mint and lemon thyme and so on, but not too much. We were oh so busy in those days.

So then I moved here about ten years ago or so, and suddenlly found myself in zone seven. I mean, you can grow just about anything here, although lilacs don't do all that well. But wisteria, wow!

Our first place didn't have a yard, or even much space for container gardening, though I think we put a couple of pepper plants on the front steps our first summer here. Or maybe we just talked about it, I can't recall.

Anyway, it was with great delight that I read about vergelimbo's fabulous fire escape garden, and also his industrial garden space repurposing project. He did have to bring in some soil, and then he fenced in the area around his shop, and now he has this fabulous garden! [The picture was taken earlier in the season.]

I'm hoping to get invited to one of the small dinner parties he mentions in his post about it all.

Because, see, I met this vergelimbo guy in person the other day. He's sort of a neighbor, and it turns out we know a whole bunch of the same people and hang out at a lot of the same places -- and have done so for years. How we failed to ever meet each other in the last like eight years or so is something of a mystery to both of us, but there you have it.

Plus we both moved here from the north to be with our sweethearts, then broke up shortly thereafter, and decided that we liked it enough here to stay on anyway. It was totally fun to talk with somebody who moved here from somewhere else -- someone who has lived in much bigger and more, you know, "cosmopolitan" type cities, and especially someone who is youthful and single and creative and educated -- who doesn't think that this little town is stiflingly dull.

I get really irked with folks who think that this place is some kind of hell-hole with nothing for hip young single people to do. I happen to think that if you're bored here, it's because you're boring, and you'd be bored wherever you lived.

I'll probably have more to say about this 'locavore'* thing he mentions in another post, but I need to re-read parts of Peter Singer and Jim Mason's new-ish book "The Way We Eat: Why our food choices matter" first.

*A locavore, apparently, is one who chooses to eat only (or mostly) things that are grown within a given radius of home. It's a great idea, no question. It supports your regional agricultural community, reduces the use of fossil fuel for transportation, and brings you, generally, much fresher, higher-quality produce -- just for starters. Plus, it's a great impetus to grow your own food, which is something I've lost touch with and I miss doing it.

Cooking in hot weather

It's starting to cool off a little bit this week, but really it's been too hot to cook lately. Too hot really to even eat anything other than an occasional gin-soaked olive. But when it's steamy and hot and crappy like this I sometimes want a really spicy-sweet-sour soup. Not one of those fancy chilled soups, but a hot soup. With shrimps and scallops and lemon grass -- kind of like that stuff you get at Thai restaurants. I figure it's no accident that people in hot climates eat spicy food.

So I made some of this last night; it's not particularly authentic, and I don't make it the same way every time. The following instructions are just guidelines, not exactly a recipe, but I think you'll get the idea. It's kind of expensive to make unless the seafood happens to be really cheap. I like it hot enough to make my ears ring, but I've toned it down a bit here.

I wish I'd had a camera at home so I could show you how pretty it was, but you'll have to take my word for it: it's beautiful.

This makes about four smallish servings. I usually use 1 whole chicken breast, and a pound each of shrimp & scallops, and two or even three quarts of broth, but the quantities below fit comfortably into what I think is a 3-qt saucepan. I serve it over short-grained white rice (nishiki or sushi rice), but it's not necessary. You could also add some of those cellophane-type rice noodles (cook separately & store extra rice or noodles separately or you'll end up with a gummy mess).

Ingredients:

• onion (medium)
• olive oil (about 1 Tbsp)
• chicken breast (about 1/3 lb boneless, skinless)
• chicken broth (1 quart)
• garlic (1 clove)
• shiitake mushrooms* (4 largishstems removed), or some other kind, or no mushrooms at all -- about 1/2 cup sliced
• lemon grass (1 stalk)
• kaffir lime leaves (2 or 3)
• dried red chili peppers (1 or 2)
• fresh jalapeno pepper (optional - 1/2 to 1)
• fresh ginger (a few quarter-sized slices, peeled)
• juice of 1/2 lime (or more if you want)
• rice wine vinegar
• shoyu or tamari
• water (a cup or so)
• fresh basil *and/or cilantro (lots)
• cherry tomatoes (a few, say 4 or 5, cut in half)
• about 1/3 lb bay scallops
• fresh, whole jumbo shrimps (8)

Directions:

First you slice up the onion and saute it in the olive oil very slowly until it's very soft. Then you cut up the chicken breast and put it in and let it cook for a bit. Add the garlic and let it cook for just a minute. It doesn't really matter if you mince it up or if you run it through the garlic press. I can't find my garlic press, so I minced it. Then add the chicken broth (I used one 32-oz box of unsalted chicken broth, but I've also made it with homemade vegetable stock and mushroom broth which I bought by accident and it tasted just fine). Toss in the very thinly sliced mushrooms if you want them. Shiitakes especially seem kind of rubbery to me if you don't slice them really thin.

The next few things you won't actually eat, but they add a very nice flavor to the broth: just snip the lemon grass into 2-inch pieces - it's a bitch to chop, and you'll be picking them out later anyway; the kaffir lime leaves just toss in there whole, sort of like bay leaves. The dried peppers can be put in whole (though know your peppers -- if the broth is going to stand overnight, for example, you might want to break one or both of them and discard the seeds, unless you like really hot food). I usually also add a couple of thick slices of jalapeno pepper -- remove seeds (wear gloves!!) if you don't want it to get too hot. Peel the fresh ginger and slice into quarter-sized slices - add maybe $1 or $1.50 worth (4-6 chunks). Dried ginger doesn't work so well -- skip it if you don't have fresh ginger.

Let all of this simmer for a while, until the chicken is completely done. Add the lime juice and maybe a tablespoon or so each of rice wine vinegar and good soy sauce or tamari. The only rice wine vinegar I had was sushi vinegar, which is sweetened and salted. Worked fine - I just used a little less tamari so it wouldn't get too salty.

Taste it at this point. If you feel like it needs to be a little sweeter, add a few slices of carrot. The best time to do that whole broth part is the day before you want to make the soup, but if you didn't think of it yesterday, just let it stand for as long as you can (bring it to a simmer every now and then for a few minutes if it's going to be a while, just to discourage pathogen growth) or refrigerate it for a few hours. You don't want to just let it simmer endlessly, though, as I find this compromises the delicateness of the flavors.

When it's almost time to serve it, bring it to a gentle simmery boil and add the scallops, shrimps*, tomatoes, and the basil, stems and all (I'm talking about like maybe almost a whole one of those packages you get at the grocery store). Add more water if you need to, in order to keep everything submerged (a cup or so should do it). You can remove the peppers, lemon grass, etc. before you serve it, or just make people pick it out of their bowls themselves.

*Update: Yes, I just toss the shrimps in, shells and all. You can peel & clean them first if you want, but I think they look kind of cool whole. Plus they're kind of fun to peel at the table if you and your guests don't mind that sort of thing. Regarding the mushrooms, they are totally optional. I prefer shiitakes, but those little funny-looking ones like they have in the Thai or Vietnamese restaurants are good too, if you can find them. The button mushrooms or portobellos are not so good in this.

And also, I forgot to include cilantro when I wrote this down. Use a generous handful (not a whole great big bunch of it), rinsed and maybe torn up a bit, but don't bother chopping it. Oh, and I also forgot to say to simmer it gently for five or maybe ten minutes -- until the shrimps are bright pink and the scallops are cooked through. The basil and cilantro should still be bright green.

Pope Hats!

I'm kind of behind the curve on this one, but someone asked me for this recipe recently and, well, I haven't posted anything about the new pope. I'm sure you've heard enough about him already. These yummy appetizers, on the other hand, are always very popular. Unfortunately, while I recognize that photos or at least diagrams would help, there aren't going to be any at this time.

You'll need:

• a package of won-ton wrappers
• a large can of tuna, or two regular ones (packed in water) -- but you can also use leftover grilled tuna - about 12 ounces or so
• a package of feta cheese
• a jar of capers
• some kalamata olives, pitted
• a bunch of fresh parsley
• olive oil
• two egg whites, lightly beaten
• a large container of plain yogurt
• a bottle of "Inner Beauty" hot sauce (or any very spicy, curry-based hot sauce)

The first thing is to mix up the tuna filling: Drain the tuna and put it in a bowl with 2-3 ounces of crumbled feta, a few tablespoons of capers (drained), about 25 or so chopped kalamata olives (if all you have are those gross black olives in cans, just leave em out), about a third to half of the parsley, rinsed & chopped (yes, it'll seem like a lot), and a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Stir it up. It shouldn't be all creamy like tuna salad. If it doesn't seem to hold together at all, you can add a spoonful or two of yogurt, but it shouldn't be necessary. I don't usually salt it, but use your best judgment. Pepper is good.

Chill the tuna stuff for a little while if you have time.

For the next part, you need to clear a space to work, and have a cookie sheet ready with olive oil sprayed or spread on it. Mix the egg white with a few tablespoons of water (more for ex-large or jumbo eggs). If you're totally freaked out by having to separate an egg white from the egg yolk, just use warm water. Nothing bad will happen. Put it in a small, shallow bowl or a teacup.

I like to do the next part on a large plate or spare cookie sheet. When you get good at it, you can do a bunch at a time, but for now just start with one. This takes much longer to describe than to actually do:

Place one won-ton wrapper in the center of the plate with the corners pointing North, East, South, and West (i.e., sort of a diamond shape) before you.

Brush the surface of it, all the way to the edges, with some of the egg white or warm water. If you don't have a pastry brush, use the back of a spoon or your fingers.

Place about a teaspoonful or so of the tuna filling in the wrapper, just slightly to the north of the imaginary equator of it. Not too big a blob. You're going to want to fold it over and seal the edges, so make sure there's enough but not too much.

Very gently take the Southernmost tip and fold it upwards to line up with the Northernmost tip.

Press all the edges together, being careful not to trap any air bubbles. It might take a little practice.

You'll have a triangle shape now, with the longest edge, the one with the fold, facing toward you.

Just imagine now that that edge is divided into thirds. Don't do anything yet. You're going to fold the left third over the center third and then the right third over that.

Gently pick up the Western point and fold it over the center third of the item. Do the same with the Eastern point, and sort of press them together without pressing them on the filling, using more egg white or water if needed. It's easy to pop the damn thing at this point so be careful.

Doesn't it sort of look like a pope hat? Place it on the oiled cookie sheet and do another, and another, until the cookie sheet is full or you're just plain tired of doing it any more. You can put them fairly close together on the cookie sheet.

Spray or brush or drizzle olive oil all over them.

Bake at 375F for about 10-15 minutes or until the outside is golden brown & crisp.

You can deep fry them if you like, but I don't really like to do that as it's kind of a pain in the ass. But go ahead, if you like that kind of thing. If you're frying them you need to be even more extra careful about no air bubbles and maintaining a good seal on all the edges.

For a dipping sauce, I generally just mix some Inner Beauty Hot Sauce & some yogurt (fat free, lowfat, whatever). I add the hot sauce a spoonful at a time to the yogurt on account of it is so fucking hot that it gives me the hiccups. So be careful.

Mango chutney is good too. Sometimes I mix yogurt and sambal oeleck (an Indonesian hot pepper paste). Or berbere (a north african spice mixture) paste.

In fact, this recipe is based on something once made in my presence by a Tunisian friend's mother. She left them in triangle shapes, and they were filled with just tuna, feta, olives, and olive oil, and a spot of berbere paste inside and then some thinner, similar-tasting sauce for dipping.

"Only a chocolate Jesus can satisfy my soul"

Trish Wilson had this goofy food meme posted yesterday & it looked kind of fun. Also I've been asked for a couple of recipes lately so I'll try to work them into the post as well. Along with the obligatory Tom Waits mention.

Favorite food to crunch: I hate crunchy food, and I don't like to crunch it loudly when I have to eat it.  I don't like raw things, and I dip most crunchy things into some kind of dip or soup or coffee to make them less crunchy.
Favorite comfort food: Tater Tot Hot Dish (veg. version w/wild rice).  Or any kind of soup, but especially the paprikasc my grandmother used to make, with hard-cooked eggs poached right in the broth.
Favorite picnic lunch: A baguette, an avocado, a hard-boiled egg, some mustard, cheese, stuff to make sandwiches, etc. Plus some kind of fruit. And wine, of course.
Favorite food scene in movie: in "Diva" when that guy Gorodish butters that baguette and puts garlic & caviar on it.  With the snorkel & mask on.
Favorite food lyrics: Have I mentioned Tom Waits today? Here's 'Chocolate Jesus' from Mule Variations:

Don't go to church on Sunday
Don't get on my knees to pray
Don't memorize the books of the Bible
I got my own special way
But I know Jesus loves me
Maybe just a little bit more
 I fall on my knees every Sunday
At Zerelda Lee's candy store
 
Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied
 
Well I don't want no Anna Zabba
Don't want no Almond Joy
There ain't nothing better
Suitable for this boy
Well it's the only thing
That can pick me up
Better than a cup of gold
See only a chocolate Jesus
Can satisfy my soul
 
When the weather gets rough
And it's whiskey in the shade
It's best to wrap your savior
Up in cellophane
He flows like the big muddy
But that's ok
Pour him over ice cream
For a nice parfait
 
Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me
 
Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied
 
-Tom Waits

Best food smell memory: Making strudel with my grandmother & aunts; the smell especially of poppy seed strudel.
Favorite summer snack: Very cold ripe melon chunks. Or gin-soaked olives.
Food that reminds me of the ocean: I almost never think of the ocean, but I guess scallops always make me think of seashells and hence oceans.
Favorite winter snack: Hot cocoa, or tea and buttered toast.
Most likely to eat for lunch: Nothing, or maybe forage for some snacks. Unless I go out to lunch, in which case it's sushi or whatever's at the hot bar at Whole Foods, or maybe curry.
Least likely to eat for lunch:Fast food.
Makes me gag: Varies. Lots of things. Anything I don't want to eat at any given moment, or anything not fresh.
Food tradition I hate: Eating til it hurts at holidays.
Saturday night food: Takeout whatever.
Favorite wild foods: Morels, soaked overnight in saltwater, soaked in clear water to get rid of salt, dipped in flour & pepper, sauteed in butter. With a chunk of fresh baguette, or in an omelette with sharp cheddar cheese and fresh sage and caramelized onion.  Or, if there's a lot of them, made into a creamy soup, with lots of fresh sage.
Favorite food for sex play: Don't get anywhere near me with any kind of food if you want any sex.  Yes, yes, I have issues. Though if you catch me in just the right mood, mangoes are kind of sexy.
Favorite medicinal food: My interpretation of my grandmother's chicken soup, with still-warm, freshly-baked bread and chunky peanut butter.  You have to dip the bread in the soup to obtain the full medicinal effect. Or so I've been led to believe.
Food that reflects my heritage: A terrifying thought, as I'm Swedish, Irish & Hungarian. And I grew up in Minnesota, where they really do use ketchup as a spice.  But I grew up mostly on more or less Hungarian-E. European-German food, so you couldn't go too far wrong with some kind of sausage & potato combination, with sauerkraut. No lutefisk please, though I like lefse just fine. Irish whiskey is OK, but it's not exactly a food, is it?
Food most like me: Some variation of the samosa/pasty/calzone archetype, or what are those Mexican things called that have the filling inside the cornmeal dough & then cooked wrapped in cornhusks?  Tamales. Anyway the delicious but unassuming bread-type thing wrapped around the very tasty filling is the food most like me.
Favorite raw food smell: Garlic, or maybe fresh rosemary out in the yard. Or sage. Or bread rising.  Or the smell of a pile of root vegetables, freshly dug up, with the dirt still on them.

So the recipes are in the posts below. Scroll down or click on the links in the list above. Except for the chocolate cake, which isn't mentioned above, but the recipe is posted below anyway.

[update, a little while later] How could I forget my other favorite Tom Waits food lyrics?

"Eggs & Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)" from Nighthawks at the Diner:

Nighthawks at the diner
Emma's 49er, there's a rendezvous of strangers
Around the coffee urn tonight
All the gypsy hacks & the insomniacs
now the paper's been read
now the waitress said

Eggs & sausage and a side of toast
Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy
Chili in a bowl with burgers and fries
What kind of pie?

It's a graveyard charade, a late shift masquerade
& it's 2 for a quarter, dime for a dance
Woolworth rhinestone diamond earrings,
And a sideways glance
Now the register rings
Now the waitress sings

Eggs & sausage and a side of toast
Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy
Chili in a bowl with burgers and fries
What kind of pie?

Ah well, the classified section offers no direction
It's cold caffeine in a nicotine cloud
As the touch of your fingers
Lingers burning in my memory
I've been 86ed from your scheme
Now I'm in a melodramatic nocturnal scene
Now I'm a refugee from a disconcerted affair
Now the lead pipe morning falls
Now the waitress calls

Eggs & sausage now a side of toast
coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy
chili in a bowl with burgers and fries
Now what kind of pie?
A la mode, if you will
Just come in and join the crowd
Have time time to kill....
See I just come in to join the crowd
Cause I had some time to kill

Tater Tot Hot Dish (no really, it's good)

A "hot dish" is just a casserole, for those of you not from the midwestern US.

Note: If you can't find real, paddy-grown, hand-harvested wild rice, don't bother -- that paddy-grown stuff they call wild rice in the stores is awful and never quite cooks without a pressure cooker, and even then it's just not as good. Use brown rice or even white rice (though it's not as good with white rice IMHO) or those vegetarian "recipe crumbles" in the frozen food section - or what the hell, use 1 lb. ground beef or turkey, cooked and drained. It's fine to use leftovers from something else you made, and to mix any or all of the above, but if you have to cook it, chop up half an onion and (if it's not meat) add a little butter or olive oil, some minced rosemary, minced sage, and some pepper. For wild rice I think it's 4 parts water to 1 part rice. Check the package. I just boil it until done & drain off any extra water - or put it in a casserole in a 350F oven for an hour or so.

2 cups or so of cooked wild rice or whatever
1 can of low-salt cream-of-mushroom soup
12 oz (1 soup can full) milk
1 package frozen french-cut green beans, thawed
Some cheese (white cheeses look best), cut up into small chunks -- or no cheese
Some nuts (walnuts or pecans or sunflower seeds) -- or no nuts
Shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, caps sliced into thin slices -- or regular mushrooms, sliced however you like them
1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, minced very fine (or 1 tsp dried is OK)*
1-1/2 Tbsp. fresh sage, minced very fine (or 1-1/2 tsp dried is OK)*
Some tamari or shoyu (or regular soy sauce)
1 large bag of Tater Tots(r) or Crispy Crowns(r) -- the latter have the advantage of a more optimal surface area-to-volume ratio, giving you more crispy fried part and less of the potatoey part. Sometimes you can also find tater tots shaped like the ABCs, which are pretty fun.

Mix the wild rice/whatever, soup, milk, green beans, cheese, nuts, mushrooms and herbs. You can also add chopped onion at this point if you like. Add tamari to suit your liking, keeping in mind that tater tots are pretty salty. Mix in about half the tater tots or crispy crowns in with this stuff and put it in a casserole and top with the remaining tater tots, artfully arranged.

Bake it in the oven at 350F for 45 minutes to an hour. You can cover it at first and then remove the lid for the last 15-20 minutes or so to ensure proper crispiness. Also -- be careful as it sometimes bubbles at first. I usually put a sheet of tin foil on the shelf under it, and try to make sure I use a large enough casserole so that it's not quite full.

*Quantities for the herbs are approximate. Use as much or as little as you see fit. I measured it last time I made it and that's about how much I used. I put the quantities there on account of some people panic if you don't. The main thing is to use more fresh herbs than you would use of dry herbs, which are more concentrated.

Chicken Soup for the Sick

First you make the stock. Yes, you have to make it from scratch. You want this to work, don't you? If you just want to make chicken soup for dinner, go ahead and use pre-made stock. If the chicken and the soup pot are large-ish, use 2 of everything (except the chicken - only use one chicken); for smaller birds and/or pans, just 1 is fine. Yes, you have to be very organized about this whole thing or your kitchen will be very messy indeed.

1 whole chicken (Make sure there's none of that highly-absorbent stuff they put in meat packages nowadays and no little packet of chicken organs inside the cavity, and be sure to rinse it off & all that. If they gave you the neck it's OK to put that in, but I toss the liver & giblets & all that stuff - or sometimes make them plus the neck into soup for the dog.)
1 or 2 onions peeled and quartered
up to 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut in half
1 or 2 large carrots, cut in chunks
1 or 2 stalks celery, cut in chunks - feel free to include the leafy tops as they are quite tasty
1 or 2 dried chili peppers, whole (those little skinny hot ones)
(optional: 1 parsnip, peeled and cut in chunks)
a sprig of fresh rosemary
a little salt
some peppercorns
a few threads of saffron, if you have it - not too much though
a bay leaf
enough water to submerge all of that in

Put it on the stove and bring to a simmer (not a boil), skimming the icky greyish foam that rises to the top at first. Try not to think about how much it resembles the kitty or a cute bunny sitting on its haunches in the boiling water. The fluffy white foam is OK, though; you can leave that. Let it simmer for a good long while & go read or take a bath or something. Just make sure it's simmering very gently. It's done when the chicken is falling off the bones, & the skin will slide off easily.

OK, now the messy part. Take the chicken out and put it in a large bowl and into the fridge for a while. It's too hot to touch right now, so let it cool a while. Strain all the stuff out of the broth and toss it (the vegetables & stuff, not the broth) or mash it up & mix it with the dog food (pick out the peppercorns; dogs hate those). The dog will love it. Refrigerate the broth if you're going to leave it out for a long time (I usually just leave it on the stove for a half-hour or so; it's going to be brought to a boil for the last step).

While the chicken is cooling, chop the following into very small pieces and set them aside:
a peeled onion
1 or 2 peeled carrots
1 or 2 peeled parsnips
1 stalk celery or 2 if you like celery, which I don't really very much
a bunch of shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, sliced thin or they're a little rubbery
fresh herbs: I use rosemary, sage, & tarragon, but my mother uses parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. And she sings. You know that song. Don't start singing it now or it'll get stuck in your head & then you'll have to sing 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.'

The next part is also messy; maybe even messier than before. And gross, I think. The best time to do this is while the chicken is cool enough to touch but still a little warm, but it's fine to let it all sit overnight in the fridge if you need to. You remove the skin and bones and anything gross and then cut up the chicken into little tiny bits. Throw away the bones (do not give the bones to the dog) and skin and put the chopped up chicken bits into the broth, along with the vegetables you chopped up earlier, and turn the heat on. When it comes to a boil, turn it down a bit, add the chopped herbs, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Adjust salt & pepper to taste. I've heard that when someone is sick, that a little extra salt is good for them. I'm not sure about that, but it does make it taste a little better when you're all stuffed up and can't taste much. Also, I'm told that whatever medicinal properties chicken soup has are fat-soluble, so you shouldn't remove the fat from the chilled broth if you're cooking this for a sick person.

My mom always baked nice plain white bread when she made this, and gave it to us with chunky (sugar and salt free) peanut butter. I'm not sure why you're supposed to dip it in the soup, but it's yummy when a chunk of peanut butter falls in and melts. Saltines are good too. If you want to add noodles or matzoh balls or dumplings, my advice is to cook them separately (I use already-prepared chicken stock for that, mixed with some water) and place some in each bowl when you serve it, rather than dumping them into the soup. What happens is the broth gets all starchy and the noodles or dumplings get excessively soggy from soaking in the soup.

Chocolate Marmalade Spice (or whatever) Cake

Preheat oven to 350 and start some strong coffee; you'll need 1 cup of hot coffee for this recipe, at the end.  Yeah, decaf is fine.  Oh, and you'll need at least one large jar of fruit preserves or marmalade.

Generously grease a bundt pan and dust it with cocoa powder just like you learned in home ec. (if you're old enough to have taken home ec.) to grease and flour the cake pans except use cocoa powder instead.  You can use two layer pans or a 9X13 pan, but it looks really pretty as a bundt cake.  Although sometimes I put slices of fruit in the layer pans and make kind of an upside-down fruity version which is very popular.

Mix together in a big bowl (you can use a mixer, but I just use a big whisk):
1-1/2 cups granulated white sugar (ok to use up to 50% brown plus white)
1/2 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract (or 1 shot of Grand Marnier or another liqueur; whatever works with the fruit preserves you are using)
1/2-3/4 tsp. cinnamon*
1/2 tsp. nutmeg*
1/2-3/4 tsp ground cardamom*
3/4-1 tsp ground ginger*
2 Tbsp. orange marmalade (or any all-fruit preserves)
3/4 to 1 cup very high quality cocoa

Sift together (or just mix up with a fork in a separate bowl):
1-3/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

You've got the pan ready & the oven hot & a cup of hot coffee ready, right? OK, you can continue:

Use a rubber spatula for this part. Combine the dry ingredients with the chocolate-y stuff and stir gently just until barely combined. Then pour the hot coffee in all at once and stir - again, just until it's all combined but no more.  It will be way too runny now and you will think you ruined it.  Fear not.

Pour it into the waiting cake pan(s) and gently tap them on the counter to cause any air bubbles to float to the top.  Place on center rack of oven.

Bake until done - around 45 minutes for a bundt pan (but see comments below)**

When it comes out of the oven, let it stand for a little bit before tipping it out onto a plate.  This is where you'll be glad you greased the pan very evenly and generously - or you'll curse the little decorative shapes in the bundt pan.  If it falls apart a little as you're putting it on the plate, just use the marmalade to fasten it back together the best you can.  Trust me, no one will care.

While it's still pretty warm, use a spoon to spread a layer of marmalade over it, being careful to sort of seal the crumbs in as you go.  It will soak into the cake as it cools, so you need to do that again when it's completely cool.

If you're truly decadent and have an air-conditioned kitchen, you can make some of that really dense chocolate icing*** that you sort of pour it on instead of the second application of marmalade & it gets quite firm, like a chocolate bar almost, or a layer of fudge sauce. But don't do that if it's too humid, as it will slide off - plus it kind of crystallizes in humid weather.  Trust me. And really, it's fine with just the marmalade or preserves. It looks like a glaze.

===

*Don't worry if you don't have one or another of these spices -- just add a total of no more than about 3 teaspoons of some spices. Cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom and ginger are my favorites, but allspice is good (a little less allspice than ginger or cinnamon as it overpowers things quickly - same with nutmeg) You can toss in some finely minced candied ginger too if you have it, or candied lemon peel/citron if you are someone who keeps that kind of thing around.  I've even added lemon zest left over from something else, and that was good.  And instead of fruit and spices and vanilla, I have added mint extract and covered it with mint jelly (I liked it but it was not so popular -- same with the sambuca/anise variation -- I love chocolate and licorice together, but I'm alone in this, as far as I can tell)

**The time it takes to cook will sort of depend on your oven and the ambient humidity and some other factors I don't really understand. And it's a little tricky to tell precisely when it's done -- the usual tests for doneness don't work on account of this is a really dense, moist cake.  A toothpick will not come out clean, even when it's way overdone, and your fingerprint will not spring right back up when you touch the top gently.  However, it will start to smell really fabulous at about 30-35 minutes (a little less for layer or 9x13 pans), and you can check it frequently starting at about 35-40 minutes.  The top will get some nice deep cracks in it, and the edges will pull away from the sides of the pan.  It's usually done in about 45-50 minutes in a bundt pan.  But sometimes it takes a little longer, sometimes not quite as long.  All I can say is it looks done when it's done - but if you haven't made it before, that's kind of meaningless.

***I think the icing recipe is just to melt some chocolate squares and butter and add confectioner's sugar & milk and beat with electric beaters for a really long time, until you're completely bored and the chocolate is glossy & then add a little vanilla.  It's probably in Joy of Cooking or Fannie Farmer under 'Glossy Chocolate Icing' or something clever like that.