Weekend Menu

Semi-annual Japanese shopping trip. Two meals. Recipes to follow.

---

Pav bhaji

---

Japanese meal

Bamboo-shoot rice w/ fried tofu
Clams with ponzu and garlic chives
Gobō & carrot kinpira
Miso soup with horseradish shoots
Pickles (lotus-root amazuke, carrot shiozuke, myōga)

---

Weekend Menu

Two meals. Recipes to follow.

---

Soufflé with snails, tomato sauce & chinese chives

---

Japanese meal

Fresh bamboo-shoot rice w/ sanshō
Okra ohitashi
Scallop sashimi
Miso soup
Pickles (lotus-root amazuke, carrot shiozuke)

---

Weekend Menu

Two meals. Recipes to follow.

---

Hunanese meal

Poached cod with fermented black beans
Bok choy with garlic & ginger
Rice
Carrot Pickles

---

Indian (Konkani) meal

Malvani-style clams
Stir-fried sprouted channa with kale
Carrot raita
Basmati rice
Fresh green mango pickles

---

The Epitome of Simplicity

The name of Ferran Adrià will forever be linked to molecular gastronomy but very few know that is a passionate advocate and practitioner of the simple perfection of Catalan cooking.

The freshest of ingredients, minimally touched, delivering magic on the tongue.

Here's one of his simplest recipes (and the CC paraphrases):

Scrape a vanilla seed into a bowl. Heat up some heavily salted water. Put fresh tagliatelle and cook for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, heat some unsalted butter in a pan, put in the vanilla scrapings at high heat. Add a splash or two of the pasta water. Drain the pasta. Toss with the sauce. Add with a lot of grated parmesan.

Some of you might have spotted the sleight of hand behind the simplicity. Fresh pasta takes some effort and it has to dry out for a few hours.

The rest is actually in the traditional sense of the word "simple".

However, the CC can attest that this recipe indeed is magic. Vanilla which is only seen in a sweet context takes on the starring role in a savory context.

Do make this. Even if you have to use dried pasta. This is ethereal.

Weekend Menu

Two meals. Recipes to follow.

---

Kale-stuffed pasta-shells in tomato-sauce

---

Japanese meal 

Miso soup with clams
Tuna sashimi salad
Bamboo-shoot rice
Sweet lotus-root pickles; Salt carrot pickles

---

Weekend Menu

Three meals. Recipes to follow.

---

Scallops in XO Sauce
Collard greens stir-fried with garlic
Rice

---

Duck Salami Prosciutto

Scrambled eggs with snails
Bread

♦ 
Filipino Meal 

Pancit Molo Guisadong Mais (w/ kale & lotus roots) Rice (w/ garlic bits) Pickles

---

Weekend Menu

Three meals. Recipes to follow.

---

"Shirred" eggs with snails, persillade & tomato paste

♦

Filipino Meal 

Kinilaw "Guisado" with bamboo shoots, dried shrimp & kale Umami rice
Salt pickles

---

 

Sautéed pea-shoots with garlic & soy sauce Lobster ravioli in vanilla butter sauce

---

Poached flounder with baby potatoes, cherry tomatoes & olives in saffron-tomato broth

This is one of the dishes that is extremely simple provided you have the ingredients on hand.

Please read the notes and follow the instructions carefully.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

2 fillets of flounder
8 baby potatoes
12 cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup fresh peas
1/4 cup carrots (sliced into thin batons)
1/4 cup French beans (sliced into 1" length pieces)
1/4 cup black olives

2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup tomato purée

2 sprigs tarragon (chopped)

large pinch of saffron

parsley (finely chopped)

salt
black pepper

Recipe

Notes:

1. You absolutely need both chicken broth and the tomato purée. The umami is a big factor in this recipe. If you don't have chicken broth then you must either make a quick fish broth, or a Japanese-style dashi. This recipe will not work otherwise. The tomatoes and the broth function in tandem.
2. Tarragon can be overpowering. Use in moderation. Substitute by fennel seeds.
3. Saffron is non-negotiable.
4. Obviously, you can use any combination of vegetables you have at hand but use neutral ones. Cauliflower is great as would be some beans. There is considerable leeway here.
5. You can use any white fish. Cod is great too. Poaching time depends on the fillet thickness.

Bring the chicken broth and tomato purée to a gentle rolling boil. Add salt and black pepper. Add the baby potatoes and cook for 12 minutes. When this happens, foam will come to the surface. Skim it.

Add the cherry tomatoes, peas, beans and olives and continue to cook for 4 minutes.

With a slotted spoon, fish out all the vegetables and put them into two serving bowls which can hold liquid.

Bring the liquid to a boil again. Add the saffron and tarragon. Poach the fish in the liquid till it is cooked through - typically 3-4 minutes per fillet. (The CC had to poach them individually but if you have a large enough pan, you might be able to do both at once.)

Lift out the fish and place it gently on top of the vegetables.

Pour the broth over the fish and the vegetables. Sprinkling of parsley and if desired, more black pepper on top.

Serve with some crusty bread.

Weekend Menu

Two weekend days. Four meals. Recipes to follow.

---

Strata with caramelized onions, kale & gruyère 

♦

Poached flounder with baby potatoes, cherry tomatoes & olives in saffron-tomato broth

---

Mushroom ravioli in garlic, rosemary & mushroom sauce 

♦

Japanese Meal 

Nori rice with winter vegetables
Miso soup with clams & wakame
Squid tempura
Scallop sashimi (with calamansi)
Sweet lotus-root pickles (蓮根甘酢け); salt pickles (塩漬物)

---

On the Delusions of Men

From the Guardian:

Carlo Cracco has cooked alongside Alain Ducasse and earned two Michelin stars for his restaurant in Milan, where the city’s elite feast on dishes such as lemon risotto with anchovies and cocoa, and marinated salmon with foie gras. 

But the chef’s professional pedigree did not stop the local council in Amatrice, a town two hours from Rome, from publicly denouncing and ridiculing him.

Cracco’s sin? The chef confessed on national television that he used unpeeled, sautéed garlic as the “secret ingredient” in his amatriciana, one of Rome’s staple pasta dishes.

According to officials in Amatrice, there are six ingredients that make up a real amatriciana: guanciale (pork jowl), pecorino cheese, white wine, tomatoes from San Marzano, pepper and chilli.

The town’s deputy mayor, Piergiuseppe Monteforte, denied that officials were being too strict. “Use one ingredient for another, it changes not only the flavour of a dish but also the history of it,” Monteforte told the Guardian. “If you use ingredients like garlic or onion in an amatriciana, it means you are ignoring a pastoral tradition that is almost 1,000 years old, passed down from generation to generation.”

Anyone spot the error?

Anyone?!?

A pastoral tradition with 1,000 years of tomatoes and chili peppers in Italy?

Pass the bong, baby! Don't bogart it.

Italy has only used tomatoes consistently since the late 18th-century or the early 19th century. Chili peppers are also New World. This complete lack of historic perspective is typical for people steeped in a particular tradition. Thankfully, chez CC, we aspire to higher standards of truth.

The Adaptation & Appropriation of Dishes

The CC really wanted to include this article under that of The Naming of Dishes but there was a lot more to be said about this subject than just the naming portion so he decided to spin it off into its own little post.

The world has always been global.

We've had traders and merchants traveling the seas trading across countries and continents. It's not uncommon even today to find Roman coins in India when land gets dug up for some new project. The largest collection of gold artifacts in the world was discovered in Surigao in the Philippines in 1981 as part of an irrigation project. Its connections to ancient India of the 10th century is quite well established (Source: Ayala Museum.)

Along these trade routes flowed something else besides spices, grain and gold — recipes and techniques for recipes.

The most famous of these routes is undoubtedly the Silk Road over land but equally important were the three sailing routes. One across the Mediterranean from Alexandria (modern-day Egypt) hopping counter-clockwise, hugging the coast, all the way to Rome and also from Cyrene (modern-day Libya) and Carthage via Alexandria to Rome. The other was the route from the modern-day Gulf of Eden hugging the coast of the modern-day Middle East all the way down the western coast of India to Calicut (modern-day Cochin). And finally the extension of this route around the southern tip of India hugging the eastern coast of India to Burma and from there on to Thailand, Indonesia and the far East.

The most powerful of impulses that the traders appealed to was that of the "exotic". Anything remotely exotic is lapped up by any population as long as it is not too far off from their own conception. Whether these are colorful clothes or dishes or spices hardly mattered to the traders just as long as it could be sold for a profit.

Not knowing anything about a foreign culture — remember travel was hard before the last 75 years or so — local dishes with some exotic ingredient are just the ticket for a sharp businessman with a marketing strategy.

Exoticism sells. Nobody from emperors to laymen are immune.

This is not just a theory. We have evidence.

Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India in 1876 and the British went crazy over "anything Indian". There were "Indian-themed" parties and "Indian food" marketed by the East India Company. This is also the birth of the infamous curry powder — a non-existent concept in Indian cooking. This powder marketed globally is now ubiquitous in such far-flung places as France, Thailand, Singapore and Japan all thanks to the marketing of the East India Company.

In the 1950's and 1960's there was a worldwide craze of "Hawaiian". Needless to say the folks from Italy and India and Vietnam or even most of the United States for that matter had never been to Hawaii but "Hawaiian Salad" was all the craze globally. The exotic element was pineapple. Take a typical salad with a mayo-based dressing and toss in some pineapple to get the afore-mentioned dish. Needless to say this had about as much to do with Hawaiian cuisine as chalk has to do with cheese. There were "Hawaiian cakes", "Hawaiian cocktails", you name it! All with pineapple. It was all marketing, of course. (Yes! The "Mad Men" had their hands all over this. We have the ads to prove this.)

The relatively recent movement towards "authenticity" is not more than about 30-40 years old. Sure there were pioneers even in the 1930's towards an honest and detailed assessment of global cuisine but its mass adoption is a relatively recent phenomenon.

This trend towards exoticism isn't relegated to dishes. Ask yourself if you really know what entrée means. It means "appetizer" in French from the verb entrer — to enter. Same goes for hors d'oeuvres which means "first course" in French but has taken on the meaning of "appetizer" in English. (Appetizers would be des toasts — "nibbles" in French.) Clearly some things got lost just getting across the English Channel and if that's the case, you can just imagine how much got lost when recipes migrated longer distances in older times.

Every culture appropriates dishes. Whether it is the Sicilian adaptation of Arabic eggplant recipes or the Malaysian appropriation of Indian recipes (roti canai — canai probably comes from Chennai but the concept is, quite likely, from Kerala), or the Japanese versions of "spaghetti" and "ma po tofu", it's universal. You also have wholescale adaptations like the Hakka-originated "Indian-Chinese cuisine". Not to mention chop suey and the like which are American adaptations of Chinese dishes.

Italian cuisine is a particularly special case. There's the Italian-American branch but that, at least, can be understood as the reaction of new immigrants to a foreign land and its native resources. What no Italian would recognize is Japanese "spaghetti napolitan" (sic) or Filipino "spaghetti" (made with banana ketchup!) or even Indian "masala spaghetti".

It's lost in translation but why?

To truly master a cuisine, you must first internalize its grammar. And every cuisine has an unmistakable grammar. A set of rules, techniques and ingredients that work in a specific set of combinations and in a very narrow context (historically) to create a meal. Only after you know this grammar backwards and forwards can you truly break free into true creativity. Science helps.

Needless to say, mastering different grammars is insanely hard work. It's far easier for cooks to get a superficial understanding of some foreign cuisine, just use the local grammar of cooking instead of mastering a foreign one, and make something vaguely in that style. It would've been even more the norm in older times since travel and authenticity were so hard. In time, the dish gets appropriated into the local cuisine and becomes "native".

So how does one distinguish incompetence at rendering a foreign cuisine from a slapdash effort from a  deliberate rethinking/reworking?

The answer lies in a similar one from the world of art.

In order to break the rules, you first have to understand and master them.

Not many people know that Picasso was a master draftsman and painter. His early paintings where he copies the classical works and even the Impressionists and out-flanks them are not well known. It's only after complete mastery of older techniques that that he broke new ground both aesthetic and technical. The same goes for Matisse.

It always pays to master different grammars. Picasso "borrowed" shamelessly from African art, and almost all painters of that era borrowed extensively from Japanese art. So it goes with any artistic endeavor.

The bias should be towards mastery of grammar and technique. The "going beyond" follows as a natural consequence.

Kale Me, Kale Me Now!

The culinary world, like the world at large, is subject to the ebbs and tides of fashion. Things come and go, they fall in and out of vogue. The seasons change and so does the culinary world.

Anyone that thinks this is a recent notion should be disabused of it rather quickly.

"I hate everything Egyptian", said Goethe once. He can't have been too familiar with Egypt never having been there what with travel being so difficult in those days. He was responding to the aftermath of Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and Syria which set off a fad for all things "Egyptian". (There may have been more than a trace of anti-French attitude given the nationalistic times but the point stands nevertheless.)

In the same age, Byron, the hedonist poet of his age and burgeoning metrosexual, who was so terrified of his figure that he weighed himself compulsively, advocated a diet of vinegar and rice and thanks to him being the male Beyoncé of his day, not only did women (and men!) throw themselves at him in disproportionate proportions but also did they submit themselves to the regular bouts of vomiting and diarrhea that came with the dietary territory.

Fun times.

America has always been the land of food fads. What with Fletcherism ("chew your food 100 times in a minute before swallowing") to Kellogg who invented cereals as a "cure for masturbation" (sic) to low-carb diets and the low-carb backlash (Atkins), there has always been room in a new country for a new mechanism to reinvent yourself.

Not that the old world is exempt. Almost all of the modern ideas derive in one way or the other from the ideas of Galen (29 A.D.) The notion of things as "hot" and "cold". There are competing systems in India ("Ayurveda") and China (食疗).

All of which are completely bogus, of course.

The latest fad seems to be kale but most people don't know how to work with the vegetable. It seems to be a "cure all" but nobody in the 19th century would've considered it so. It was peasant food because you have to work to make it edible. It's natural form is not given to tasting good.

Tasting bad is, ironically "mostly universal".  It tastes bad because we have evolved a mechanism whereby something that tastes bad is probably poisonous or rotten and our senses are steering us away from it. Except that we humans, are insanely inventive. We invented cooking which neutralizes these poisons. And we're risk takers so that when we taste something bitter (bitter melons, brussel sprouts, beer!) and survive, it's like a roller coaster and we want more of the same.

This leads us to a digression. If you are going to make something that "tastes good", it takes considerable ingenuity to make it so.

Kale is undoubtedly "good for you". It also undoubtedly sucks in taste in its native form. We've had millennia to figure this out. The rational response has always been to pair it with a completely irresistible umami flavor and whether you did it via meat, mushroom, tomatoes or cheese is irrelevant. We have recipes from across the globe that do this.

There are a few things that need to be done. Firstly the tough central rib must be removed. They would've been fed to the animals on the farm. Secondly, with winter kale, you must massage it vigorously with your hands. You are breaking up the cellular structure. You will feel the kale go limp in your hands. After that, let the umami begin!

The recipes here are not only "good for you" but also "waste very little" and it will also make you roll your eyes back in pleasure.

Kale & White Bean Soup with Parmesan Broth

Ingredients

1 bunch kale
1/2 cup white beans

1 large onion (chopped coarsely)
4-6 cloves garlic (chopped)
2 parmesan rinds
6 cups water

olive oil

salt
pepper

Recipe

First make the parmesan broth. You need to have saved some parmesan rinds. They function like the "bones" in the broth.

Fry the onions and garlic in the olive oil. Add the rinds and the water, bring to a simmer and let it simmer for an hour at a low temperature. Strain the broth through a strainer retaining the liquid.

Meanwhile, make the beans. Simmer in water and salt until just below tender. This depends on the age of your beans. Separate the beans and the liquid and retain both.

Prep the kale. Remove the tough stems, and cut into a chiffonade.

Combine the broth, the beans, the bean liquor and bring to a simmer. Add black pepper to taste (the CC likes to amp it!). Adjust the salt. The parmesan is already salty so you may not need much. When it simmers, toss in the kale leaves and let wilt for 3 minutes.

Serve at once preferably poured over stale bread.

Kale Salad with Buttermilk Dressing

Ingredients

1 bunch kale
4 radishes (sliced paper thin)
1 carrot (sliced paper thin)
croutons

4 tbsp.. shaved parmigiano-reggiano (or more!)
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tbsp. sherry vinegar
buttermilk (read below - exact proportions are hard)

salt (to taste)
black pepper

Recipe

Note: When the CC refers to buttermilk, it means real buttermilk. When cream is whipped, it separates out into butter (the fat) and the liquid (the non-fat). The latter is the buttermilk. It has a smooth complexity thanks to the lecithin. Commercial stuff called "buttermilk" is not really buttermilk. It'll still taste good but you will have to thin it with water.

First prep the kale. Remove the tough stems and cut into thin strips. Do the massage thing. They will wilt. (This is important otherwise you will be chewing like a cow and cursing the CC. Not recommended!)

Meanwhile, make the dressing. Add the parmesan, olive oil and vinegar. Slowly pour in the buttermilk while whisking continuously. You will need more than the conventional 3:1 ratio because the parmesan is adding heft to the dressing. Thin till it has the consistency of a dressing. Add the salt and black pepper to taste.

Mix everything together. Let sit for at least 3 minutes. Dig in!

The Potato Chronicles

Have you ever had an experience where you ask yourself why something so obvious is so completely unknown?

The CC is going to discuss roasted potatoes and French fries and what they have in common.

It's a well-known fact among connoisseurs of the humble potato that the best way to fry it is in various versions of animal fats. Goose fat, duck fat, chicken fat and horse fat. Expensive but mind-blowingly awesome.

What also makes the perfect fry is that the surface is crispy and brown (tastes come from the Maillard reaction) and the insides perfectly soft and creamy. It's the contrast that makes it work. Here's a refresher to the science.

The potato has been a staple in many cuisines once the New World was discovered. It rapidly spread across the globe. Roasting it aside the meat which shed its fat was a common and delicious idea.

The innovation which surprised the CC last night was simple. Instead of letting the potato roast, the chef took a medium-sized potato, peeled it, sliced it vertically into thin sections that were still attached at the base — leaving the potato whole —  and roasted it. It's simple knife-work. This thin slicing meant that the edges of the potato were completely crispy while the insides were completely creamy. The potato was clearly roasted with some goose fat and served with the roasted goose giving the dish a coherent feel.

It's such a simple idea and yet so radical.

The Rules of Buying Cookbooks

Over the years the CC has amassed a pretty large trove of cookbooks. Even more importantly, he has disposed of a vast quantity. Much money, time and energy has been expended over the problem so before you fork over your hard-earned money, read through the following:

1. Never buy a cookbook for the pictures. In fact, never look at the pictures because most of the "styled" pictures are not even food. They are make-believe just like magazine covers.
2. Never buy a cookbook that is too broad (Great Recipes of the World, Fish Cooking, Splendid Soups) or too narrow (Grill Cooking, Oysters, Biryani).
3. Never buy a cookbook on vacation. The fantasy clouds your judgment. You'll never cook from it ever again.
4. Most cookbook authors just like novelists only have one book in them^†.
5. Don't give up your classic cookbooks when the author recycles them for an "anthology". This means they have run out of ideas.
6. Rarely should you buy "celebrity chef" cookbooks. Remember, you pay for their talent at their restaurant not for a shittier home-made version thereof.
7. Books that teach technical skills are worth their weight in gold. (The exceptions to the "celebrity chef" rule are ones that are technically engaged.)
8. Always gauge how long an author has engaged with a culture before buying a book. The longer they have spent time, the more authentic the cooking is likely to be. The CC has made this mistake in three entirely separate languages. It's universal. The categories below are the only ones that should be purchased — they are in no specific order.
1. A cookbook from someone within the culture.
2. A cookbook from a first-generation immigrant of that culture.
3. A cookbook from someone who has spent their life understanding that culture^‡.
9. Conversely, if an author seems to flit about cultures, all the books are crap.
10. Shamelessly sell, donate or recycle. Cookbooks are worse than cars. They depreciate to zero the moment you buy them (with some rare exceptions.) So dispose them off if they no longer serve a purpose.

Happy Holidays!

---

† Frequently, the first one is a masterpiece. In fact, the greater it is, the more skeptical you should be about the second. ("They poured out all their energy on the first one. There's nothing left.")

‡ The people living within a culture and first-generation immigrants are not necessarily the best judges of their own culture. In fact, their logic tends to be faulty or filled with superstitions and half-truths. It frequently takes an outsider to write cogently and analytically about something.

The Lynchpin of Logistics

The role of logistics in cooking is axiomatic to trained chefs but it seems to be unknown, unheard of, and unrecognized by regular folks cooking daily meals.

Let us first define the goal. It would be to make nutritious, interesting meals daily, or at least, most evenings. This is what chefs do daily in exchange for money. The home cook tries to do it and, more often than not, fails. The blame is placed on the our harried lives and the "demands on modernity" never mind the fact that we have more instruments (blenders, food processors, dishwashers) that do all the hard work for us than in the bad old days of yore.

The failure can be attributed to the failure of logistics or to put a positive spin on it, the secret to success in the culinary arts lies in logistics.

Great cooking on a regular sustained basis is closer to mobilizing a military campaign than it is to the airy-fairy world of recipes, tastes and thoughts. Creativity, knowledge and technical mastery all play a role but these are pre-requisites in almost any domain of human endeavor. The logistical aspect of cooking gets short shrift from most, particularly cookbook writers, who assume that the audience will pick it up by practice and osmosis.

Importantly, this skill is not ethereal vapor. It's objective and it can be taught and one gets better at it just like the classic Carnegie Hall joke. ("How do you get to the CC's kitchen? Practice, practice, practice.")

There is a skill to the logistical aspect of things and the CC could walk into most people's kitchens and gauge their culinary ability within a minute or two just by observing the organization of their pantry and tools. There would be no role for conversation. A simple cursory observation would do the trick.

The biggest juggling act that a cook must master is managing the pantry.

One of the problems of juggling a pantry is that you must "know yourself". You need to be absolutely crystal clear about your strengths and weaknesses, your desires and hatreds and more importantly, the loves and hates of your target audience. (All cooks have an audience whether it's the paying kind or the not-so-much-paying family and friends variety. If you want to get really technical then all cooking has a serious element of theater in it as well. We, the cooks, are performers.)

Mastering your own pantry and knowing its contents is hard work. It requires you to juggle a ton of variables — long-term stuff (pickles, preserves), frozen stuff (vegetables, preserves, sauces), fresh stuff (herbs, vegetables, meat, etc.)

This is painstakingly difficult work and its complexity must not be underestimated. The price of failure is clear. You toss the waste out but if you want to keep this to a minimum then you must juggle this information either in your head or via a spreadsheet.

You can easily appreciate how important this aspect is in a professional kitchen since it is first and foremost a business. Any wastage accrues directly and negatively to the bottom line.

Planning is also needed in the shopping aspect of things. If you want the best and you want it on a budget then you must juggle all the various ingredients and their locations and their costs. This is something that needs to be learnt and is particularly true of most places in the world that still have separate grocers, butchers and fishermen. (New York is one of the few places in America along with older cities like Boston that still have these supply chains still intact.)

Remember the comparison with military campaigns? The CC was not kidding.

The military has always considered this aspect to be of importance. Now you too can appreciate what Napoleon meant when he said that "an army marches on its stomach" and why the role of quartermaster has always been performed by a relatively senior officer.

The same level of planning goes for the actual execution of the dish. Professional cooks always have a mise en place — French for "putting it in place". All the ingredients are neatly chopped up, arranged and organized in bowls so that the actual cooking is swift and mistake-free. This is particularly important for dishes that require ingredients to go in at a rapid pace e.g. Chinese wok cooking where speed is of the essence and there is no time to dilly-dally with chopping and the like.

Planning extends to cleanup as well. Great home cooks clean as they go and for those with dishwashers, stack as they go. The same goes for professional kitchens where the space is not only cleaned during the execution of dishes but there's also a final cleaning at the end of the night where everything is scrubbed down. Most good cooks will have a clean workplace before the first dish even hits the table.

Traditionally, these skills were under the purview of a course in "Home Economics" since the relationship between money and logistics has always been very clear. This was considered so important that the English classic "Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management" has never been out of print since 1861 (although it has been revised by successive generations to keep up with the times.)

The book represents everything that is positive about Victorian England — its progressive, rational, Enlightenment-seeped nature. The preface by Isabella Beeton says it best:

I must frankly own, that if I had known, beforehand, that this book would have cost me the labour which it has, I should never have been courageous enough to commence it. What moved me, in the first instance, to attempt a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by household mismanagement. I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife's badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways.

We can excuse Mrs. Beeton for her sexist assumptions which were typical of her time but the progressive sentiment of "teaching the skill of household management" jumps out with etched clarity.

This is never going to be a popular subject because there is no "market" for this. Could you imagine a modern-day book that teaches you how to shop for food or how to organize your pantry? Even worse, are we talking about a Japanese pantry or an Indian one since the needs are so different? What if you wanted multiple pantries like the CC?

The greater your ambition and the wider the net of your daily cooking in terms of multiple cuisines, the larger the role of logistics looms. If it's hard enough to cook a single cuisine daily then it is even harder to manage the pantries of multiple cuisines with conflicting demands and juggle everything so that nothing goes to waste.

Somewhere somehow these skills have gotten lost in the modern shuffle but they are absolutely critical if you want to make amazing food on a regular basis.

To blatantly rip off Napoleon, "a great chef marches on his^† organization."

---

† No sexism is implied. As any legal textbook might tell you, "his" includes "hers" as well as "theirs".

Blackberry Picking

Summer is over and the CC does (occasionally) go picking wild berries (and mushrooms) and he can personally attest to the sentiment alluded at the end of the poem.

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

-- Seamus Heaney

Lasagna with Cod & Zucchini

There is no sugar coating this one. This recipe is "heavy".

It's absolutely rock-solid and amazing but the CC only recommends making this if you have like 8+ guests who are dining. Seriously. We're talking small portions because of the sheer heft of this recipe.

This recipe is great for making ahead of time. When your guests arrive, just pop it in the oven and let it bake while you enjoy a nice de-stressing cocktail. It also really helps if you've made the tomato sauce ahead of time.

It's heavy on the prepping time and the oven time so you might want to make it in the waning days of summer when the ingredients are in copious supply and it's not so hot that you want to kill yourself.

Now that the negative juju's are out of the way, this recipe is killer. And heavy. And a heavy-killer!

So onwards and upwards.

There are just five components here all easily available or made in summer — cod, zucchini, tomato sauce, béchamel, and herbs. The CC will not judge you if you use commercial lasagna sheets. In fact, they might even be preferable since it's summer and this is not a delicate dish.

The steps are classically Italian. Waste not, want not. Each step goes back into the previous step to enhance the dish and waste nothing of the flavors acquired so far.

Why not step back right now and try and guess the recipe like a crossword puzzle?



Ingredients

package of lasagna sheets

1 large piece of cod
3 zucchini (cut into large rounds)

4 cups tomato sauce
fresh herbs - rosemary, thyme, oregano

1 cup milk
4 anchovies
1/2 cup flour

2 cups parmigiano-reggiano

butter
olive oil

salt
black pepper

Recipe

Take 1/4 cup of the tomato sauce and add water and bring to a boil. Poach the cod in it till medium done and lift out. Flake the flesh in a bowl and separately strain the broth. Discard the solids and reserve the broth.

Meanwhile reheat the tomato sauce with the fresh herbs. Set aside. It should be thick and glossy so that you can layer it with the lasagna.

Heat up some olive oil in a pan and fry the zucchini. Do it in batches until they are limp and have given up most of their moisture. This is important. If you do not do this, you will have a very soggy lasagna. You can bake it but it's simply not the same. Set aside.

Make the béchamel sauce. Pre-heat the milk in a pan. A microwave works great here. Heat up some butter in a pot. When bubbling, add the flour and let it fry at a medium heat until it is golden in color but not dark brown. Add the anchovies and let it fry a little. Add the hot milk and stir. When the milk is fully denatured, add the fish broth from the cod above and let it reduce to a thick sauce. (If you add it earlier, the milk will curdle.)

Assemble the lasagna. Grease the dish. Add the sheets to the bottom. Layer it with the zucchini, the flaked cod, topped with the béchamel; then more sheets; then with the tomato sauce; then more sheets. Keep repeating the layers until you use up everything. Top with some tomato sauce and the cheese.

Bake covered in a 400°F for 20-25 minutes and then uncover. Bake for an additional 10 minutes till the top is browned.

Creativity and Radish Salad

What does creativity mean?

Creativity doesn't exist in the void otherwise babies would be creative geniuses which they clearly are not. They are a pile of mewling and shitting neuroses.

Creativity works in a context. You take what has come before you and you push it further. Edgier, more vibrant, more in tune with the society of today and tomorrow not yesterday.

Whether scientist or artist, creativity lies in pushing the boundaries outwards in different directions and not in the trivial way.

It's straightforward to make an Indian dish with a non-Indian ingredient like fava beans but true creativity comes from reimagining something that is a classic for good reason in a radically different context.

The triad of radish, salt and butter is a classic one. Radishes, cold butter, sprinkle of salt, sprinkle of herbs. Not exactly rocket science but a potent combination that has gotten many a French housewife and her English counterpart in the 19th century through a dry spell on the table.

Today that butter would be cultured unsalted butter but once upon a time that's all that was available. The defaults have changed so we have to work with the times and specify it.

Why does something so simple work? First off, you have the pungency of the radishes particularly in late summer that is cut down to size by the fat of the butter. The salt is necessary otherwise you wouldn't taste any of the herbs at all. Fatty, pungent, fragrant and salty. Your tongue and nose are loving it.

This combination is well known across the world. There is a classic Persian salad platter consisting of radishes, feta, and herbs. They are just piled onto a dish side by side and the eater can pick or choose as they please. The herbs can be more than one — parsley, mint, tarragon, pepper cress, flat chives all work. Paired with a flat lavash and tucked in, it's as simple as it is delightful.

It's the same combination of pungent radishes, salty fatty cheese, and herbs.

The CC is a big fan of the chef April Bloomfield. She's best known for her "nose-to-tail" eating philosophy which is ironic because she made her name cooking vegetables. Her vegetable dishes are beyond superb.

What's presented below is her version of the classic salad above. Note the care with which she reworks the classic combination and adapts it to an entirely different medium. You still have the same four ingredients — radishes, herbs, salt and fat.

Her description of how to make the salad is a little bit romantic but there's logic there. You can't make this without engaging your hands. You need to knead it to make it work.

This is not a salad you can make ahead of time. You have to serve it at once because you are smashing the basil with the salt and the aromatic component will be lost otherwise. You can prep most of it ahead of time though just there's a last minute component which is quite easy.

Ingredients

15 radishes (cut irregularly into large pieces)

1 cup basil leaves
Maldon sea salt

parmigiano-reggiano (cut into irregular chunks - some large, some thin)

3 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil (your best!)
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

2 cups arugula

Recipe

In a large bowl, combine the radishes with the basil and 3 healthy pinches of salt. Using your hands, grab handfuls of the mixture and sharply press the basil and salt against the radishes for about 30 seconds to release the basil's aromatic oils.

Add the parmesan and mix again with your hands until some of the cheese is creamy, some is in little chunks and some is still in larger dime-sized chunks.

Combine the lemon and olive oil into a vinaigrette. Toss with the arugula, and the mixture above and serve at once.

Halo-Halo

In today's absurd New York heat, the CC could really go for a halo-halo right about now.

The CC is not a big fan of desserts as many of you might have noticed but this one is different. It's textural complexity and visual delight lead many into temptation.

Two entirely different renditions demonstrate how generic and "meta" the recipe really is. The second is made with one of the best renditions of classical flan that the CC knows — remember that the Spaniards ruled the Philippines for almost 400 years so they've had a lot of practice.

Little House on the Prairie

Well, it's that time of the year again in the large city. 40 pounds of tomatoes all bubbling away on the stove into tomato sauce that will be preserved.

What's sauce for the summer is sauce for the winter, as they say.