A Blithe PALATE

Lemon Thyme Spoonbread

I haven't been stretching myself too much culinary-wise recently.  Cooking, which used to be a happy, lazy indulgence, has become rote.  I  found myself thinking not too long ago that there are a finite number of dishes which could be made.  Almost immediately I realized how idiotic that sentiment is: it's like saying there are only seven notes so there's a finite number of compositions possible. My sentiment was driven more by the fact that I'd been making the same dishes week in and week out than any real truth.  And one truth is:  I've gotten lazy.

Time hasn't been in abundance of late and I wonder if my laziness to try something new, or my reluctance to really put my heart and soul into cooking anymore, is because I'm bored?  Because it's easier to make the same dishes, the ones I know by heart, than to stretch myself with something else?

Oddly enough, where I have derived food joy is in reading cookbooks.  And I'm always itching to try some of the fantastic recipes -- yet I don't.  So this past weekend, I decided to reinvigorate myself and get back into the rhythm of my kitchen.  I inventoried the fridge, the freezer(s) and the pantry, then went and consulted several of m cookbooks. 

Martha Stewart has a new cookbook out. Martha Stewart's Dinner at Home is a collection of 52 complete menus -- appetizer, salad, entree and dessert, and divided by the seasons.  I may have mixed feelings about her, but she has an extraordinary staff -- these are easy and outright tasty recipes. 

Earlier this week we made the Chicken Marsala with Sage Polenta; a winning dish, very flavorful and very easy.  Dinner tonight was Panfried Chicken and Lemon-Thyme Spoonbread (I elected to skip the wilted salad and raspberry dessert that accompanied the menu).  I'm particularly appreciative of the fact that the recipes call for dark meat -- not just cheaper cuts but so much more flavorful!

Pug and Hoss both loved the panfried chicken although Hoss was much keener on the spoonbread than was Pug.  I'm not quite sure how to feel about spoonbread, which is essentially a baked cornbread; it was moist, rich, and as the name suggests, spooned onto our plates.  I loved the flavors but in some ways, the lemon-thyme notes lent more to dessert than to a savory side dish.  I'd be curious to see how the spoonbread works as a dessert. The whole time I was eating, I kept thinking how lovely it'd go with vanilla ice cream.

I think maybe it's time to stop playing the same tune over and over just because I know it; and given the tomes lining the cookbook shelves, maybe it's time to learn an entire new repertoire; and somewhere in there, hopefully get my cooking (and blogging) groove back.

Beef and Guinness Stew, Redux

I forgot it was St. Patrick's Day today or I would have been better prepared.  I was a little sleep-deprived:  I was on calls with colleagues in India until 2:30 am EDT, Pug was having sleep issues in between calls, and I only managed sleep between 4:30 and 7:30, when 12 week old Hoss woke, ready to play.  Then, it was time for the day job.

It's probably a good thing I don't need much sleep.  It's probably also a good thing that my sense of humor isn't tied to adequate shut eye.

Hubby called me at 4:30 and said, "Did you get my voicemail?"  No.  What voicemail?  "I left you a voicemail at 9 o'clock this morning!  It's St. Patrick's Day!"  Yes.  I remembered when I was at the grocery store an hour earlier and the  clerk pinched me for not wearing green.  Did she know how close she was to physical harm?  Oh, and I'm making chicken for dinner.  "But it's St. Patrick's Day!"  Yes, and?  "Listen to the voicemail."  Click.

I dialled voicemail.

I kid you not, this is what Hubby had the temerity to leave as a message:  "Woman of the house!  Guinness stew tonight or be prepared for a beating!"

Moments like these, I'm convinced God has a sense of humor, or is a preservationist.  How else to explain Hubby's lack of survival instinct?  How else to explain the extra cuteness which saves him from certain death?  He's watched "The Quiet Man" one too many times (Sean refers to his wife as "woman of the house" when ordering her to fetch him something in one notable scene; and in the scene where Sean drags Mary Kate back to their home, a local village woman helpfully offers him a stick with which to beat his recalcitrant wife.  They don't make movies like this anymore.).

How on EARTH am I to make a beef and Guinness stew in less than 2 hours with another grocery run required?  The trick, it appears, is to find beautifully marbled boneless chuck roast, cut the meat into relatively small pieces and pray hard.  But surprisingly, everything came together in less than 90 minutes and the meat was decidedly tender. 

Unlike last year's stew, I modified the recipe and decided not to discard the vegetables; having soaked in Guinness and beef stock for almost an hour, the leeks and mirepoix were incredibly flavorful and it seemed terrible to be wasteful so I simply added the sauteed bacon, mushrooms and shallots to the casserole.  Once again accompanied by mashed potatoes (Pug asked for rice with his stew instead of potatoes, having never fallen in love with Mommy's preferred starch), a more than lovely stew.  Of course, it would have been perfect had it been cold, rainy and misty outside instead of sunny and dry.  Or maybe because it was so achingly gorgeous outside (and the stew so delectably steeped with Guinness and stock), I could laugh off Hubby's lunatic voicemail.

That's me:  Woman of the House.

Saffron Risotto

Anthony Minghella died on March 18.  He was someone I admired.  He was a noted filmmaker, helming such movies as The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain and more significantly for me, the adaptation of The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje's lyrical, complex and aching novel about love, adultery and tragedy in the Sahara. 

         

-----------------------------------

Screenplay by Anthony Minghella, adapted from the novel by Michael Ondaatje 

EXT.    THE CAVE OF SWIMMERS.    DAY.

               He has WRAPPED KATHARINE IN THE SILK FOLDS OF HER PARACHUTE
               and emerges from the near the familiar cleft in the rock,
               struggling with the exertion of the climb as they approach
               the Cave of Swimmers.  He has a large water bottle slung
               around his neck and a haversack, and is loaded like a pack
               horse.  Katharine opens her eyes.

                                   KATHARINE
                             (whispering)
                         Why did you hate me?

                                   ALMÁSY
                         What?

                                   KATHARINE
                         Don't you know you drove everybody
                         mad?

                                   ALMÁSY
                         Don't talk.

                                   KATHARINE
                             (gasping)
                         You speak so many bloody languages
                         and you never want to talk.

               They stagger on.  He suddenly notices a stain of gold at her
               neck.  It's saffron, leaking from a silver THIMBLE which
               hangs from a black ribbon.

                                   ALMÁSY
                             (overwhelmed)
                         You're wearing the thimble.

                                   KATHARINE
                         Of course.  You idiot.  I always
                         wear it. I've always worn it.  I've
                         always loved you.

               Almásy CRIES as he walks - huge sobs, no words - convulsed
               with the pain of it.  They approach the Cave.

-----------------------------------

I saw the movie with my friend Elizabeth.  It overwhelmed me in a way the book had not.  I love that book; it touched so many chords in me; but the visual adaptation tore me to pieces, from the opening scene of Madox's plane casting its shadow across the desert floor like an aerial swimmer to the final sequence of Almasy carrying the dead Katherine out from the Cave of the Swimmers.

I was so haunted by Minghella's intense direction and saturated scenery that eight years elapsed before I was able to watch the movie in its entirety again.

When an artist's vision can hold a person in thrall for that long...well, then you can understand why I note the passing of someone I've never or was ever likely to meet.

There's always saffron on hand in the house...some of it stored in a thimble.  Why, I just can't say.

The All Guinness Meal.

I've been reading Suzanne Goin's Sunday Suppers at Lucques.  Now that my day job consists of working for non-lunatics, dinners have gotten back to normal:  instead of rush, harried and thoughtless meals or take out, I can actually plan and prepare good suppers for my boys.  Goin is an alumna of Chez Panisse, so it's understandable that she marches the seasonal cooking road; and I've decided that despite the paltry access to fresh and seasonal produce here, I'm going to try to cook and eat seasonally, if for no other reason than to make sure that Puggle is getting the right fruits and vegetables at the proper time.  I am so looking forward to Annie's love (Philip) planting in the garden for us...

In any case, there was a recipe for saffron chicken that made my brain go, "YUM!" but when I brought it up at lunch with Hubby today, he frowned and said, "It's St. Patrick's Day though.  We should be making corned beef and cabbage."

Ick.  "Do you want corned beef and cabbage?" I asked.

He paused.  "Actually, I'm thinking a Guinness stew might be nice."

During our trip to Ireland, we enjoyed several versions of Beef and Stout stews; and yes, of course it's St. Patrick's Day but it was 70 degrees out today and hardly the right time of year for something so rustic.  But also in Goin's book is a St. Patrick's Day menu which included a chocolate and Guinness cake with Guinness ice cream.  Goin swears that she's not the type to make dishes out of weird ingredients but says the stout really does enliven the cake and ice cream.

And being a whore to my blog, it was hard to resist the challenge (and conceit) of an All-Guinness meal.

I learned two things from tonight's dinner:  1) you simply cannot go wrong with stew regardless of time of year; and 2) it is entirely possible, despite previous sentiment otherwise, to overload on Guinness.  The stew:  absolutely delicious and fulfilling; the cake:  kinda iffy and a little on the icky, weird side; but the ice cream was a pleasant surprise.

Lance and Margie, two of our cohorts from the Ireland trip, had given us an Irish cookbook on our return, and there was a recipe for Guinness and Beef which looks deceptively simple  -- it's actually a 3 hour process, but the dark, flavorful stew at the end is entirely worth it.  First you brown the meat and saute mirepoix and leeks;  Guinness Stout and reduced beef stock are added, then simmered for 90 minutes or until the meat is tender, after which the meat is removed, the liquid drained and the vegetables discarded; then streaky bacon bits, shallots and mushrooms are sauteed in butter, and flour is added to lay the roux, which thickens the liquid; and finally, the meat returned to the pan.  Ladled over piping hot mashed potatoes made from heirloom fingerling potatoes, it is not possible for a stew to be more perfect. 

Alas, would that the same were true of Goin's Chocolate Guinness cake.  Now, to be fair to her, I did miss an important step.  I forgot to add the cocoa powder so essentially I made a Guinness bundt cake over which I poured melted bittersweet chocolate in a post facto attempt to add in the chocolate.  The cake, however, was just funky -- too spicy (it has cinnamon, nutmeg and whole cloves) and too...mealy to be luscious or enjoyable.  It looked pretty but certainly didn't live up to its aesthetics (kind of like a culinary version of, "Don't ruin it by talking.").  The Guinness and molasses were overpowering in the cake and while I'm aware that the taste problems may (and probably do) rest on my accidentally forgetting the cocoa, the resulting cake was so bleah that I have no wish to repeat the exercise, even with the correct ingredients.  But the Guinness ice cream was absolutely outstanding:  rich, creamy and just  right sweet, like a vanilla-scented pint of plain.   Who knew such a bizarre concoction could yield something that could stand up to its principal ingredient with aplomb?

So two out of three isn't bad for the All Guinness meal.

Chicken Parmesan and Brian Wilson

Well its been building up inside of me
For oh I don't know how long
I don't know why
But I keep thinking
Something's bound to go wrong

(Santa Monica, 1994)  Uncle Mike is working on the 10th Street house.  I am helping, outside painting one of the doors, the melodic backdrop of "Don't Worry Baby" filling the California afternoon.  I have neither Brian Wilson's wistful falsetto nor any hope of pitch, but it's too sweet a song not to sing along.  After the fifth replay of the song, Uncle Mike pokes his head out the back door and begins to laugh.

"You listen to music that was out like thirty years ago."

"Sure," I reply.  "But that doesn't make it any less superb."

The CD player automatically replays the song again.

But she looks in my eyes
And makes me realize
And she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out all right

Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby

I get this reaction a lot:  "Beach Boys."  Shudder.  "Ewww."

"Never mind," advises my aunt Lori.  "While everyone else was stealing other people's music or riding on the shoulders of breakthroughs before them, Brian Wilson was creating something new."

I'm of the opinion that the Beach Boys' music sounds clichéd to modern ears because (for most us in the States) their music is indelibly and inexcusably linked with commercials and pop culture.  In my head, I can still see the Sunkist commercial in the 80s which feature "Good Vibrations" as its musical centerpiece.  But  just because something is trite doesn't mean it isn't good.

I guess I should've kept my mouth shut
When I started to brag about my car
But I can't back down now
I pushed the other guys too far

She makes me come alive
And makes me wanna drive
When she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out all right

Take chicken parmesan.  When was the last time you ordered this dish in a restaurant or had the urge to make it?  Chicken Parmesan is one of those workhorse dishes that appears on most Italian restaurant menus yet no one feels inclined to order it.  "Oh God that dish is so passe," shuddered a friend when we were at a swank Italian restaurant in New York.  La Tavola in Atlanta, a favorite Italian trattoria, has never put that dish on its menu even though other classics have found their way on and off.  I asked Heath (their former head chef) about it once.  He smiled and said, "Too old school."  But he agreed that it's hard to go wrong with chicken breasts dredged in butter and breadcrumbs, and baked under a blanket of tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.

And in my own collection, among 100+ cookbooks, I could not find a recipe for Chicken Parmesan.  Either I have the wrong cookbooks or this dish is anathema to most cookbook recipe writers.  And consulting various cooking websites, I discovered that their versions of Chicken Parmesan were too haute or modified and updated to resemble the original dish.  Is it because it's a simple dish?  is that why it's considered pedestrian?  When does a classic cross the line to cliche?

Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby

She told me baby, when you race today
Just take along my love with you
And if you know how much I loved you
Baby nothing could go wrong with you

(Santa Monica, 1995)  So I'm watching a documentary on Brian Wilson...and I feel like crying.  I know it sounds completely stupid but this is a man whose music I admire and whose songs I know backwards and forwards; and there he is, a virtual wreck of ruined cadence in speech and vocals.  His voice is aged and shaking, the result of years of alleged abuse.  In his interviews, he sounds timid and scared, his inflections odd, as though he's forgotten how to talk.  And when he sings.  Oh man. 

I keep muttering, "Oh my God."

Then he sings, "Caroline, No," one of my favorite songs from the seminal "Pet Sounds," and I nearly come unglued.  I have to remind myself that he's not a teenager any more and it's impossible to expect a man whose life is (in)famously consumed with  illness and drugs to sound the same as he did some decades earlier (never mind Paul McCartney!).  And seriously, just when I'm about to change the channel because it's too painful to watch, "The Warmth of the Sun," comes on.  The song was written on the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated and Wilson said in an interview that he always associates the song with that day.  If we're going to get totally gooey on it, the song makes me think of the end of innocence; makes me think of the passing of one generation (the post-war) to another (the hippies); makes me think of helicopters flying over rice paddies (I think this a leftover shaving of the movie "Good Morning Vietnam"); makes me think of a long farewell.  His take on "The Warmth of the Sun" has none of the strength or resonance of his youth; but he sings it as an older man with weight and sincerity; and it's this evocative wistfulness that saves the song from ruination (think Maria Callas post-weight loss and after 1954).

It's about as much as I can take.  I grab car keys and head out to my car.

The sun roof's open, my windows are down, and I'm cruising up Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu.  Brian Wilson's falsetto rings loud and clear on the stereo.

Oh what she does to me
When she makes love to me
And she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out all right

Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby

This is how Brian Wilson's music is meant to be heard:  in the milieu to which it pays homage.  The Beach Boys never sound so right as when you're driving up and down PCH with the sun setting in the water and the ocean sparkling in the remnants of the day.

If you're going to be cliched, you need to make it worthwhile. 

Table à Deux

Part One:  The Romance of Memory

Leaves were falling ..Just like embers
In colors red and gold they set us on fire
Burning just like a moonbeam ..in our eyes

The night proved a poor chaperone, its nocturnal cloak allowing for a greater intimacy of conversation than would have otherwise occurred in real life.  The intensity of their naked conversations meant that falling in love would happen so much faster than if they'd been near one another, able to experience the mundane along with the extraordinary.  All relationships appear infallible in the beginning because apart from the joy of discovering something new, we are also hopeful, ludicrously optimistic.

"It seemed perfect," says Hélène (a pseudonym).  "We talked so much, we were so attuned to one another that when we were finally physically in the same place, the reality of him swept away everything I had imagined."

Memory is oh so malleable, so full of holes, enabling us to bend it to our will so that it reveals only what we want to see.

Romances that begin with the projection of perfection based on midnight conversations have no way to scale that cliff again.

-------------------------------

Part Two:  Salt Wounds

Now I am guilty of something
I hope you never do because there is nothing
Sadder than losing .. yourself in love

One day H. says, she and Ross (another pseudonym) forgot how to talk to one another.  The mutual muteness had happened so gradually, so quietly that neither realized the prevalent silence until it had fully entered their lives, insistent and insidious, propping their twosome like a three legged stool.

In the beginning, said H., they carried on those midnight conversations, talking about books and life and music and dreams.  Lovers' talks.  In the darkness, a thousand words were exchanged as they moved closer, inevitably, to couplehood.  There was no shortage of things to say; only a dearth of time in which to say it.

H. says:  "We were talking one night and he said, 'I like talking to you.  You say thoughtful things."  Then she says, over time, the urgent calls became routine; and once they were together, the calls gave way to the comfort of a late conversation before sleep; but eventually, over time, the conversation became rote and the topics became mundane.

"I realized that I was talking to a roommate.  Not a lover.  An acquaintance maybe.  We were talking about salt.  Salt.  How do you go from Milan Kundera to saline?!"

She poses this question to me:   "Why does 'honey' sound more like a nomenclature now than an endearment?"

"I don't know," I answer.  And I don't.

"We don't kiss anymore.  We've forgotten how.  Or maybe he's forgotten to turn into my kiss and not away from it.  I don't remember when we last held hands, or when he put an arm around my waist to guide me along as we walked here and there."

"I don't know," I answer.  And I don't.

"Salt," she says, heart laid bare and stripped.  "I remember him talking about how one of the most real moments of his life was when he was six and he laid under the tree in front of his parents' house, looking up at the sky through the wheel of his bicycle."

How can the here and now compete with the then?

-------------------------------

Part Three:  The Moment Slipped

Now, you ask me Just to leave you
To go out on my own and get what I need to
You want me to find ..what I've already had

Pork chops, garlic, lemon zest and parsley.  That's what H. associates with this moment in her life.

H. was cooking dinner.  Ross came home.  He looked at her, then said quietly, "I am seeing someone else.  I do not love you anymore."

Ross told her that he had found someone with whom he felt great affinity; their conversation had begun innocently over a shared love of John Prine, but that had eventually given way to something more intimate (and reckless).

(H now:  "If he wanted to talk, why didn't he open his mouth and say something to me?  I was here!  I was here!?")

All H. remembers now is how her brain shut down and all she could concentrate on at that moment was the smell of burning pork chops and the tangy, pungent gremolata.

-------------------------------
Part Four:  Auden was a Fucking Idiot

Somebody said they saw me...
Swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over the white clouds....
Killing the blues

Some time later, H. and I are observing the orange, red and golden shards of the setting sun.

"That poem by Auden you like to quote?" comments H.

"He was my North, my South, my East and West / My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; / I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong."

"The other one."

"Lay your sleeping head my love / Human on my faithless arm"

"The other other one."

Oh.  That one.  "If equal affection cannot be/ Let the more loving one be me."

"Auden was a fucking idiot."

I think one day (I hope one day) she will not be so bitter.

The Torchon of Foie Gras

Foie gras:  moulard liver.  A lobe barely edible.  Gentlemen, we can rebuild it.  We have the technology. We have the capability to make the household's first torchon of foie gras.  This lobe will be that torchon.  Better than it was before.  Better, stronger, faster....or rather, better and certainly yummier.

What sort of dumbass buys foie gras, sticks it in the freezer and forgets about it for a year?

(Raising hand).

Last week, I was clearing out my freezer to make room for one of my Christmas gifts, a Kitchen Aid ice cream maker attachment (more on that later), and pulled out a bag of Grade B foie gras, still sealed in vacuum pack.  What sort of brain wattage have I lost during my pregnancy and motherhood that I didn't even remember I had a lobe of foie gras?  And for God's sake, how long had it languished in the Narnian hinterland of my freezer?

I brought the bag in to show Hubby.  "Is it still edible?" he inquired.  Good man.  Thinking with his stomach.

Apparently vacuum sealed foie gras can survive freezing, but not for more than a year, and even then, the foie loses cellular composition, resulting in a less refined, less creamy texture.  At least that's what several websites I consulted reported. 

But you can't throw away foie -- apart from the wastefulness, it's also a Dack problem.  (This is a situation in which there is no good way to dispose of what you have at hand, coined by a former friend, who in his case was trying to figure out how best to dispose of his deceased friend's cremated ashes, which were stuck to his hand after he spread them in a field where the two of them had grown up.  "What do you do with your best friend's remains on your hands?  Wipe them  on your jeans?  Wash it off with soap and water?"  A conundrum.  I digress.)

So...for years now, I've wanted to make a torchon of foie gras but I've lacked the fortitude to do so.  I generally fall back on the slice and sear method of serving foie gras.  But I was inspired by Carol, who writes the brilliant French Laundry at Home blog and thought, okay, why not try it?  What's the worst that can happen? Apart from rendering an entire lobe of foie gras into a useless bowl of fat?  Besides that, what could happen?  I mean, it's already been in the freezer for crying out loud.

Keller's recipe in the French Laundry cookbook, like the man and his cooking, is deceptively simple.  It looks so effortless, so elegant on the page.  Then you read the recipe and you realize this is a four day process and some steps aren't too clearly articulated.  Or maybe they are and I'm just an idiot.  Day 1, the foie is rinsed, patted dry, then soaked in milk for 24 hours to draw out any blood. 

Day 2 is deveining.  One word:  eeeew.  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW.  But devein I did, removing every damn blood vessel I could find.  The lobe was completely demolished as I went about this exercise, and I chose to blindly believe Keller, who assures readers that the foie is like Play-Doh -- it can be reassembled.  After deveining, the foie massacre on the kitchen counter was marinated in a salt/sugar/pepper and pink salt mixture, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, and left overnight in the fridge. 

Day 3, reassembly.  Yeah, Keller's being truthful:  you can reshape this sucker.   Using parchment paper, I  wound the marinated foie into a thick roll, then wrapped it in cheesecloth and prepped it for poaching.  Now, Keller's recipe called for chicken stock (or water).  I didn't have any chicken stock available, but I did have turkey stock, leftover from a turkey pot pie the week before (at one point, I was struck by the thought that if I did have chicken stock, I could mix it with the turkey stock, and by poaching the foie gras in the mixture, I'd have a turducken in spirit if not in letter...).  Hubby happened to be passing by as I was getting ready to poach and I told him to give me a ninety minute SECOND (ed. note:  SECONDS!  NOT MINUTES!  SECONDS! [thanks Gigi]) countdown.  Now, I have to admit:  I thought ninety minutes seconds wasn't going to be enough time to actually cook anything.  But as the foie roll lay in the simmering pot, and fat began to bubble to the surface, I had a moment's panic that the lobe was about to render completely into fat in the turkey stock and was on the verge of pulling it out when Hubby admonished me to believe in Keller.  Okay, so we stuck it out for a full minute and half, then I plunged it into an ice bath.  Amazingly, though the foie lost a bit of volume, it was still relatively intact.  Next step, roll in kitchen towel, reshaping, remolding, re-rolling and tightening, then stringing it up in the fridge overnight.  I can't begin to describe how I had to reshape atomic molecules in my impossibly packed fridge to make room so that the foie could be strung up.

Day 4: eating!  Unrolled, the foie was gray from oxidation, but we cut thick slices and used a round cutter to get at the lush pinkish interior (I saved the scraps to make a foie gras ravioli.  Keller's recipe calls for pickled cherries but I'm not fond of them so I made pickled strawberries instead.  I also made the brioche ("Hubby!  Hubby!  I made brioche!  Look how beautiful it looks!"  HUBBY:  "Great.  Congratulations.  You made something people have been making for a thousand years.").

I imagine that side by side with fresh foie there might be noticeable flavor differential but considering we haven't eaten foie in quite a while, it was absolutely delicious. 

It's not likely I'll be making this again any time soon, but at least I now know that I can make a torchon.  Hopefully next time it won't be a year after I've frozen a lobe of foie gras.  Oy.

Gemelli and Rustic Meat Sauce

I have a particular affection for plebian dishes.

"Peasant food," is how Hubby refers to these dishes; in any culture, in any cuisine, it's pure and simple cooking, workhorse dishes meant to warm a tummy.

In Vietnamese cooking, I have a plethora of these favorites, the most favored of which is sweet rice with Chinese sausage or with garlic-ginger steamed chicken.  In French cuisine it's gratin.  For Italian, few things please me more than a rustic meat sauce with pasta.

I've been eating a lot of pasta recently -- when last I ate this much pasta, I was in grad school, relatively poor and on the verge of scurvy from carbo loading.  Time does heal all wounds, even the culinary ones. 

Hubby makes a great meat sauce.  Lots of meat, lots of garlic, chunky tomatos, a good paste, parsley, basil, oregano and wine.  The first time he made it, I was blown away by the flavors -- I later realized why:  a $40 bottle of wine went into making it.  Really it's true:  never use a cheap wine with which to cook. 

It's the sort of dish that requires no accoutrements; no decorative sprinkles of parsley or excessively grated parmigiano, though both are great.

No, if I'm to eat peasant food, I think the dish should be honest:  plain Jane and perfect.

Heidi Swanson's Broken Lasagna with Walnut Pesto

It being easier to drive to Florida than to fly for a recent trip to visit the parents, I stocked my bag with plenty of cookbooks and magazines, one of which was the February issue of Food and Wine magazine. 

Having gorged myself on Mom's cooking the whole weekend (and earning my sister's enmity when I childishly IM'd her to gloat about the dishes that Mom was making for me), I was in a happy state of food bliss so reading about food on the road was perfectly apt.

Heidi Swanson, of 101 Cookbooks, one of my favorite food writers and bloggers, is featured in the magazine with several of her recipes, including one for Broken Lasagna with Walnut Pesto.   It sounded so dark, so delicious:  whole wheat pasta, walnut pesto, bitter greens and mushrooms... Knowing all we had access to on our trip home were fast food restaurants left me a bit grouchy but Hubby made good time in getting us home.

Having cleared the fridge over in anticipation of our trip, a quick trip to the grocery store  was needed to pick up mushrooms and arugula but upon returning home, I realized that the pantry lacked whole wheat lasagna, so I had to substitute with whole wheat fettucine.  Heidi's recipe is beautifully simple and quick -- perfect for two ravenous people whose sole nourishment on our 7 hour drive were some pastries that Mom made for us (a brief stop to McDonald's ended when we asked for a refund and left without food [long story].)

I've never thought to make pesto with other nuts but the walnuts are perfectly balanced against the bitterness of the greens and the dish, as I had imagined, has a flavorful smokiness to it that kept me coming back for more.

It's so nice when a recipe you read tastes exactly like how you hope it will when you finally make the dish...

Chicken Pot Pie

"No Kitty, that's my pot pie!"

I did not grow up eating pot pies.  My mother, accomplished at French cuisine, and a smattering of Italian dishes in addition to her stellar Vietnamese repertoire, wouldn't have known what it was or how to make one (she never consulted the red and white checked Betty Crocker cookbook someone had given her) so my first introduction to chicken pot pie was at age 25, at the home of a friend of a friend; and the soupy hunks of chicken, mushy peas and carrots, topped with soggy biscuits, did little to make the first impression a good one. I'm probably not wrong in guessing that the pot pie was constructed from cream of chicken, frozen peas and carrots and Pillsbury biscuits.  Enchanté I was not (an experience not unlike my foray into packaged Mac and Cheese at age 24; should I mention the horror that I could not hide when my college classmate pulled out the foil package of orange cheese by-product and poured it into the noodles?).  So I had no reason to eat or want to make a chicken pot pie. Or any pot pie for that matter. Until an episode of South Park.

Cartman snaps at Kitty to stay away from his pot pie with such ferocity that I felt compelled to ask, "How good can a pot pie be?" My then-significant other began waxing lyrically about how much he loved pot pies. So much, in fact, that he got up, left and went to the grocery to buy himself a frozen pot pie to eat. I did not give his taste buds much credence; the fact is, he grew up eating packaged foods at home (his mother's acquaintanceship with a stove did not begin until long after her children had left the house) and then later, institutionalized food at college and during his stint in the Navy.  How bad were his taste buds?  Well, he once attempted to boil a steak because:  "The Navy boils everything." 

Shortly thereafter, I decided to try my hand at a pot pie and consulted a copy of the revised Joy of Cooking which I had been given as a housewarming present. Right after the recipe for Chicken or Turkey a la King was the one for Pot Pie. It first required a batch of creamed chicken (a roux, stock, cream and cooked chicken), with frozen vegetables added to the mix, a few teaspoons of fresh thyme, and then drop biscuits baked on top. Having no visual clue as to what a pot pie should look like, I could only operate on the previous experience -- my friend's friend's casserole dish. So I served the pot pie in the casserole dish and after he finished his first plate, He-Who-Lacks-Taste(buds) exclaimed, "This is excellent! It tastes store bought!"

It was the highest compliment he was capable of giving me. It did not bode well for our relationship and indeed, we did not last too much longer thereafter.  But of course it made sense -- the recipe was heavy on cream, overly salted and a perfect proxy for processed chicken pot pie. It lacked subtlety or genuine flavor.

The recipe itself was good for technique -- but I didn't like the heaviness of the creamed chicken or the blandness of the vegetables accompanying it.  And I certainly didn't like the biscuits on top. So I revamped the recipe to include my own preferences:  pastry dough for a crumbly crust and top; diced carrots, peas and potatoes (or other vegetables as strikes my fancy) and creamed chicken made with 1% milk (so it's not so heavy) that owes its flavor to a nice hearty stock that's made while the chicken's boiling.

And I promise you this so does not taste store bought!  I know this because Hubby offered this compliment when a friend recently wolfed down a third helping:  "Yeah.  My wife's pot pie is no !@#$."  Pithy.