an open cupboard

The foodblogging event, Food Destinations #3: My Favorite Chocolate Shop, has officially closed. Emily of Chocolate in Context kindly hosted the event originated by maki, and posted a roundup of chocolatey entries today. If you’re a chocolate enthusiast, you must check out the entries for this event. Even if you aren’t a big chocolate fan (is that possible?), it’s fascinating to make the virtual acquaintance of chocolate shops and their very dedicated patrons in Switzerland, Australia, New York, and Italy. I lost count of all the chocolate retail websites I must’ve added to my del.icio.us today, as a result.

The greatest eye opener for me, however, was the video in Ed’s post over at Tomato. The video is a short PR film on Grenada Chocolate company, called “Radical Chocolate” by Eti Pelig. I’ve seen a bar or two of Grenada chocolate at my local chocolate shop, but haven’t really gotten around to picking some up. Its packaging is bright and playful, almost the sort of packaging you’d associate with candy for children. I like my chocolate bitter and intense, so perhaps maybe that’s why I never tried it out. According to the film, Grenada Chocolate is perhaps the first solar-operated chocolate producing cooperative in the world. This is a far cry from the behemoth chocolate producers who engage in appalling labor practices, particularly in some parts of Western Africa. In contrast, founder Mott Green decided to revive the dying cacao industry in Grenada by developing a small-scale chocolate production facility owned by workers. The company provides dignified, safe work to the people in the area, and the cacao is sustainably, and ecologically grown. It’s really an amazing story, but Pelig’s video tells it best. As soon as I saw the film, I understood that Grenada Chocolate’s colorful packaging is simply an accurate reflection of the vibrant Caribbean community where the factory resides.

Many thanks to Emily for hosting this fun event, and for choosing an open cupboard as the winner.

Some photos from my recent trip to New York City. Can you guess what they are and where they were taken?

This is my post for the Dishes of Comfort blogging event, hosted by Cream Puffs in Venice and Viaggi & Sapori.

One of my favorite foods growing up was kashe varnishkes, an Eastern European Jewish side dish full of carbs and mushrooms. As a child, I enjoyed nothing more than a bowl of steaming, sticky white rice, a slice of crusty bread or challah, or a bowl of pasta, hot or cold, with olive oil and salt. I was, and still am, enthralled by the texture, flavor, and the soulful satisfying nature of carbs.

Kashe varnishkes, however, stands apart. A combination of pasta, buckwheat, and mushrooms, kashe varnishkes is the Eastern European answer to Egyptian kushari and Yemeni majadra. The unique pleasure of Kashe varnishkes lies in its combination of nutty, tender buckwheat kernels, with earthy, juicy mushrooms, along with al dente pasta. Kashe varnishkes is pleasantly toothsome, yet very warming on a cold night.

Kashe varnishkes is one of the few dishes that my mother learned to cook from her Eastern European mother. Back in pre-WWII Europe, my great-grandmother enforced the rule that the kitchen was no place for children. Consequently, my grandmother didn’t learn much in the way of cooking, and my mother was often shooed from her mother’s little kitchen in Israel. Kashe varnishkes was one of the few dishes that survived the broken chain of culinary tradition, along with gorgul morgul—a peculiar yet tasty concoction made of egg yolk, lemon juice, and honey—which was meant to soothe a sore throat.

My mother would prepare kashe varnishkes as a treat for a Friday night Sabbath dinner, perhaps with chicken and salad or broccoli. I loved the steaming kernels of toasted buckwheat as much as I loved the big, chewy pasta bowties that poked through the mound of grain. The mushrooms were little buried treasures that exploded with earthy flavor in my mouth.

On Saturday afternoons when everyone napped, I would tiptoe to the refrigerator and fix myself a bowl of leftover kashe varnishkes. They were cold, and I couldn’t reheat them on the Sabbath, but I didn’t care. I would correct the seasoning with salt and perhaps a little pepper. Satisfied, I would take the bowl and a soup spoon and go to the living room, where I would choose an interesting book from my father’s extensive library. Maybe Jonathan Swift, or Dickens, perhaps Aldous Huxley. I’d climb into the big leather Eames chair and cross my legs Indian style. I’d pick up the book and cradle the bowl in my lap. As I disappeared into the universe of my book, I’d dig in my spoon and take a big, luscious bite.

kashe varnishkes

butter
150-200 gr pasta, preferably bowtie (I used fettuccine, which I broke into large-ish bite-size pieces)
3/4 c buckwheat, toasted
1/3 lb mushrooms (I used shitakes and chanterelles)
salt and pepper to taste

• Cook the pasta as you usually would, rinse it to stop it from cooking.
• In a large skillet, melt a little butter and fry the buckwheat until fragrant.
• Add one cup of water to the buckwheat and bring to a boil. Then lower to a simmer and cover.
• Meanwile, slice the mushrooms and fry them in a skillet with butter.
• Season the mushrooms to taste with salt and pepper.
• After a few minutes of simmering, check to see whether the buckwheat needs more water. If it looks dry and isn’t yet tender, add a little more water. You want to add just enough water to keep the buckwheat from drying out. The goal here is tender, yet slightly firm buckwheat, as opposed to buckwheat mush. Towards the end of cooking, remove the cover so that excess liquid evaporates. If a little buckwheat sticks to the pan, do not scrape it up.
• Season the buckwheat with salt and pepper to taste, bearing in mind that you’ve already seasoned the mushrooms.
• Combine the pasta, mushrooms, and buckwheat and correct seasoning. Serve at room temperature or briefly reheat in a pan.

Serves 3-4

I’ve been collecting recipes over the past month or so, storing the links in an e-mail draft in my gmail account. This is standard practice for me before every big holiday meal. The process goes something like this:

1. Think about seasonal ingredients that pique my interest for the holiday menu, such as cranberries, pecans, pumpkins, squash, chestnuts, sage, fennel, celery, beets.
2. Scout the blogosphere and epicurious.com for recipes that sound good.
3. Save links in an e-mail according to topic, for example, 15 pie recipes that all sound really good.
4. Prepare certain staples in advance, such as ordering the most expensive turkey I’ve ever purchased and canning my own cranberry sauce.
5. As the holiday hype snowballs in the media, search for and save links to yet more recipes.
6. Consider the number of guests and their particular dietary requirements. Current estimates: thirteen people, including two vegetarians, two young children, two people who hate peppers and cilantro, 1 person who dislikes turkey, 1 hater of all things chocolate.
7. Panic.
8. Take a deep breath and thank the gods I don’t need to prepare a fat-free, sugar-free, salt-free, low-carb holiday meal.
9. Look over the list of recipe links, realize I haven’t a clue which I will actually prepare, which I won’t, and which I will use as a springboard for my own recipes. I have no idea what items I need to buy and how much of them I need to get, let alone an actual shopping list.
10. Panic.

That’s about where I’m at right now. I need to narrow down the menu by the end of this week, and fill out an order with Fatted Calf as well as my CSA/organic food delivery service. This involves printing out the most appealing menus and fleshing out a shopping list based on the ingredients. After that, I’ll have to plan the preparations down to the hour or so. I will begin by following the plan religiously, and then run dangerously late and panic again.

I’m not sure whether the key is planning too many dishes, and not managing to prepare them all, or planning just enough dishes, and making them all on time. On the other hand, I could print out one of those pre-planned menus with recipes developed by chefs and a to-do list with e-mail and cell phone reminders. But aside from the utter annoyance of being spammed by your own to-do list, a pre-planned menu means actually sticking to the recipes, and that’s just no fun. In the end, toying with the menu as I go is well worth the cost of driving myself just a little bit batty.

Here is my current, tentative menu:

heritage turkey preparation

• Stuffing and gravy
• Preparation tips and dressing between skin and breast
• More specific gravy and roasting instructions

vegetarian dressing baked on its own, one or a combination of the following

• Sausage, cranberry, and cornbread stuffing (sausage omitted)
  
• Cornbread, pecan, and apple stuffing
• Pomegranate cornbread stuffing
• Cornbread recipe for the dressing

poultry alternatives for the turkey hater

• Jamie Oliver’s chicken in milk
• Roast chicken
• Stuffed quails from the Fatted Calf

sides and vegetarian staples

• Squash, spinach, and leek salad with maple syrup dressing
• Green beans with grapes and possibly parmigiano
  
• Whole roasted cauliflower with capers and olive oil
• Jansson’s temptation (not vegetarian, but damn tasty)
  
• Potato parsnip casserole with apples
• Roasted yams with citrus coriander butter
• Braised fennel with lemon

bread

• No-knead bread (hat tip to Rebecca’s Pocket for posting the link)

dessert!

• Apple and pumpkin pies
• A la mode?

Living out here across the pond, it’s easy to forget that the BBC has some really good radio shows. Not that I’ve ever lived on that particular side of the pond. Geeky girl that I am, I have heard some of the old Hitchhiker radio shows so I’m aware of the gems aired on BBC radio. I don’t remember how I found it, but there’s a really nice little food program on BBC 4 that you can catch on the web.

This week’s show is about the history of chutneys, pickles, and relishes. Journalist Sheila Dillon interviews a food historian, a pickle producer, chefs, and growers, while reporter Mark Holdstock talks to the managing director of Henderson Relish factory in Sheffield. The best part is listening to the pickle bubble as pickle maker Maya Pieris stirs the pot and offers Dillon a taste. Similarly, the Henderson factory is vivid with the sound of mechanical movement and steam. You can browse through the archive of previous shows, including one on Romany food and another on Iran.

Listening to the history of English condiments reminded me of my predilection for old recipes. One of the great wonders of human cookery (that’s humans cooking, not cooking humans) is “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things” (back to Douglas Adams). Traditional foods from disparate areas often have so much in common, sometimes even traceable to a common source. The key to finding these interesting connections is by looking at the history of these foods. Old cookbooks show us how we used to cook, and illuminate the origins of the way we cook today. Old cookbooks can be an adventure for the modern, sometimes jaded, palate. Many chefs, in fact, turn to historical recipes for inspiration.

Old recipes can inspire home cooks too, particularly during the holiday season. Some web searching returned some new and old favorites:

• Fannie Farmer Cookbook: A Bostonian classic, this particular version was published in 1918.
• Feeding America: A site one could easily browse for hours, this work in progress is a collection of historic American cookbooks. Entries include a description of the work with links to a few salient recipes, as well as the full text of the cookbook in HTML and PDF formats. Also fun to look at is a browseable gallery of historic kitchen utensils. My favorite is the bain marie, which is—quite literally—a bain.
• Gode Cookery: A collection of Chaucerian, Medieval, and Renaissance recipes with modern measurements.
• Medieval and Renaissance Food: A hefty collection of links to old cookbooks and individual recipes.
• Historical Culinary and Brewing Documents: A collection of links to old cookbooks in various languages.
• The Food Timeline: This site presents the history of food as a timeline starting from around 17,000 BC up to the current year. Foods are listed according to their appearance in history with links to both internal and external articles. The FAQ has some good links as well.
• Foods of Jerusalem: Short articles and recipes on food in the ancient Middle East during various periods.
• Oded Schwartz: In the same vein, check out Oded Schwartz’s astute articles on topics such as olives, dairy products, and the foods of the Bible.

My first batch of home canned cranberry sauce is processing as I type. Cranberry sauce is remarkably easy to prepare, and almost as easy to can. I used these recipes as guidelines, just to get an idea of how much sweetener and liquid to use. The general rule seems to be two parts cranberries to one part sugar and water. The National Home Canning web site gives useful guidelines on processing times, which vary depending on the volume of your jars. Additional guidelines on recommended equipment and the necessity (or not) of pre-sterilizing jars can be found here.

I had planned to set aside some sauce for freezing, in case something went wrong with the canning process. Of course I forgot. No matter. I’ve got four half-pint jars of sauce. If they’re all bad, I’ll just make a new batch a day or two before Thanksgiving. I know, I’m very confident.
Here’s the recipe if you’d like to give it a try.

home canned cranberry sauce

4 half-pint canning jars and lids, washed
16 oz. organic cranberries
1 c water
3/4 c brown cane sugar
2-4 TBS honey
spices: ground cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, ground cloves, ground allspice, about 1/8 well rounded tsp each

• Wash the jars and lids in hot soapy water and set aside.
• Combine the cranberries, water, sugar, spices, and half the honey in a small pot or sauce pan. Simmer until most of the cranberries have burst, stirring occasionally. Taste the cranberry sauce and add more honey if necessary.
• While the cranberries cook, boil the jars (not the lids) and a pair of tongs in a large pot for about 10 minutes. You can use a canning pot or a large pasta pot with a drainer insert to hold the jars.
• When the jars have boiled, turn off the flame and remove the jars with the sterilized tongs, draining the water from the jars as you remove them. (If the cranberry sauce is still cooking, leave the jars in the hot water until the cranberry sauce is ready.)
• Pour the hot cranberry sauce into the jars, making sure to leave enough space at the top (usually about 1/4 to 1/2 inch, check the instructions that come with the jars). Run a non-metal spatula around the sides of the jar to remove any air bubbles.
• Wipe the tops of the jars and seal them well.
• Put the jars back in the pot and bring to the boil. Once the water has boiled, cover the pot and process the jars for 15 minutes. Note that processing time varies depending on your altitude and jar size.
• When the jars have finished processing, turn off the flame and let the jars rest for five minutes. Then remove the jars from the pot and cool on a dry towel for 12 to 24 hours.
• Remove the bands from the jars after cooling for 12 to 24 hours. Lids should be somewhat concave and difficult to remove with your fingertips. Clean the jars with a damp cloth and label and store the contents in a cool, dry place.

Makes 4 half-pint jars of sauce.

Just to make up for last week’s post about Sheba, here’s a much cuter photo of her sleeping. Note the white spot on her belly, and the daintily folded front paws.

I rather like this photo as it captures Sheba’s personality. She has a wide-eyed, expressive face that vacillates between wonder and insatiable curiosity. Sometimes she seems almost inquisitive, the way she looks at you when she meows. Naturally, the photo is blurred as a result of Sheba’s constant movement. She is always jumping about, particularly when a camera is present (”What is that thing my non-furry mother is sticking in my face? Why is it blinking?”).

This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939, edited by Christopher MacGowan. Copyright © 1938, 1944, 1945 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Hat tip

Today I read that the Wednesday Chef has been exhausted by NaBloPoMo. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one! You’d think I’d have more time to post, having been sick at home. But, well, not really. I’ve been busy trying to get some work done while not moving around too much and taking lots of Yin Chao, all while feeling like I’m drunk and hungover at the same time. I imagine if I had a TV, I’d never get anything done at all. Thank the gods for small blessings.

I’m a bit scatter-brained today, so I’ll write a brief sort of stream of consciousness list of food and foodblog related thoughts that have passed through my mind today:

• Floyd’s foodblog kicks arse. I loved him on TV, and I continue to love him online. If you haven’t already, do check him out.
• Thanksgiving! Would you believe I’ve been slowly planning it out since last month? I added a lovely looking salad from Leite’s Culinaria to my tentative menu list. I am determined to prepare Thanksgiving dinner at a leisurely pace, leaving enough time to make every dish while still eating at a fairly reasonable hour. Wonder if it’ll actually work out?
• In this photo of Rachel Ray, the guy she’s cooking with is clearly staring at her boobs. This is why some food professionals get on TV faster than others.
• Cranberry sauce to be prepared and preserved this weekend. Stay tuned.
• Are there cooking shows on YouTube? Are they any good?
• Thinking of interesting topics to post about on a daily basis is challenging. Are there any specific topics you’d like me to write about?
• I read a little about photography today, something I know very little about. Apparently there’s this thing called white balance and also exposure. Apparently I should be concerned about them. Note to self: read about white balance and exposure, then fiddle with camera.
• If humankind is so advanced in the later Star Trek series such as Voyager, why do they eat replicated food? How 1950’s of them.
• Sumac is a fun, underused spice. I’ve got a huge jar of it that I often forget about. Tonight, I sprinkled sumac on some dinosaur kale cooked with apples in butter and olive oil. Yes, I know, apples and greens have been done to death. But sumac, that’s interesting. Mmmm, sumac and chicken. There’s a lovely Arab dish of chicken and sumac baked on a large round of flatbread in a wood-burning clay oven. It’s heavenly.

That’s about it for tonight, folks. Seriously, do leave your ideas for topics in the comments section. A demain!

P.S. Do click on the NaBloPoMo randomizer button on the left-hand sidebar. It will introduce you to some nifty, random sites that are participating in NaBloPoMo. Many tips o’ the hat to pink elephants for developing it!

I tried, I really did. I just couldn’t get a good photo of this evening’s side dish. So for your amusement, I’ve created a stylized (*ahem*) rendition of a green bean with a strawberry. They look rather happy together, don’t they? Each in its own lopsided way.

What’s a green bean got to do with a strawberry, you may ask? The truth is, I have no idea. I just needed something to lend a little chutzpah to the skinny, sedate French beans I served with supper. I spotted the basket of forgotten strawberries from the corner of my eye and thought “yeah, that’ll do.” It did indeed. I’d forgotten how wonderful strawberries taste with freshly ground black pepper. They’re also a soft, juicy contrast to turgidly crunchy beans.

This is one of those non-recipes that’s too simple to really be a recipe. The only rule is to try to balance the green beans with the strawberries. A ratio of two to one is about right, I think.

green beans and strawberries

1 bunch green beans, washed and trimmed
strawberries
olive oil to taste
salt and pepper to taste

1. Place a large sauté pan or skillet on a medium flame and toss a bunch of green beans into it.
2. While the green beans are cooking, rinse and trim some strawberries and slice them in half. Then slice the halves into thick matchsticks.
3. Toss the green beans around periodically, and cook until they just turn a bright shade of green.
4. Transfer the beans to a large bowl, combine with strawberries.
5. Drizzle with good olive oil, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Taste and correct seasoning. If you’d like the salad to be sweeter, add more strawberries.

Variations:

• Dress with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
• Instead of freshly ground black pepper, use freshly cracked black pepper for more pronounced heat and black pepper flavor.
• Try shaving or grating some parmigiano-reggiano on top.
• Crumble some good quality freshly fried bacon on top.
• Serve with prosciutto.
• Deconstruct the dish by cooking the strawberries separately with balsamic vinegar and reducing them to a sauce. Season liberally with cracked or ground black pepper. Spoon the hot or cold sauce over the green beans. (This is the most peculiar, yet intriguing suggestion I could think of. If anyone tries it, do let me know how it turns out.)
• Reduce the green beans to a sauce, and spoon it over the cold strawberries. Just kidding.