Roasted Curry Cauliflower Soup

The CC's mom used to make a cauliflower soup when he was growing up. He always felt that there was something missing. The soup was too boring and bland.

Of course, it wasn't the spices that were missing but Maestro Maillard.

The soup here takes longer to make(you don't have to do anything; you can lay back and drink your martini) but the results speak for themselves.

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower (cut into florets)
1 large red onion

1 1/2 tsp curry powder

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper


Recipe

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Toss the cauliflower with olive oil, sea salt and plenty of black pepper. Roast for 25-30 minutes until it is lightly brown.

Fry the onions at medium low heat until they are softened. Add the roasted cauliflower, and the curry powder and fry for a minute or two. Add the water, and let it come to a boil. Skim if necessary.

Blend the mixture, and pass through a sieve. Reheat if needed.

Everybody loves bacon

You can buy a bacon air freshener. Nope, the CC is not making this up.

Cauliflower Gratin

Easy peasy shouldn't make anyone queasy.

Delightful with a salad as a complete meal.

Ingredients

1 large cauliflower (cut into florets; read below)

1.5 cups béchamel sauce

1 cup grated gruyère
1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

nutmeg
sea salt
black pepper

breadcrumbs


Recipe

Blanch the cauliflower florets really quickly in hot salted water for no more than 3 mins, and immediately dunk in cold water to cool off. Let it drain.

Take some of the stalks of the cauliflower and put them in your food processor to get a crumbly mixture. (Alternately, just grate them with a box grater.)

Meanwhile, prepare the béchamel sauce.

Mix the cauliflower florets, cauliflower crumbs, the sauce, the cheeses, salt, pepper and nutmeg in an ovenproof dish. Top with the breadcrumbs.

Bake uncovered in a 375°F oven for roughly 20-25 mins until the top browns nicely. (The time will vary depending on the shape of your dish, and the consistency of your sauce.)

Spelt Crackers

In these trying times, when it's harder to stretch the dough further and further^†, it helps to learn how to do things from scratch rather than going completely crackers^‡.

Particularly when party times beckon over the holidays.

They have a very rich wheaty flavor that can stand up to strong cheeses. You'll never go back to the commercial kind after you make these.

Of course, the CC being the CC made these into an assembly line with different toppings. You can whip up a batch for 40 people in less than 2 hours if you get your CC-Rhythm™ going.

Cost: roughly $1 for 40 crackers.

(Hat tip: Smitten Kitchen who got it from the New York Times Magazine.)

† Pun intended. Spelt flour is low in gluten.

‡ Sorry!

Ingredients

1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups spelt flour
1 cup water

coarse sea salt
"stuff" for toppings (kalonji, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, etc.)

Recipe

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Dissolve the salt in 1/2 cup water. Add the spelt flour and knead until a ball forms.

Roll the dough out on a cookie sheet into a 12"x17" square. Use a little flour to prevent it from sticking. Try and make it as thin as possible without breaking it.

Spray water all over the dough for a glossy finish. Add the coarse sea salt, and the toppings, and lightly press down with the rolling pin to secure it.

Prick all over with a fork. Score into cracker size segments with a knife to break it easily.

Bake it until it is golden (15-25 mins.) Check after 10 mins to make sure it doesn't burn.

Cool. Break apart. Store in a dry cool place.

Dinner, Brunch and Dinner

Sour panchratna daal
♥
Paneer mutter
♥
Sukke (with long beans)
♥
Parathas (not shown)
Coconut chutney
♥
Sambaar
♥
Idli
Paneer mutter
♥
Saffron pulao

Chives

The smallest member of the onion family, and among the mildest, they have a very mild onion/garlic flavor.

When finely chopped, they shine as a topping on soups as well as in other contexts where a mild oniony flavor is desirable.

They are easy to grow indoors, and can be frozen without any harm to the flavor.

On a practical level, the CC would like to point out that you need far more than you think. In spite of years and years of experience, the CC always ends up chopping far fewer than needed.

Zucchini Gratin with Tomato and Marjoram

It's a little late in the season for zucchini but New York has been having unseasonably warm weather (at least when the article was written), and the CC found excellent zucchini at the farmers' market.

When asked about the presence of such zucchini, the farmer merely grunted, "Greenhouse."

A few days later when the CC was trying to scramble up something to eat, he thought about making one of the usual zucchini dishes but then he decided to consult Marcella Hazan on a whim.

And lo and behold, she rode to the rescue as she is always wont to.

You need to make a tomato sauce for this but just this once as luck would have it, the CC had some leftover in the fridge (from a completely disastrous culinary attempt which will not be revealed.)

What the CC adores about Marcella is that her recipes always succeed. She should be beatified.

Ingredients

2 large zucchini
1 tbsp garlic

1 cup tomato sauce
1/4 tsp marjoram
4 tbsp Italian parsley (finely chopped)

parmigiano-reggiano (very coarsely grated)

olive oil
black pepper

breadcrumbs

Recipe

The trick here is simple. You first fry the garlic and the zucchini to get the Maillard going. Cook until they are slightly limp. Take them off the heat.

Mix the tomato sauce with the marjoram, parsley, and plenty of black pepper.

Then, layer zucchini/sauce/cheese/zucchini/cheese/breadcrumbs in a oven-proof gratin dish.

Please note that the garlic doesn't show up in the final dish although a slight memory of its taste certainly does.

Bake at 400°F uncovered for 15-20 mins.

Zucchini Gratin

Breadcrumbs

The CC cannot believe that he is writing a blog entry on this subject but given that the culinary arts reach new lows daily, this is a much needed rant.

Good breadcrumbs are necessary for many dishes.

What makes them good? Well, if you don't like to eat them as is, they are not good. It's as simple as that. They should also preferably be relatively uniform in size (although opinions differ on this subject for a good reason.)

So what's the solution you ask?

Find a nearby baker that makes "naturally-leavened" bread. Most of y'all in urban or semi-urban areas should have no trouble finding one. Get a baguette or a ciabatta, cut it up, and let the pieces dry out for 4-5 days. The pieces will be hard as rocks when they are done. (If they are thinly sliced, they will dry faster.)

There is complex science involved in why this works only with "naturally-leavened" stuff but that's for another post.

Grind the stuff using a food processor, and sieve it. The last crumbs should be passed through a coffee grinder (which grinds finer) and sieved again. (The CC needs to wear earplugs for both steps because it is so loud.)

The stuff will store indefinitely in a tight container. Yeah, you heard that right. Indefinitely.

You will never go back to the commercial crap again.

Is this so hard?

Comprehensive Comprehension Failure

Zucchini, Onion and Rosemary Frittata

The basics of a frittata are explained here.

The recipe is obvious so here's a picture instead:

Béchamel Sauce

This is your basic white sauce in fancy French terms. It's shockingly easy to make so it's a bit of a surprise why people can't seem to make it right.

In the classification scheme, it would be (S + (W/S))/W.

Like all French sauces, reheating is not really an option so you have to make it, and use it although this one is a little more resilient than others.

Ingredients

1 tbsp butter
2-3 tbsp flour
1 cup milk

salt
flavorings

Recipe

Set the milk to boil in one pan. When it nears boiling, shut it off. You want hot milk not boiling milk. (Or you can just nuke it in a measuring cup like the CC.)

In another pan, melt the butter at a medium low heat. Add the flour, and let it fry. Do not let it burn. When it is light golden, add the hot milk slowly while whisking continuously. Crush any lumps against the sides. Let the sauce thicken to desired consistency.

At this point, you can salt it without fear of the milk curdling, and add whatever flavorings you are going to use with the sauce.

Gaeng dtai plaa

Made with fermented fish innards (not kidneys as Pam states), the CC gorged on what is reputed to be one of the hottest Thai dishes.

The waitress opined, "You sure you want this? It's too hot for me."

It's filled with fresh peppercorns, gkapi, long beans, Thai eggplants, bamboo shoots, etc.

Well then, don't just sit there? Tell us how it tasted!

It fuckin' kicked ass is what it did! End of story.

Gratin

The gratin (fr: crust) is a classic of French bourgeois cooking. It is a casserole-style dish that is typically made with some ingredient, and béchamel sauce (sometimes Mornay sauce which is béchamel plus gruyère and parmesan), and/or grated cheese and typically with breadcrumbs on top, baked to a finish with a golden crust.

It should really be regarded as a technique or a meta-recipe rather than a specific recipe even though the words au gratin have entered English as a synonym for au gratin dauphinois (potato gratin.)

This is a sensationally easy dish after you've mastered the art of making béchamel which the CC assures you is really rather easy.

Celeriac

Also, known as "celery root", this is a root vegetable with a strong celery flavor.

Bit of work to prep (sorta like peeling ginger) but it's really tasty.

Watch this space for recipes.

Arugula, Walnut, Orange and Feta Salad

You may make substitutions but please respect the perfect blend of sweet, salty, sour and bitter, and the textural variation.

Ingredients

2 cups arugula (washed)
1 orange (peeled, diced into half-slices)
1 cup walnuts (roasted)
1 red onion (sliced very thin into semi-rounds)

feta (crumbled)

1 orange (juiced)
1/8 cup olive oil
1/16 cup balsamic vinegar
black pepper

Recipe

Whip the juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and black pepper into a vinaigrette. (You don't need salt because the feta is salty enough.)

Mix together. Serve.

Strozzapreti with walnuts and gorgonzola

Strozzapreti (literally: priest-chokers) are a Neapolitan specialty consisting short lengths of pasta rolled like a twisted towel.


Traditionally, they are served with a meat sauce (presumably that's why the priest choked) but this is a delightful way of enjoying them.

Ingredients

2 cups strozzapreti

1 cup walnuts (roasted)
1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
2 cloves garlic (chopped coarsely)

1/2 cup parsley (chopped loosely)
1/3 cup gorgonzola (lightly crumbled)

extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Cook the pasta al dente.

Meanwhile, pulse the walnuts, garlic and parmesan in a food processor along with some olive oil.

Put it in a bowl along with the parsley, salt and pepper. Add the pasta and toss it all together. Then add the gorgonzola and toss again. (If you coat the gorgonzola with the walnut mixture to make it less sticky, you can do this in one step.)

Sorrel

This is a plant with soft, roundish leaves that have a tart lemony taste.

The sourness comes from oxalic acid which needs to be tempered. You need to strip the leaves if the stems are super thick and cook them.

It has a lovely tartness which is much desired in soups, etc. Also a killer pairing with eggs or potatoes.

Dinner

Arugula, walnut, orange and feta salad
♥
Cauliflower gratin
♥
Chocolate

Butternut Squash Soup

The CC thought he had blogged about this, but lo and behold, he hadn't.

Perfect for a cold winter's day, and simple as all out.

Ingredients

3 leeks (sliced)
4 cloves garlic (sliced)

2 butternut squashes
1 potato (diced)

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Slice the squash lengthwise into two, and scoop out the strands and seeds. Sprinkle salt and pepper all over it.

Turn upside down on a tray with a little amount of water, and roast in a 350°F oven until soft (about 20 mins.)

Scoop the pulp out after it cools.

Fry the leeks and the garlic for 10 mins on a low heat Add the potato and fry for 6-7 mins. Add the squash, and let it fry for a bit. Add the salt and pepper, and some broth (or water) and let it cook for at least 15-20 mins.

Dump the whole thing in a blender, and strain it through a sieve. Depending on the texture you prefer, you may have to thin the soup further.

Butternut Squash Soup

Mac 'n Cheese

In these turbulent times, who doesn't crave the familiar?

To those that have only had it out of a box, this may come as a revelation. The textures and tastes make this dish a pure delight.

Even if think of this dish as quintessentially American, the actual roots of this recipe go very far back.

If you pull out Pellegrino Artusi's masterpiece from 1891, La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, you see similar version of the recipe under maccheroni col pangrattato (macaroni with breadcrumbs), maccheroni colla balsamella (macaroni with béchamel), and very oddly enough as maccheroni alla francese (macaroni French style!)

In Ada Boni's masterpiece Il talismano della felicità published in 1929, you see a variant appear under maccheroni alla besciamella (macaroni with béchamel) in the section on paste al forno (baked pastas.)

Please note how the spelling has evolved and become standardized since the unification of Italy. Oddly enough, she does not consider it important enough to include the recipe in the English edition (which is barely a quarter of the size of the Italian original!)

What is presented below is pretty much identical to Artusi's maccheroni col pangrattato (with the small addition of nutmeg.)

Times have changed but our palates haven't.

Ingredients

4 cups penne

butter
1 cup milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup gruyère (grated coarsely)
3/4 cup parmigiano-reggiano (grated coarsely)

breadcrumbs

nutmeg (optional)
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Cook the penne in heavily salted water until under al dente (somewhere around the 80% mark works great!)

Meanwhile make the béchamel sauce. Heat the butter and milk in a pan. When it nears a boil, add the flour in very small amounts while whisking continuously. The sauce will continue to thicken. Add the salt, black pepper and nutmeg (if using) and take it off the heat.

Preheat an oven to 375°F.

Combine the penne, the sauce, the cheeses in a oven-proof casserole. Top off the dish with the breadcrumbs (this is the real secret to success!)

Bake uncovered until the surface is brown, bubbly and crispy (about 30-35 mins.)

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Climacteric Fruits

Say what?

When understanding fruits, there are two terms to understand -- maturity and ripening, and they are distinct.

Maturity refers to the development of sugar in a fruit.

Ripening refers to the process which makes the flesh softer and makes the fruit develop aroma and complex flavors.

Maturity stops the moment you pluck the fruit. There is no mechanism to make the fruit sweeter after that but climacteric fruits are ones that continue to ripen on their own off the tree. They give off ethylene which is basically a natural signal from fruit to fruit to start ripening.

In this modern world of homogenized agriculture, you are well served by memorizing the names of these fruits. Leave them to develop in a moderately warm environment. (Not too hot, they'll spoil.) Just wash and dry the fruit, and turn it once a day to prevent "spoil spots". You can put them in a paper bag to trap the ethylene but it's not really necessary. (Different fruits ripen at different rates. And tomatoes are included because they are technically fruits.)

The key point is that you can get great results with your supermarket produce if only you understand the process.

apples
apricots
avocados
bananas
muskmelons
figs
guavas
mangoes
nectarines
peaches
pears
persimmons
plums
quinces
tomatoes

Howto: Chicken Broth

This is laughably simple to make. All you require is time -- it doesn't even take effort. Far too many people are intimidated by what is actually absurdly elementary.

Please read this post if you haven't done so already.

The CC prefers to keep his chicken stock basic. No fancy flavorings so that he can control for that in whatever he uses it.

Ingredients

1 large onion (chopped coarsely, leave the skin on)
2 carrots
1 stick celery

chicken bones and parts

olive oil

1 tbsp black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
sea salt

Recipe

Chop the onions and carrots coarsely. Leave the skin on. It just doesn't matter.

Fry the onions languidly at a low heat. Add the carrots and celery and fry for at least 6-8 minutes. Add the chicken and fry for a while. Add the peppercorns and bay leaves.

Then, and this is the most important part, add a large quantity of cold water.

Let it heat up slowly. Simmer for at least 4 hours, skimming the foam that comes up periodically. You will have to keep skimming; this is the hardest part.

Strain the broth discarding the bones and solids. Add adequate salt to preserve it. Let the pot sit in your refrigerator overnight. The fat will come to the surface and solidify. Skim one last time, and you have your broth.

This freezes beautifully.

Gravity Nutcracker

Wonder if we can create a category for "less than useless". Enter the Gravity Nutcracker™.

With any instrument, there's only one interesting question. How does it behave in the limit case? As in, will it help me crack 100 walnuts or hinder the effort?

Given that this is German, the CC supposes we can classify it as a Hindenburg.

Oh, the humanity!

Buddha's Hand/Buddha's Fingers

Poetic name for a citrus fruit. Contains very little juice or pulp, and mostly used in candies and in places where lemon zest would be used (salads, etc.) since the pith is not very bitter (unlike lemons.)

Orecchiete with broccoli, lemon and almonds

Basic. Simple. Delicious.

(The "holy trinity" of cooking.)

Ingredients

orecchiete

1 large broccoli (cut into florets)
1 red onion (thinly sliced into semi-rounds)
2 cloves garlic (thinly sliced)
6 anchovies
1 lemon (juiced + finely grated rind)
1/4 cup slivered blanched almonds

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

parmigiano-reggiano (grated)

Recipe

Pretty easy. Fry the anchovies followed by the onion, garlic, lemon rind. Add the almonds and fry for a bit. Then the broccoli, salt and pepper. Add a bit of water to cook the broccoli. Add the lemon juice towards the end.

Meanwhile cook the orecchiete until al dente.

Mix and serve with the parm and black pepper to taste.

Mushroom Madness

The CC has decided to stop being bored, and instead has joined a Mycological Society which teaches you how to forage for wild mushrooms.

When this was mentioned, a certain party remarked that it was because the CC was such a `fun guy'.

Hors d'oeuvres

canteloupe, prosciutto di parma, parmigiano di reggiano

Rotate on this!

We haven't had a good rant in here in a while.


Enter the Rotato Express™. Another member of the "special" Pantheon of the Useless™.

Bengali Five-Spice

The CC has trouble imagining Bengali food minus mustard and mustard oil but who knew that panch phoran (mixture of mustard seeds, nigella, fenugreek, fennel and cumin) didn't originally use mustard?

It used radhuni (wild celery) instead of mustard.

Butchering a Chicken

Time to move this blog back to its omnivorous roots. Some basic knife skills for leaner times.




(Courtesy: Mike Pardus of the Culinary Inst. of America.)

Tarragon

The French love for tarragon is legendary. What they don't tell you is that the herb is not only really easy to grow but absurdly easy to store in the modern setting.


Wrap the roots in moist paper, and they will last for a very long time in your modern pathetic refrigerator.

Tarragon Butter Sauce

1/2 stick unsalted butter (yeah! only unsalted will do)
1/4 cup tarragon leaves

black pepper

Recipe

Warm the butter at a gentle heat. Do not let it burn.

Add the tarragon leaves and the black pepper. Let them cook for a while.

Fish them out, and throw them away.

Add the pasta (pasta water must be heavily salted) to the sauce; toss and serve.

Le dejeunuer chez le CC

Mushroom ravioli in a tarragon butter sauce
♥
Chocolate

Sprouted Mung

These babies get a bad rap particularly when you see the really awful stuff you get in supermarkets.


They are supposed to be delicate with wispy sprouts full of nutrition not the godawful stuff that is grown under artificial lights and have sprouts the size of roots (which are pretty effin' tasteless to boot.)

For a recipe, follow this.

Zucchini and Rosemary Risotto

This is truly the last of the zucchini before summer fades. They are all tiny because they need to be harvested before they spoil.

This recipe is a bit of work because you have to do everything twice but the results are just too too delicious.


Ingredients

3 large red onions (separate into 2 + 1)
8 zucchinis (6 + 2)
6 rosemary sprigs (5 + 1)

2 cups carnaroli (or vialone nano)

broth (homemade obviously)
sea salt
black pepper

parmigiano-reggiano (grated)

Recipe

Part 1

Cut 2 red onions into semi-circles. Chop the 6 zucchini coarsely. Separate the rosemary from the 5 twigs.

(No need to get fancy here. It's all going in a blender.)

Fry the onions in olive oil languidly. This will take the better part of 8 minutes. Add the zucchini, and fry for a bit. Do not hurry this step! This is crucial to success. This will also take the better part of 10 minutes. Finally, add the rosemary, sea salt and black pepper. Fry for a bit. Add water (or broth), and let it cook until the zucchini has softened and is edible.

Dump the melange into a blender and blend till puréed.

Then, pass the whole thing through a fine tamis.

Yes, this last step is totally necessary.

Part 2

Dice the other onion. Dice the other 2 zucchinis into cubes.

Standard procedure for risotto. You need the broth simmering at a low heat.

Fry the onions; fry the rice. Add the zucchini paste (above) and boiling broth alternately so the temperature doesn't drop. Also, the sea salt and pepper. Add the rosemary and zucchini towards the end. The zucchini will cook quickly because of its small size.

Finally, the mantecura with the grated parm.

Vacation

The CC is off to culinary adventures in California.

Back in three weeks.

Bon appetit!

A Farewell to Summer

A lovely and fitting end to summer.

Rustic or elegant, you have a taste of pure zucchini. A last high note to bid farewell.

Zucchini Soup

Ingredients

2 large red onions (diced)
2 cloves garlic

2 zucchinis (cut into rounds)
2 yellow summer squach (cut into rounds)

1 zucchini (diced)
1 summer squash (diced)

1 large sprig basil

sea salt
black pepper

To serve:

dried bread slices
parmigiano-reggiano (grated)
black pepper

Recipe

Fry the onions and garlic languidly at a low heat. Add only the large zucchini and squash (retain the dices) and fry for quite a bit. This is where all the flavor comes in. Do not skimp on this step.

Add the water, salt and pepper. and let it simmer for 10 mins or so.

Blend the soup with the basil, and pass it through a fine sieve.

Add the diced zucchini and squash to the mixture, and bring to a boil again until they are cooked.

Serve over the bread sprinkled with parmesan and black pepper.

Pasta with Sage Butter

This is as simple as a pasta sauce gets. Ten minutes of attention, and you could be in culinary ecstacy so why not try it?

For the record, this marries best with fresh pasta but even if you go with dried linguini (or similar), you're likely to have a foodgasm.

If you find the stuff impossibly rich (which it is), squeeze half a lemon into the sauce, and whip it into a (O+S)/W emulsion. (Yeah, this is pretty traditional too.)

Ingredients

1 stick unsalted butter (yeah, it's gotta be unsalted)
sage (lots)

black pepper
parmigiano-reggiano (grated real fine)

Recipe

Heavily salt the pasta water. Yeah, heavy salt. Cook the linguini al dente.

Meanwhile, melt the butter on low heat, and fry the sage. (If you really like sage, cut it into ribbons, otherwise just as is.)

When the sage turns "stiff", fish it out and toss it. Yeah, you heard that right.

Keep the butter (like duh!)

Toss the linguini with the "sage butter", toss the parm and black pepper on top.

Slurp.

Panzanella

The Italian "bread salad" redolent of poverty, and yet so delicious that the CC challenges any and all of you not to gobble up every morsel, and lick your plates.

For the record, you need "true" sourdough that has gone stale (= dried out completely.) These staled-out breads have very long shelf-lives and will not grow moldy (for reasons to be explained in a future post.)

Ingredients

staled cubed bread
4 tomatoes (as ripe as can be, diced)
1 large red onion (diced)
2 cloves garlic (minced fine)

6-8 tbsp capers (preserved in salt, soaked to remove salt)
anchovies (preserved in salt only if you have them.)

red-wine vinaigrette
sea salt
black pepper

lots of chiffonaded basil

Recipe

Salt the tomatoes; they will let out copious mixture. Separate and whip the liquid with the vinaigrette.

Mix everything together, and chill for just a tad. The bread should be both soaked in the liquid and crunchy.

Texture is as important as anything else.

Simple Tomato Sauce

In this modern fast-paced world, who doesn't crave ease, simplicity, convenience?

Enter the simplest tomato sauce that the CC can provide.

Please not that simplicity does not equal speed. It means not doing much hard work.

It's as easy as recipes on this blog are going to get. Deal.

Ingredients

2-3 cloves garlic (crushed)
2 lbs tomatoes (halved lengthwise)

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Heat the olive oil to medium heat. Fry the garlic until golden. Make sure you don't burn it.

Add the halved tomatoes, salt and pepper. Let the mixture reduce for 20 minutes.

Pass through a food mill. (Yeah, this is the hardest part.)

Add back to the pan, and reduce on a low heat for 30 minutes or so. (Check and add some water to prevent sticking towards the end.)

Fried Zucchini Blossoms

Delicious and easy but attention to detail is key.

Use the "female" blossoms if you have a choice rather than the ones attached to the zucchini.

Does this matter? Yep.

Ingredient

zucchini blossoms
mozzarella (grated coarsely)
parmigiano-reggiano (grated coarsely)

2 eggs
sea-salt
black pepper

breadcrumbs

Recipe

Wash the zucchini blossoms, and dry. They will contain insects who love the blossoms as much as you do so deal. Remove the stamen without damaging the delicate flowers. This is way harder than you think it is.

Stuff each flower with the mozarella-parm mixture, and twist the top to seal.

You can either deep fry this, or shallow fry this with at least 1/2" of oil.

Whip the eggs with the salt and pepper in one bowl. Put the breadcrumbs in the other bowl.

Dip each blossom in the egg mixture followed by rolling them with the breadcrumbs, and fry them. Drain on paper towels.

Like all fried stuff, this has a shelf life of minutes. So gobble, gobble.

Farmers' Market Lunch

Inspired by the farmers' market, and a bit carried away while reading Julia Child's memoirs, the CC made probably the largest lunch he's had in a decade.

Fried zucchini blossoms
Panzanella
Linguini with sage butter

Buñuel's Food Satire

A preoccupation with food, and discussions on food is a marking trait of the bourgeoise. Nobody understood better than Buñuel that food isn't just nourishment but an external symbol of attitudes of a society.

Virtually every movie he made included vicious satire on the strange relationship between the two. Needless to say, the food was always deliciously filmed.

The best scenes in the oeuvre:

The Exterminating Angel

Magnificent dinner scene with the waiter stumbling. Revealed as "modernist theater". Slow devolution of civilized society into animalistic eaters. Bonus scene: the lamb.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise

Food, pretension, death; more food, more pretension, more death; embarassment while eating, dying while eating, embarassed dying while eating.

Viridiana

The beggars enacting The Last Supper. Photograph taken by the beggarwoman with her "winking" pudendum. Banned by the Church. Need the CC say more?

Hasta la Pasta, Baby!!!

Since the CC was down in the Village to watch a matinée (Carl Dreyer's Day of Wrath, in case you were wondering,) he decided to stop by his favorite place in New York for fresh and dried pasta: Raffeto's.

The owner has seen the CC before, and for once, he was not surprised at the size of the order (10 pounds of pasta total, give or take.)

"Are you a chef?" he said in an Italian accent clearly sensing a business opportunity since they source the pasta to most of the restaurants in New York.

"Only in my own house", said the CC, "but your pasta is so good that it runs out, so whenever I'm in the neighborhood I make sure to pick up enough till the next trip."

"Good plan", he replied, "I would do the same."

Lots of discussion of Italian cooking later, the CC lugged his pasta home on the subway. The fellow subway riders looked vaguely amused.

"It's a bird, it's a plane, look, ..."

"... it's Tomato Man!", yelled out the exuberant farmer at my farmer's market.

"Gather around, folks," he continued, "he's here to get his fix, and I'm his dealer."

As the heads swivelled to see who the farmer was talking about, the CC blushed furiously while the crowd started laughing, pointing, and one even applauded.

It looks like "Tomato Man" is now a known fixture at the market.

Of course, the Culinary Muses being suitably capricious, that was the day the Tomato Man did not purchase tomatoes because the muses had cast their lovely eyes upon the zucchini.

Cooking Myths (Part 1)

Welcome to a new series on pervasive cooking myths.

One of the biggest ones is that since alcohol has a lower boiling point (78.4°C) than water (100°C), all the alcohol must evaporate first when added to a dish.

Sorry, folks, it doesn't quite behave that way as every physicist and chemist possibly knows.

Firstly, in general, you need multiple distillations to separate two liquids. This is just a consequence of how molecules behave. Energy transfer and evaporation are statistical in nature not deterministic.

Secondly, ethanol and water form an azeotrope so you can never truly separate them using just distillation.

So while the rate of evaporation of alcohol is higher than that of water at 100°C (cooking temperature), there's always going to be alcohol left behind in the mixture even after extended cooking. Particularly in a closed vessel where you have both evaporation and condensation taking place.

Method	Percentage alcohol remaining
Added to boiling liquid + removed from heat	85%
Alcohol flamed	75%
Alcohol simmered 15 minutes	40%
Alcohol simmered 30 minutes	35%
Alcohol simmered 1 hour	25%
Alcohol simmered 1.5 hours	20%
Alcohol simmered 2 hours	10%
Alcohol simmered 2.5 hours	5%

(Source: US Dept. of Agriculture Nutrient Data Lab.)

Note that we're talking miniscule amounts because generally only a small amount of alcohol is added to the dish but the myth that there is none left behind is just that.

Pasta con fagioli

The Tuscans really really love their beans. Among the Italians, they are sometimes referred to derisively as mangiafagioli (bean-eaters.)

White beans are not just a dish but a way of life.

We're gonna make a Tuscan classic, and we're gonna do it the Tuscan way, which is the ol'-fashioned anal-retentive way, which needless to say gives superior results.

This one trick over here gives it the serious complexity of a meat sauce, even though this is completely vegetarian. Of course, if you have some prosciutto or guanciale, toss the diced pig in post-soffrito, and pig out afterwards.

There is only one way to describe this dish: effin' delicious.

In fact, serve it lukewarm with some olive oil drizzled on top, and you can dump the pretense of the pasta too.

Ingredients

2 cups white beans (soaked overnight)

3 cloves of garlic

1 large onion† (diced fine)
2 large carrots (diced fine)
1 stick celery (diced fine)

† After they are diced, they must be in a ratio of 2:1:1.

12-16 tomatoes (passed through a food mill)

1 parmigiano-reggiano rind
more parmigiano-reggiano (grated)

1 cup red wine (use drinkable stuff)

1 bay leaf
2 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
1 dried red chilli pepper

1 branch rosemary

extra-virgin olive oil
parsley (chopped fine)
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

First up, the beans need to be soaked overnight, and the water discarded at 12-hour intervals. The water will turn yellow, and those in the know, refer to it as acqua fartorum. Let it go. For your own well-being, and for those that sleep besides you at night.

The tomatoes need to put in boiling water for roughly 8 minutes each, and passed through a food mill. Yeah, this is hard work but since this is not Rachel Ray™'s Room for Rubes & Retards™, you must pay the price for good food.

Rotate, baby, rotate; get those triceps a movin'. Yeah, that means you.

The recipe is quite simple but needs patience.

First up, the soffrito of the Holy Trinity (just like the French mirepoix.)

At a low heat (you knew that, right?) fry the onions and garlic, then the carrots, finally the celery. If this doesn't take the better part of 20 minutes, you're doing it wrong, and you will pay the price in taste.




Add the cinnamon, cloves, red chilli pepper, and bay leaf, and fry for a bit.

Add the wine, and scrape the bottom to deglaze the pan. This is the last of the "hard work" so just scrape properly, okay? OKAY.

Just make sure you use a good Italian red, and the CC ain't talking about Roberto Rosselini neither.


Ignore the spillage at the left hand side of the picture. That's what happens when you try and cook and take pictures at the same time.

Add the beans, and the tomatoes, and the salt and pepper, and the rosemary and the parm rind.





Let it simmer (at a low heat) until the beans are soft. Timings are hard because they basically depend on the age of the beans but we're looking at the better part of 2 hours here.

Yes, this matters, it matters, it matters. Don't argue. Make it first the CC's way; talk back later.



You may need to add some water from time to time if the stuff starts sticking.

Now, it's time for a visit to the confessional. After about 2 hours, the beans hadn't even started softening while the tomato sauce was getting nicely caramelized. Outside, the hungry hordes were pawing at the kitchen door. The summer heat and the kitchen heat and the stomach heat was getting to everyone concerned. Tension was mounting.

So the CC unceremoniously dumped the entire melange into his pressure cooker, added some water, and the beans were ready 10 minutes later.

Serve with parsley, the grated parm, lots of black pepper, and an Italian red.

Mangia bene!

Pasta con fagioli

Variation

The CC's Dad suggested he do a post on this subject, and it's a terribly important subject. The CC is mortified that he didn't think of it himself.

What's the subject again? Variation.

There are two approaches to this subject, and we're going to explore them logically.

The first is that the chef is going to produce an exact product, and that everything is in the service of that. The CC has pontificated about the subject enough, and if you've lost your memory or your marbles, you can read about it here.

The second is that the chef explore the local variation in ingredients, and shape the recipe to his or her environment. Even to the point, the chef shapes the recipe to his or her mood.

Are you in a spicy mood tonight? Well, the CC doesn't know, my love, but he sure wants to find out how spicy you are.

Of course, this is a way for lazy people to be, well, lazy, but there's a difference between a minor variation based on a difference in ingredients, and just not bothering to follow the recipe at all.

What the CC is getting at is simple. Each recipe has a core, call it a soul if you will. Violate what makes the recipe tick and the CC will call you lazy; a mere variation at the edges is a variation. Of course, true mastery means that you make every variation come out exactly the way you want it to every single time.

There is an inherent tension between mastery and variation. The CC claims that you should just embrace it.

La cucina di povertà

All cooking starts in poverty, and ends up in a fancy restaurant.

The above quote, unhumbly concocted by the CC, so accurately sums up the idea behind so many dishes around the world that we may safely take it to be the First Principle of World Cuisine™.

Featured below is the rind of parmigiano-reggiano. What's left behind after all the cheese has been grated away. (Please note that you can still see the characteristic stamping of the name.)

This humble rind, negligible to look it, is still filled with enough "flavor" that it is traditional to add this to pasta sauces and broths to give them a little "something" extra. (The rind is fished out at the end, and tossed.)

That "something" is amping up the umami if you want to get all scientific about it. Parmigiano-reggiano contains the much desired isosinates in off-the-chart quantities.

Also, put this in your sauces, and your friends will swear that this is a meat sauce. Why? Because one of the purposes of the prosciutto, guanciale, etc. is to get you the afore-mentioned isosinates.

If there was one trick that fancy chefs use over and over and over and yet over again until the CC is ready to scream at the top of his lungs, this is it. Why it's not commonly known is a bit of a mystery!

So save your rinds, and watch your broths and sauces bloom. (ziplock + freeze works exceptionally well.)

Speaking of saving private rinds (har-de-har), now that it's summer and all, you should learn to save your watermelon rinds too but that, of course, is a tale for another day.

Sweet Sufferin' Siberia

One of the CC's close friends is leaving for Siberia to do environmental work. So she decided to throw a party that would be the perfect antithesis to a (future) Siberian winter.

Beach party, bright and early, at Brighton Beach.

After a hearty day of swimming, sun-tanning, watermelon-consumption and escaping from a swarm of jellyfish, all assembled to head out for some variegated Russian food.

First up, was a "green borscht" (made with sorrel and beet greens.) The CC's friends noticed that the CC was quite the enthusiast so they generously gave him more than his rightful share.

Next up, were vareniki with mushroom and potatoes (boiled dumplings like ravioli), blini with caviar (mmmmm ... salty), manti (steamed meat dumplings), and some excellent plov (lamb-lovers and rice-lovers, this dish is for you!)

For dessert, we had the vareniki stuffed with sour cherries.

The CC couldn't resist picking up some wondrous Russian rye bread (the smell, the smell) and some Bulgarian brined cheese. Also, a package of 100 vareniki was picked up to be placed in the CC's freezer. Cost? $11.

Aah, New York in summer: sun, sea, sand, and splendrous splendrous food.

Farmers' Market Bounty Summer Menu

Zucchini Fritters with tzatziki
♥
Gazpacho
♥
Cherry Granita
♥
Penne con zucchini

Kingsley Amis on Tipple

Amis, who was always seriously committed to the fine art of bibbering (a.k.a. topering), gives us a set of general principles on drink.

As we might expect from the author of the wondrous hangover scene in Lucky Jim, there is more to these aphorisms than meets the ear. They range from the tippling staple ("quantity over quality") to the wickedly acidic (see G.P.5.) Above all, they express a coherent world view (see G.P.7) that distinguish him from the average columnist.

His three pamphlets on the art of the piss-up ("food is the curse of the drinking classes") are well worth checking out.

G.P.1: Up to a point (i.e. short of offering your guests one of those Balkan plonks marketed as wine, Cyprus sherry, poteen and the like), go for quantity rather than quality. Most people would rather have two glasses of ordinary decent port than one of a rare vintage. On the same reasoning, give them big drinks rather than small -- with exceptions to be noted later. Serious drinkers will be pleased and reassured, unserious ones will not be offended, and you will use up less chatting time going around to recharge glasses.

G.P.2: Any drink traditionally accompanied by a bit of fruit or vegetable is worth trying with a spot of the juice thrown in as well.

G.P.3: It is more important that a cold drink be as cold as possible than that it should be as concentrated as possible.

G.P.4: For any liquor that is going to be mixed with fruit juices, vegetable juices, etc., sweetening, strongly flavored cordials and the like, go for the cheapest reliable article. Do not waste your Russian or Polish vodka, etc.

G.P.5: The alcohol in any bubbly drink will reach you faster than in its still version. Hence, or partly hence, the popularity of champagne at weddings and other festivities.

G.P.6: With drinks containing fruit (other than the decorative or olfactory slice of lemon, orange, etc.) it is really worthwhile to soak the fruit in some of the liquor for at least three hours beforehand.

G.P.7: Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve -- or worse.

G.P.8: Careful preparation will render a poor wine just tolerable and a fine wine excellent. Skimping it will diminish a pretty fair wine to all right and a superb wine to merely bloody good. That is about as much difference as it will make. Much more important is price, which is normally a very reliable indicator of quality.

G.P.9: He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.

G.P.10: Everything fattens you.

Pad Prik Khing

Not for the "vegetables". Shrimp paste is essential. So are long beans.

Bellini-ssimo

Named to honor the famous opera by Bellini, Pasta alla Norma is a cult Sicilian dish.

Chances are that the dish was already a Sicilian staple but it took the eyes of the theater director, Nino Martoglio, to declare the dish "una vera Norma". In his eyes, the dish and the opera matched each other's perfection.

What eggplants and tomatoes and ricotta salata have to do with an aging druidess whose lover runs out on her with a younger woman, and who declares this all her fault, and decides to immolate herself with him is best left to the imagination.

And the pleasures of the dish are definitely far from the "Casta Diva" of the opera.

Food is anything but chaste; food is pure unashamed unabashed sensuality. The idea of food being "chaste" is as ludicrous as ludicrous can be.

Not to mention that the pairing of food and tragedy is a bit of a travesty too. Try telling your dinner guests next time that the food portion of the dinner will end in a tragedy next time. Drop the CC a line if that works out for you.

Pairing of dinner and tragedy? Probably takes a particularly Teutonic mind to do so. Definitely un-Sicilian.

However, if we can accept the metaphor that there is something quite lovely about both this dish and the opera, then in the spirit of that mindset, the CC can begin to show you how to make the dish.

Just like a dramatic coloratura soprano is non-negotiable in the opera's title role, you must use ricotta salata. It's a salted cheese made from sheep's milk but pressed (sort of like a very dry feta but less crumbly.)

If you don't use it, the CC will find out about it, and come by and immolate you.

Ingredients

2 large eggplants (sliced vertically; see here)

1 large onion
4 cloves garlic (finely diced)
8-10 tomatoes (or use canned "San Marzano" peeled tomatoes)
3 dried red peppers

basil (snipped)
sea salt
black pepper

ricotta salata (grated or just chopped)

Recipe

The recipe proceeds in three separate parts all of which you will "assemble" at the end. They are respectively: eggplants (two different sizes, fried), tomato sauce, and the pasta.

If you use fresh tomatoes, they must be peeled.

Y'all already know how to make a tomato sauce but the pictures are repeated for emphasis.

Heavily salt the eggplants, and let them sit for at least an hour. They will let out copious moisture which you must discard.

Then you must wash each slice individually to remove all the salt.

Half the eggplants must be cut into "small" pieces, and the rest into "large" pieces. See below for a picture.

Fry the garlic.

And the onions, and the dried red chilli peppers. Fish the chilli peppers out at the end of the frying.

Add the tomatoes.

Let the tomatoes reduce at a very low heat. Yeah, this takes time. Go drink a martini or something.

Add the snipped basil leaves towards the end.

Fry the smaller pieces of the eggplants.

Push them to a side, and fry the larger pieces too.

The dish is a straightforward assembly of the al dente pasta, the two kinds of eggplants, the tomato sauce, and the ricotta salata on top, garnished with basil leaves.

Part of the pleasure of this dish is that you leave the different components separate; a sort of "mix 'n match" of different textures and tastes. Exactly the same thing that Norma's ex-lover, Pollione, was attempting with his chippy on the side except things didn't quite go his way, and he got scorched.

Pasta alla Norma