Day 2 Day radishes

June 4/ Little ears

Above is a photo of home made orriecchiete also known as little ears.  Recently I have been having a revival of pasta making.  Several cookbooks that I own have shown Italian women making home made pasta, not only noodles, but hand shaped.  I have never successfully made pasta of only water and flower.  But I decided last night to try one more time. Surprisingly, it was easy.

 

The cookbook A16 is written by the chef owner of a San Francisco restaurant of the same name.  The restaurant A16 is named after the highway from Naples to Bari.  He says get out your Kitchen Aid mixer and try.  Slowly with the dough hook I mixed 2 cups of all-purpose flour with a ¾ t salt, then adding in ½ cup water a little at a time on low for three minutes, and then raised the speed to medium low for 10 minutes.  Let the mixture rest at room temperature in a plastic sack for between 4-24 hours.  The pasta is then rolled in ¾ inch diameter logs, and then sliced, flattened and shaped over your thumb.  For adults one would want at least 20 per person. 

 

I am looking forward to making the dough this summer when I can get the kids to help.  With children it is hard to know how cooking will be received.  But all of the grandchildren including the youngest are capable of participation. 

January 8/ how many hours in the kitchen

Recently I read that in the 1950’s a women spent about 13 hours in the kitchen a week. In those days it included breakfast, lunch and dinner, even if it was a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. It was theorized that home cooking was one of the factors in the lower rate of obesity. Home cooking leaves out all the wicked additives. And I venture the woman got tired of all the work, and so served less.

My husband, for whom I cook, says that he thinks I spend more than 13 hours a week. I think I agree if I count kitchen clean up which is a huge time gobbler. No one helps me out here. But when I was a child at home, my mother worked her way out of kitchen clean up certainly starting when I was 10. And several years later she let the kids do almost all of the clean up, and that meant pots and pans, clean sink and washed counters. She had done a lot of tidying up before dinner, but the nightly after dinner clean up was my brother’s and my job, which is to say it was my job. She would help out if I had a something like a test the next day.

Two of my daughter’s work. I have nothing but admiration for them when they cook after they have worked all day, or when one has cared for young children all day long. But the clean up is the rub, especially when one girl has to work after dinner, and one has to help with homework. Society has done a lot over the years to improve things for women, with the exception of premenstrual stress and kitchen cleanup.

I am going to try to keep track of my time in the kitchen this coming week. I ask you to send in any kitchen clean up tips. I have no tips. But maybe I can work on shorter meal prep.

February 2/ How to Cook Everything

If you are the type of cook that goes to the grocery, and says I think I will have fish one night, then chicken and I might braise something on the weekend, and maybe I will have beans and rice another night, then Mark Bittman’s Tenth Anniversary Edition of How to Cook Everything is for you.

Mr. Bittman has “2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food”. It is not the fanciest cookbook in the world, but it does tell you how to cook nearly everything. A baked Breast of Chicken recipe will have 10 ways to season it. In your refrigerator if you have shrimp, but you have no idea how to cook them, but you are thinking Asian, a recipe will be in it. This book is the go to book for an everyday reference cookbook. If I want to cross reference a subject I check with this book. Few of the recipes are knock your socks off. But you will get your dinner on the table. And the meal will be tasty.

I can not tell you how many books of the first edition I bought and gave away. I bought books for myself, and my daughter’s ended up with the books. I have not had the book for several years, and I purchased the Revised version around Christmas in the event my husband did not buy me a cookbook for Christmas. Mark Bittman wants everyone to cook, and he has done his best to simplify the recipes.

The one issue I have with the book is that the first book was not that well made. It fell apart. Partly because it was used so much and partly because it was not well made. I am not confident that this edition will be better.

If you do not have a cooking reference book, buy this. And you can take this to the bank.

January 21/ Diet Outlaw

Running around in the back of my brain was the thought that I had come across something very much like Mr. McKenna’s I Can Make You Thin book.  Then it came to me that I had read a column in the San Francisco Chronicle food section by Marlena Spieler.  She is cookbook author, and sometime she writes special articles for papers. She loves to eat and she loves to cook.  

I had clipped her article out and thought this was a good approach. Then my birthday came with parties and the article was stuffed away.  Today I dug the article out off the Internet.  This woman had lost 150ish pounds.  Her article has recommended reading, of which ICMYT is one, along with the book Why French Women Don't Get Fat.   Should you be interested in losing weight, you might read this article.  I try not to plagiarize all the time. But like any writer, I am sure she enjoys a hit.  

One of the hard things for me  to work out is,when I am hungry? The first principle of all the current theories of weight loss, is that you should eat when you are hungry.  Not eat when you are not hungry.  I like to cook on somewhat of a schedule.  By that I mean breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I also cook at least the evening meal also for my husband.  If a dinner takes two hours to cook, how do I know when I am going to be hungry? When should I start cooking? These are just the details.

November 21/ Cookies

Gourmet magazine has cookies on the cover of their December issue.  Apparently they were so thrilled with their photos of the cookies that they could not decide which cookie photo they should use for the cover, so they made six covers and sent them out randomly. If you look at the cookies and the nightmare fabric they are displayed upon, I can not imagine many people actually cooking these cookies.  Apparently Gourmet was quiet pleased with the whole cookie article. Retro fabrics aside, these cookies are so fussy that I can not imagine anyone cooking them except for a laid off investment banker of about 27 who has no children or invalid grandmothers. 

However, on Gourmet.com web site they have a huge selection of 6  decades of cookies.  I have only cooked from the 40’s and 50’s recipes, because I prefer these old easy cookies both to eat and bake.  They are the cookies of my childhood.   But I see cookies as only cookies. I never learned to decorate.  (A cake is something else.  Maybe I just need a large palette.) They are eaten in a minute. Here today.  Bite, disappear. . . sometimes in one bite. With four year old G, I made the coconut bars, and cottage cheese cookies, the last of which took about five minutes to put together. And they are delicious.  Little T thought all he had to do was say please and he could have all that he wanted.  Tomorrow I am moving up to the 60’s and making macaroons.   If you are a cookie nut ,  log on to Gourmet.com.

The above photos are mine.  Young T is standing very straight and saying in beginner speak, “please”. The photos at the bottom are by G.

Most everyone who reads this blog also reads my daughter’s blog: http://expatprincess.wordpress.com/
The last two blogs have wonderful pictures  and at least one great story about hair.  I encourage you to go there.  

November 10/ How I am keeping stable

I have not adjusted to my new political reality. I have not adjusted to my new financial reality. And, I have lost one very special earring that my husband gave me for my birthday. My self appears to be sending me pornography and I am having trouble getting to Firefox. I hope none of you are getting porn from me. I am even disgruntled with my new church reality which is very liberal.

The only thing that is my salvation is a new Cookbook called Fat: an appreciation of a misunderstood ingredient, with recipes. Fat is just great. I am not urging you to go out and buy the book, but it is perfect for me who is interested in making butter, rendering lard, making meat pies etc. The theory of the book is that every part of our body needs fat, including our brain. The author says fat will satisfy your hunger the easiest. And she does not even mention olive oil. Here Pork is king.

The other night I made oven sweet potato fries. They were yummy! I took a goodly hunk of lard, and melted it in the 400 degree oven, then put in the cut up sweet potatoes. They cooked in the lard, frying nicely. Apparently what happens is that the steam from the sweet potatoes pushes to the surface of the fry and in so doing does not let the lard in. I did not do a scientific study, but the amount of lard looked the same at the end as when I put it in.

I realize this is whacky, but I am desperate for mental health. I am going to render into lard a sack of pork fat which I was given. Free is cheaper than butter and with that, my Christmas cookies may just be Chocolate Chip Lard cookies.

September 23/ Water

Water is the new chicken broth. Mark Bittman brought this idea up in his New York Times column, and other chefs have concurred. If you do not make broth yourself, which you can cheat by adding a little bouillon, do not bother with canned or boxed chicken broth. Of course you can buy good broth by mail order, but most of us do not want to spend the money. What has changed? Water gives a clean taste! And clean is in.

September 21/Fat is back

The New York Times recently had an article on Lard. And lard is back. In places like Mexico, it never left. I remember my daughter’s maids telling me how good lard was for you. I did not exactly agree with them, but I also knew enough not to disagree. Lard has been in the diet for 10,000 years right about the time they took up cooking bacon.

Understandably lard took a turn for the worse when Upton Sinclair started writing about the pork processing plants, and it did not help that he said workers fell into the vats never to be found again. I guess that was sort of like people being reportedly put in the cement of Yankee stadium.

Then we got all uppity ,not a racial slur, about fat in our pork. So all the fat was bred out of the pork. Then we were left with all of these tough pork chops, and the only way to make them tender and tasty was to put them in a salt brine. I remember when my mother used to cook a pork roast, she would put peeled potatoes around the roast and when the fat started to melt, she would roll the potatoes in the fat perhaps with rosemary. Those were the best potatoes.

Susan Allport, author of “The Queen of Fats” (2006), (such a great title), says that in the last century, use of corn, peanut, safflower and sunflower oils, which have high levels of omega-6 fatty acids, surged in the American diet. Consumption of Omega-3s, found in leaves and some animal fats, has flattened or fallen. Totally out of whack. I guess my daughter, NoName, who hates fish should be taking up lard.

And here is the best news, Harvard School of Public Health has reviewed the body of research and found that the type of fat you eat matters more than the total amount. No wonder the Brits eat these little meat pies at soccer games. For me, I am not going to regret those tamales, and I am thinking of making a flaky lard pastry, and perceive this as a service to my body. Lard is better than butter.

The trouble is that the American’s have bred all of the fat out of the pork. So it will take a while to get fat pork back into our diet.

August 28/ Incredible edible egg

I could not resist these pictures. The other day I decided that I would try to flip my fried egg. This is the result.

Yesterday I borrowed a book from the Library. Our library is a new idea in libraries for smaller areas. The deal is they get new and popular books and display only them. There are no indepth sections. This works out for me as I love new cookbooks. Half the time I later go out to buy the same book, but at least I know what I am getting. My book this week is The Splendid Tables’s *HOW TO EAT SUPPER, by Lynn Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift. These women have a show on Public Radio named the Splendid Table. I like the book because I like the side comments and quotes, and their further reading notes.

In this book they write: “A Confession: When life is dull, some people turn on the TV, others try hang-gliding and we go to the American Egg Board website (www.aeb.org)”. I can recommend this site. It is beautiful and it even has games for kids plus anything you would ever need or want to know regarding eggs.. Here is some information: “ Of course, everyone knows that the egg color is dictated by earlobes and feathers. Breeds with white earlobes and white feathers lay white eggs, and breeds with red feathers and red earlobes lay brown ones.“ Or how about this, “Just as women are born with a set number of eggs, hens are born with a set amount of shell material. As they age, the shells get thinner.”

I love this.  "I don't know how long I like my egg boiled, but it is exactly right by the time I finish my hair."  by Betty Furness

August 26/ Latest case snobbery

I am the proud owner of a new panini press. My daughter bought Ina Garten’s latest cookbook, Barefoot Contessa at Home. Her friends had cooked her several good meals from it when she was in the East. I had never bought a cookbook of Ina’s because everyone else cooked out of hers, not withstanding few people invite me to dinner, nor do I invite all that many to dinner. Hum. Well Ina says, you can not live without a panini press. Good enough for me. Besides I needed a new toy after my family returned to China.

In my heart of hearts, I know a panini press has limited applications. Of course there is always panini, but what else? Well you can grill a hamburger, a piece of fish, sliced vegetables (excellent), or peaches. Still it is a hunk on my counter for such silliness. Sandwiches are best with cheese, and I even forgot I am giving up cheese. I bought this Cuisinart panini press partly because it says you can put the grill plates in the dishwasher.

A long time back I think, I once had a George Forman grill, which is pretty much the same thing, much cheaper, at a slightly different tilt, but no stainless, only white plastic, not sexy and I threw the thing away. So not only am I now a snob, maybe I am also a racist.

Last night’s salmon was incinerated. Worst of all, I think the real reason I bought the cookbook is that Ina told me how to put a pretty stack of books with a little chic chic lamp on the dinning room table to make it cozy.