Toast

Election Night Curry

I'm taking a vacation day on Wednesday so that I don't have to wake up for work, since I suspect any effort to go to sleep at a reasonable hour Tuesday night would be doomed. I am so anxious about the election that I can work up a sweat reading the paper, and I have begun to address audible comments to televised news and punditry, with only the cats to hear me.

I in no way presume that anyone is interested in my position on this contest, but lest you think me evasive or coy- I'm happy to tell you that I (enthusiastically) support Barack Obama. I'm not going to talk about the issues here. It isn't that I think it would be somehow wrong to do so, but rather that I am already way too keyed up, and I'm pretty sure the only possible effect of airing my views in any detail would be further angst on my part, and maybe boredom on yours. Apparently there are still a substantial number of undecided voters. The mind boggles. I can't imagine what they want to hear, or what they are waiting for.

In any event, if you are, as I am, planning a Tuesday evening, after voting, wrapped in an afghan in front of the tube, clutching a bowl of some sort of comfort food, and a spoon (or chopsticks), you may have been, as I was, intrigued by the recipe in the Times Magazine last weekend. The article discussed Katsu Curry, a specialty of Go Go Curry restaurants. This Japanese (! curry?) chain now has a few outposts in New York, which are proving popular.

Katsu curry is, "a comfort food, an energy food, a power food, a guilty pleasure," says Miyamori, the proprietor of Go Go.. It is "British Indian food as imagined by excited Japenese and cooked in the United States a hundred years later," per Sam Sifton, who wrote the article. As he commends it for televised football viewing and as it can be served layered in individual, personal bowls, it sounded just the thing to me. And really, the bowl arrangement is best. I've got it spread out a bit here, so you can see all the parts- but layered is nicest- and most efficient for living room consumption
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The dish consists of rice, topped with a fruity pork curry, and further topped with strips of fried, panko encrusted pork chops, a handful of shredded cabbage, and a dribble of Tonkansu "fruit and vegetable" sauce.* Sound yummy? I picked up the S&B Japanese curry powder* and the Tonkatsu sauce* at the Asian grocery in the Strip at lunchtime on Thursday, and I was pretty sure this was going to be the meal in question. I was so certain that I dragged an eclectic bag of groceries to and home from post-work theater-going (August Wilson's last play, "Radio Golf"- and a terrific performance it was, too), just so I could try it out this weekend.

To avoid disappointment, (I do NOT want to suffer from disappointments of any kind, if at all avoidable, on Tuesday) I thought I'd have a dry run ahead of time, so here you are. A little research revealed that there are also chicken versions of this curry, which was good, because I had ground chicken, and no ground pork. Also, I oven- fried the pork chops, rather than deep frying them, partly out of nutrition guilt, but mostly because I didn't fancy dealing with smoky fat..laziness, more than anything. Also- sue me- I used basmanti rice rather than short-grain Japanese rice, because I like it better- especially with curry. Anyhow, the curry keeps, and I will reheat it and cook it up for election night, making another pork chop to slice up then.

This is really just the thing for the purpose- invigorating to the fingertips, strong and sustaining..it suits me fine- and no doubt would also work for the football viewer. Here are the instructions- as minimally altered by Yrs Truly -based mostly on availability of ingredients:

3 Tbsps butter
1 lb. ground pork, turkey or chicken
s and p
3 Tbsps flour
3 Tbsps S&B Japanese curry powder
peeled onion, quartered
3 cloves garlic, peeled
peeled sliced carrot
2" fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
mango, peeled and coarsly chopped, or a peeled banana and 2 Tbsps sweet mango chutney- such as Major Gray
a green apple, peeled, cored and quartered
2 Tbsps tomato paste
1 Tbsp worchestershire sauce
1 cup chicken broth
6 thin boneless pork chops, pounded
2 beaten eggs
1 cup of Panko breadcrumbs
cooked rice
shredded cabbage
tonkatsu sauce

Curry Sauce: Melt the butter and add the meat. Brown the meat thoroughly, add S and P, then stir in the flour and curry powder. In the meantime, combine everything else, up to, and including the Worcestershire sauce in a food processor, and combine thoroughly. Add to the meat, and cook, stirring for five minutes or so, until sludgy. Add the chicken broth, stir and cook down over a very low heat, for about an hour. You can do this ahead, and reheat it, if you like.

Pork: Preheat the oven to 450. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Beat the eggs, and put the eggs and panko each in a wide shallow bowl. Heat a large saute or frying pan with two tablespoons of peanut oil until almost smoking. Dip each chop into the egg, then coat thoroughly with panko, and, for a good crust, repeat. Set in the hot oil. Brown each chop on both sides, then set on the lined cookie sheet, and place in the preheated oven. Finish cooking in the oven, until cooked through and beautifully browned. Slice chops on the diagonal.

Assemble: Put a nice scoop of rice in each bowl, ladle on some curry sauce, and top with slices of pork and a handful of shredded cabbage. Squirt on some tonkatsu sauce, tasting it first, to make sure you like it. (I do. It kind of tastes like V-8 juice with the color and texture of oyster sauce. In a good way. Really.) Consume, holding the bowl in one hand, and chopsticks, or a spoon in the other. And hope for the best.

* I have pictured these ingredients in an effort to make it easier for you to find them; it always takes me forever to locate a listed ingredient in an Asian shop...though they are labeled in English, it just helps to know what they look like.

Dinner Party Chicken

When I went away to college, and lived in my first apartment, I was just dying to start cooking. My mother, a fantastic, creative cook, had set a high standard. She was a total control freak in the kitchen, and could not bear "help" of any kind, but she did permit spectators, and I was generally there, hovering, and carrying her delicious food to the table. I think this may be the best method ever for the psychological conditioning of future generations of enthusiastic home cooks. I learned a lot from watching, and as I was not allowed to participate, cooking seemed a privilege, rather than a duty.

It still does. And, after all, it is a privilege, to have the wherewithal to bring home baskets of lovely local produce, to afford some meat and poultry, to buy the nicest imported coffees, and to never run out of King Arthur's unbleached all purpose flour, when there are many, many people going hungry, and many more with no stove to cook on.

In any case, a couple of the many things I learned watching my mothers fine hand at work, were the importance of timing, and the benefits of keeping a hot summer kitchen from roasting the cook. The latter was especially important pre-air conditioning, but is still relevant for those of us who like to feel cool enough to be hungry for supper.

Quite a few of my more impressive early kitchen tricks were copied directly from my mother. The cacciatore /fricasee of chicken was a cornerstone of her dinner party cooking repetoire, embodying both principles, and allowing for all sorts of great variations. I got a lot of mileage out of these concoctions, which could be both homey and fancy. You browned the chicken in butter or olive oil, removed it briefly, sauteed some good combination of vegetables in a bit of the exuded fat combo, and deglazed the pan with wine, broth, tomato sauce or some combination thereof. The chicken and some herbs went back in the pan, to be covered and braised. These dishes could be done in the morning, without lighting the oven and reheated, with no last minute flurry- except perhaps the adding of a bit of cream sometimes, and sauce reduction.

There were all sorts of classic variants, or you could make up your own. I was especially fond of one done with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, tarragon, garlic and white wine. A friend used to make a recipe from a supermarket women's magazine, where the braising liquid was canned cream of mushroom soup with a little white wine, and there was grated gruyere in at the end. It was, frankly, delicious, and in those days, we were far less suspicious of and /or embarrassed by prepared foods with mysterious chemical additives.

If there were no potatoes in the veg mix, you could make some plain noodles or rice, and put some pan juices on top. A green salad, crusty bread for moping up, and you were good to go. Pretty much everyone liked this sort of food- so what happened? Why did I stop making this sort of chicken? It was really a perfect solution for jazzing up fairly tasteless supermarket chicken, was it not?

I am not entirely sure, but I think that supermarket chicken has deteriorated in quality, even since the 1980s. They were already less tasty than the best free-range hens our ancestors presumably had, if they were lucky enough to afford chicken, but there was still some decent texture. It may be my imagination, but I think mass produced chickens are getting mushier and flaccid? Is this craziness on my part? In any event, that's what it seemed like to me. So, I sort of began making only the sort of chicken dishes that firmed up- roasted, grilled, sauteed, and abandoned the tenderizing cacciatore type dishes.

I've noticed that the 2 free range chickens which I get each month from the neighbor of my CSA farmer, delivered one week each month with my vegs, have, in addition to excellent flavor, a welcome toothsomeness. So I thought I try a scratch version of the gruyere topped stuff, and I'm here to tell you, it was great. And it is also very easy, as long as you have a proper organically raised free range chicken. You will definitely want some crusty bread for mopping up the pan juices here. I won't pretend it's diet food- but it is special occasion worthy, IMHO.

Cut up your chicken and dredge it with flour which you have seasoned with salt, sweet paprika and pepper. Brown it very thoroughly in butter in a heavy skillet or saute pan which has a cover and can go, coverless, into the oven. Make sure it is quite thoroughly browned, as the longer, damp cooking will make it pale, otherwise. Remove the chicken from the pan, and deglaze with 3/4 of a cup of dry white wine.

Reduce the wine by half. Put the chicken back in the pan with chunks of carrots and a fair number of peeled shallots, a branch each of fresh tarragon, thyme and parsley. Add 1/2 cup of broth. Partly cover, and cook very slowly until quite tender, adding a bit of broth or water if the liquid gets too low. I cannot tell you how long this will take, it really depends on your chicken. It is easy to overcook supermarket chicken; my farm chicken takes longer. so you will need to poke at it a bit to be sure.

You can stop now, and cool and refrigerate until just before serving. If you do that, bring it to a simmer before you go on. Stir in 2/3 cup of heavy cream, blending with the pan juices, and sprinkle the top with a generous handful of coarsely grated gruyere, or other swiss type good cheese. Run under the broiler until the top is brown and bubbly, and serve, with the aforementioned crusty bread and some salad.

Sorry about the terrible photo.

Devil May Care

I was surprised, after some rummaging among past posts, to find that I have never before written about deviled eggs, as there is very nearly nothing I like more. I was even more surprised to find that I had a bit to learn on the subject, since I thought the case was, for me, closed.

I knew that there were various French variations on stuffed eggs, which included asparagus, or shrimp, and the like. That was fine with me, and these were mostly very nice, but could not hold a candle to the classic: Hard-boiled egg white halves, stuffed with a mixture of mashed yolk, English mustard, mayo, salt and pepper, and, finally, sprinkled with some paprika, smoked Spanish or regular, or maybe, if I was feeling a little extra was called for, ground chipotle. No pickle juice here. End of story.

I was therefore disconcerted to discover, in the Sunday NYTimes Men's Fashion Supplement*, a recipe for stuffed eggs Caeser salad style, which is a worthy alternate. I was also surprised to learn, courtesy of Jacques Pepin, that a few minutes upside down in a frying pan can have an amazing, and praise-worthy effect on a deviled egg . A caveat: the new egg recipe is not for anchovy haters- nor is the Caeser salad itself, for that matter. And, a happy happenstance: the Caeser eggs are particularly suited to the Pepin effect.

Even if you are as stuck on the classic as I have been, you may want to try these both ways. Nearly as simple as the original, and that is a plus, in my book. The cold ones are great with whiskey or gin drinks, and the warm ones make a nice sit-down first course, or a lunch.

This is how you make the basic Caeser egg, as amended by me (I don't like the idea of coming upon a bit of chopped raw garlic while nibbling my egg.):

12 hard-boiled eggs
2 Tbsps Olive oil
2 tsps lemon juice
1 tsp anchovy paste
dash Worchestershire
salt and pepper
paprika
garlic clove, split

Rub the garlic clove over the interior of a small to medium bowl. Cut eggs in half, and add the yolks and all the other ingredients, except paprika, into the bowl. Mash thoroughly, and stuff halved whites. Sprinkle with paprika and display cunningly on your depression glass dish or in Tupperware...they will all be eaten, either way.

Now, with your regular deviled eggs, or your Caeser eggs, you can make a sort of deconstructed Caeser salad. Dress some romaine with a little bit of garlicy vinagrette and set it on a serving dish, or several smaller plates, with a few homemade croutons, if you are so inclined. Film the bottom of a heavy frying pan with olive oil, and heat it up. Set the eggs in the pan in a single layer, carefully, yolk side down. Cook them at a medium-low heat until the yolk is nicely caramelized and brown. Mine took 5 minutes.

Set them atop your salad, arranged prettily, and consume. They are nice without the lettuce, too, but you should still have them with a knife and fork, on a plate...unlike the cold version, which are perfect for eating out of hand , at picnics. Also, if you put two cold ones yolk to yolk, and wrap them up, they are the best ever little treat in a packed lunch.

*A strange item, no? I always read the Times style items with interest, and they are so often a source of amusement. I fear my amusement may be a symptom of my own depravity, though. How can I chuckle over a spread featuring chic modern models portraying starving depression era hobos, in mock-rags of cashmere with thousand dollar price tags? This display appeared not too long ago in a similar NYTimes style magazine.

Who was this for, and why? Has Marie Antoinette been playing milkmaid games again? Maybe someone there should take a moment to remember how she ended up.

In any event, apparently deviled eggs have become fashionable, much in the manner of upscale mac and cheese. Oh well.

Guerilla Cookies 1971, and the Best Ever Cookie Jar

You see before you the fabulous Olive Oyl cookie jar of my dreams, currently being sold on ebay. If you can afford a couple hundred bucks for a cookie jar-it's all yours, I'm not in a bracket to compete. Or, you could just enjoy it my way, by gazing upon it and marveling, and lusting after it shamelessly.

It is here as a symbol of the emptiness of my (lesser) cookie jar. I'd better let you know from the start that a recipe for genuine guerilla cookies is not available here. Or anywhere else, except possibly for pilgrims to a sort of legendary hermit guy..but that may be an urban legend...or not.

Guerilla cookies were large, individually wrapped cookies I often bought in Madison, Wisconsin during my years as a student there in the early seventies. They were sold at the Mifflin Street Co-op, by street vendors, and in the Rathskeller at the Student Union. They were not cheap, but they were almost a meal. There was lots of stuff in them, and I'm not sure what all of it was, but they were delicious.

I know there was oatmeal and there was coconut, because I could taste both. Besides, they had that quality of tasting like real food, and not just a dessert, which makes oatmeal cookies so satisfying. Sometime ago, I vainly thought that it would surely be possible to find the original recipe and/or its creator, on the internet.

Instead, I found emails with varying interesting versions of this saga in the Wisconsin State Journal and the wisconsin.com websites. The story seems to be that the recipe is in the hands of, and possibly is the creation of one Ted Odell. He lives, some say, sort of in the woods, with no phone and so on. He purportedly doesn't want the recipe in the public domain, because it could be exploited for profit by the unscrupulous, who I guess would most likely be imperialist running dogs and their evil minions-that sort of person. I'm not entirely unsympathetic.

However, assuming this story is true, I would suggest to (or beg) Ted O. to pass the recipe on to some nonprofit enterprise of which he approves, for use in fund raising. I'll bet such an organization could make a bundle for a cause he didn't loathe, mail-ordering genuine guerilla cookies to Madisonians and ex-Madisonians. I, for one, am ready to order some right now. They keep well too, so they'd be perfect for a mail order fund raising. I sure could go for a real guerilla cookie.

I can't hoist on a knapsack and search out Ted Odell, begging for the recipe with promises of secrecy. And I wouldn't if I could, because you see, Mr. O, it is my firm belief that Recipes are for The People! I'd feel honor bound to liberate that recipe, and won't be pretending otherwise.*

In any event, I am hoping to make for personal and friendly consumption something not unlike the original, and invite anyone who harbours memories of the Guerilla Cookie, whether it be of ingredients they believe they noticed, or any other Guerilla Cookie memories , to comment here, or send me an email, by March 1st, so I can consider any available information.

'Til then, a girl can dream. Omigod, the beret/lid is so wonderful.

*I'm not actually kidding about this; I don't like the whole concept of hoarded secret recipes, and firmly believe that the sharing and preparing of real food is an important human link.

"Chinese" Pepper Steak: 1962

Before she inexplicably gave up all interest in cooking maybe 15 years ago, my mother was a wonderful and creative cook, who made delicious food of a kind which did not commonly appear in the households of my friends. She read a lot of cookbooks, and was a big Craig Claibourne fan. But sometimes she just made stuff up-based on flavors that she had experienced in restaurants-especially Chinese restaurants, which we all loved. In those days, Chinese restaurant food in a provincial city like Pittsburgh was pretty much all Cantonese-American.

I have had quite a few asian beef and pepper dishes in restaurants and people's homes since then. Mum's "Chinese" Pepper steak was her own invention, and not, probably, especially close to any actual Chinese dish. It was, however, wonderful comfort food, and like most things with lots of peppers, smelled insanely good in the cooking. We ate it with fluffy white rice (as opposed to the medium grained, stickier Asian rice). Thus, it was fork, and not chopstick fare. Green peppers were widely available then, while red, orange and yellow peppers rarely appeared in a supermarket. So her pepper steak was made with all green peppers-but there was a secret step.

She parboiled the sliced peppers, before adding them to her sauce, and this made for a very delicate flavor. I tried to mentally reconstruct the recipe as she made it, while simultaneously deciding if I should vary it when I made it myself, because of the additional ingredients and tools which are available to me now. There was no doubt in my mind that Mum would have used some of these things if they were available to her. Still, her pepper steak was a thing of simple beauty as it was, so I didn't want to stray far from the original.

In the end, the conscious changes I made were these: I made it in my wok, beause it was easy and I make lots of stuff in it as a matter of course. I used a variety of peppers and fresh ginger, instead of only green peppers and dried ginger, because I could, and who wouldn't? I drizzled it with toasted sesame oil, because I love it so, and could not resist. I also had a heated internal debate about a few fermented black beans, and left them out, but I may not, next time. So it remains a simple dish which can be made from ordinary supermarket food. It is something I can eat often, without tiring of its simple goodness. and pretty much all non-vegetarians like it.

If you are interested, this is what you need to serve 4:

3/4 lb thinly sliced beef, suitable for sauteeing -although tougher cuts, frozen and sliced very thin work, too-they are tenderized somewhat- just a bit chewier, which can be nice.

an onion, peeled and thinly sliced in half-moons

a clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

1/2" square of peeled fresh ginger, chopped
peanut oil 2 tbsps

3 sliced sweet peppers, assorted colors, briefly parboiled and drained

soy sauce-to taste, be generous. Before soy sauce was widely available, Mum used Worchestershire sauce, but she swtiched later

pepper

beef broth, preferably homemade- 2 cups

14 oz can chopped tomatoes-preferably Muir Glen, or homemade, drained

1 tbsp cornstarch, disoled in 1/4 cup cold water

drizzle toasted sesame oil

2 scallions, sliced

In a wok, or large saute pan, heat the oil. Add beef, onion, garlic and ginger, and stir fry just until almost all the beef has changed color. Add the broth, tomatoes, soy sauce and peppers, and simmer until the beef is tender- maybe 20 minutes. Add cornstarch mix, stirring or whisking to keep things smooth, and cook until sauce is thickened. Drizzle with sesame oil and garnish with chopped scallions. There is a lot of sauce, and it is very good over basmati rice. So make plenty of rice. I have been known to make a lunch of leftover sauce on rice.

If my mother was making this for supper, I could smell it as soon as I came home from school, and opened the door. I had a hard time waiting until dinner. Sorry there is not photo- the camera batteries gave up the ghost, and we could not wait for a re-charge to eat. It's not all that pretty anyway; iti somehow looks its best when you can smell it, as well as see it.

Before Halloween: Christmas Pudding 1930/1960/2005

When I was about 12 years old, my English mother decided to make her own mother's recipe for Christmas Pudding for the first time. Thereafter, she made it every year, in early fall, until she gradually and inexplicably gave up cooking, beginning about 10 years ago. My brother and I took over the family holiday meals , but neither of us ever made the pudding. I have been making versions of my Mum's holiday trifle off and on, but I wasn't inspired to try the pudding until recently, when I stumbled upon some very Christmassy looking pudding bowls at the Goodwill.

One basin is English and one American, one big, one small. I thought I could make one big one, to serve holiday company, and one small one to send a friend. "Big" is a relative term- the larger one is far from huge, but a Christmas Pudding is a very rich item, and the 1.2 liter size will feed 8 people. As it turned out I had more than enough, and made a third good sized pudding in a coffee can as well.

My mother always made these in October, to give them plenty of time to develop their flavors. It was one of the few things she liked to have help with in the kitchen, and I was the volunteer scullery maid and fruit chopper/grater. I am not the sort of person who prudently begins Christmas shopping in January. Nor am I enchanted by the ever earlier jingle bells and santas appearing in the stores, now seen pre-Halloween, closing in on Labor Day. But for mincemeat, and for the pudding, I am willing to do a bit of planning ahead and putting aside.

Part of the ritual of the pudding, as done by my mother, was shopping for the ingredients at Donahoe's, a fabulous old fashioned store which had dominated Market Square in downtown Pittsburgh as long as anyone remembered. There you could buy all kinds of whole glaceed fruits, as well as special raisins, currents, and nuts. Donahoe's is long gone, but many of the ingredients we bought there can been found in the Strip District. Visiting my daughter this weekend in Cleveland, I found the last few things I needed. I bought a whole chunk of candied citron at the wonderful market there, and I picked up some stout at Trader Joe's.

Many Christmas puddings contain suet, but my mother and her mother used butter, because they found suet unappetizing. I'm not especially put off by it myself, but will adhere to the family habit for tradition's sake, as well as for the sake of my vegetarian children. These are the ultimately assembled ingredients:

6 oz butter, frozen
3 oz. self rising flour
6 oz white bread crumbs
pinch salt
2 tsps freshly grated nutmeg
2 tsps cinnamon
pinch each ground ginger and ground cloves
12 oz soft dark brown sugar
15 oz zante currants
12 oz mixed raisins-mostly dark, some golden
6 oz. pressed dates, crumbled
3 oz. very finely chopped glace citron (it is best to buy a whole piece, and chop it very finely. The prechopped is too coarse, and tends to be dried out and hard)
3 oz ground or finely chopped blanched almonds
1 peeled apple
zest of a scrubbed lemon
3 eggs
7-8 oz. Guinness
good glug of port

This is what you do: In a large bowl, add these ingredients in order, grating the frozen butter and peeled apple on the large holes of a box grater over the bowl. As you add each of the dry ingredients, mix thoroughly, with your clean hands, tossing them lightly in all the way to the bottom of the bowl, and trying not to mash the butter or dates into any large clods. Beat the eggs before adding. The whole thing should be quite wet. Cover the bowl with cling wrap, and refrigerate for 24 hours.

Remove from fridge and stir with a big wooden spoon. Everyone who happens to be in the house should take a stir and make a wish. This is the only custom of this sort in my family. It is entirely out of character, but definitely required.

Butter the pudding basin(s), or in the alternative, coffee cans, in which you will steam the puddings. Pack the basins nearly to the top, or the coffee cans to desired pudding height. Leave a wee bit of space at the top; they will rise slightly, due to the relatively small amount of self-rising flour. Cover with a parchment layer and then aluminum foil. Tie them round the top, and then tie on a little extra string crossing the top, for a handle. They will be cute. Set the prepared puddings on a rack in a large pan. I use my hot water bath canner. Add boiling water 1/2-3/4 up the side of the basins or cans.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer, covered. Keep an eye on it while bringing to a boil, so that you don't accidently overflow and drown your puddings. Steam the pudding for 8 hrs (yes, really), adding boiling water to try to keep the level pretty constant. You will have to check it fairly frequently.

Remove from pan and cool down thoroughly. Redo the two coverings, and set in a cool place- larder or fridge- to mellow until the holidays. Some folks add additional port from time to time. I am among them. You do this by removing the coverings, sticking a thin skewer into the pudding in a few strategic spots , and pouring a bit of port over. Re-cover carefully. Don't do this more than once per week, and take care not to drown your pudding in liquid.

To serve your pudding warm you must steam it again for a couple of hours, and then upend it, plop, on your platter. With a coffee can, you can open the bottom with a can opener, and gently push it out. Christmas Pudding is traditionally presented on a dish decorated with a bit of holly. You pour brandy on it, and light it up with a match, after turning off the lights. Well, Mum did anyhow, and I believe I will too. I told her today I was working on this, and she said she was tickled that I was taking the trouble to do it. I'm kind of tickled myself.

"Turkey Treat" 1966/2005

When I was a high school student in the sixties, it was a very big deal when shortly before the holiday, the school cafeteria offered a special called "Turkey Treat." There were signs posted about this event several weeks in advance. The treat consisted of generous chunks of turkey in a salty, thick yellow canned gravy, served over your choice of a soft square biscuit or an ice cream scoop of reconstituted dried mashed potatoes. Sometimes there was also a scoop of bread dressing.This could be washed down either with the tradtional pink "bug juice" or the more sophisticated pre-sweetened iced tea.

Unappetizing as this sounds , it was extremely popular, even among students who ordinarily scorned the cafeteria food, or ate only the few annointed a "cool" items- grilled cheese sandwiches, french fries, or hotdogs. In retrospect, I suspect that the explanation for this enthusiasm has to do with the fact that turkey, then, was still very much a special occasion food, which was only available in the holiday season. Even in a deli, where you could get a sliced turkey sandwich, generally your turkey was sliced from a whole roasted bird. Turkey was a food for feasts; turkey burgers and turkey bacon were not seen yet in the supermarket.

Even the awful canned gravy did not entirely drown the taste of real roast turkey. Plus, the basement cafeteria was filled with that roasting bird aroma, which is heavenly. So much of taste being associated with smells, you could probably nibble on some spongy wonder bread while smelling a turkey roasting, and think it tasted pretty decent.

I love doing a big mahogany crisp skinned turkey for a feast, and enjoy the leftovers, particularly including a good rich soup made from the carcass. But there are a number of excellent uses for the turkey parts now available, not the least of which is the making of turkey broth from a package of necks.

A real turkey treat, though, and a favorite of mine is this simple dinner for one or two, which fills the house with the wonderful roasting bird smell, and tastes delicious. It is adapted from a Betty Fussell recipe. Though you can easily make it for supper after work, I would not hesitate to increase quantities and serve it to guests. For 2 people you need:

1 or 2 turkey thighs (one is a very large serving for one person)
2 generous handsful of spinach or other greens, such as beet greens, or greens and arugula, mixed
olive oil
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1/3 cup raisins or dried cranberries
sea salt
dash ground chipotle or spanish paprika (opt)
salt
freshly ground pepper
2 tbsps orange marmalade
1 tbsp balsamic or sherry vinegar

Preheat oven to 375F
With a paring knife or boning knife, remove the thigh bones. Leave the skin on. Set each thigh on a good sized square of aluminum foil.

Heat some olive oil in a pan, and cook the onions until limp, but not brown. Add the greens, raisins, and seasonings, and cook until greens are wilted. Cool this mix to room temperature, and then spoon it into the hollow of each thigh where the bone was removed. Carefully and tightly wrap each thigh in its square of foil, drawing in the edges of the meat within to roll it closed around the stuffing. Closure need not be perfect, but wrap them tightly.

Set the wrapped thighs on a baking sheet, and cook for about an hour. Your house will begin to smell wonderful. Remove from oven, and carefully unwrap each packet. Watch out for steam. With tongs or two spoons, turn each skin side up, inside the open foil. Pour off accumulated juices into a little bowl, and save. Heat the marmelade and vinegar together, and brush or pour it over the turkey skin. Put the open packets on the baking sheet and turn the oven to 420F. Cook 10-15 minutes more, just until skin is crisp and browned. Keep an eye on it.

Add any additional juices to the bowl, and let the turkey rest for 5 or 6 minutes. Slice carefully in thickish slices, and arrange on a plate. Reheat juices, pour over, and serve. This is nice with just some crusty bread, as it comes with your vegetable inside. I like to add a plain green salad with a vinegrette on the same plate-juices mingling. You can also serve this with fingerling potatoes with olive oil and rosemary, since they can cook along side the turkey, in a separate pan, of course, for about the same time. Easy as pie. (A great deal easier, in fact. Pie isn't particularly easy anyhow.)

I think the smells and savory tastes are comparable to those of a whole roast turkey. I like the juicy thighs better than the drier breast for this sort of thing. They make such neat little bundles, and take much less time to cook.

Cuisine of the Sun : 1979

Apparently there is a reprint available of Mireille Johnston's The Cuisine of the Sun, a cookbook which I consulted often, with pleasure, from the late seventies through the eighties. I have been reading it again, with renewed appreciation, and am now trying for the first time one of the recipes I didn't try back then.

When I first bought this book in the late 70s, I was looking for a recipe for a daube, which I had read about in a novel, and which sounded so good. I had been in France a few years earlier, as a student traveling, and I remembered the markets and cafes of Aix-en-Provence and Arles as revelations. I had loved the food , the formal town buildings and fountains, the mountains , wild herb smells, the white and orange cottages and the insanely blue skies.

I was delighted to read about them, and try to learn to cook some of the good things I had there. Ms. Johnston was a French woman living in the US with her American husband. Her descriptions of her childhood in Nice were so evocative of the places I'd seen. There were not yet hundreds of books by English-speaking mediterranean transplants and their oh-so-charming farmhouses. I was enchanted by her food, and the recipes worked brilliantly.

I had done alot of looking around for information on the topic of daube, and tried variations, so that the recipe I came up with, and still make, is a distillation of many sources-and therefore more or less my own. But quite a few things I learned to make from this cookbook are still with me, in nearly the original form. I still make the Beef Mironton from the remains of daube, pot roasts and boiled beef dishes on a regular basis. It is a great supper dish, and a fine way to use leftovers. My husband and my not-yet-a-vegetarian four year old loved it back then, and I still do. As Ms. Johnston suggested, the leftovers from these leftovers make a great ravioli filling, chopped up. It's a truly easy dish.

One day I'll make a daube, followed by a mironton, and post about it. But I still have all these very ready to go ripe tomatoes. I'd canned some and sauced some, and I'm eating plenty sliced plain, and in BLTs, and so on. Because I'm now jam obsessed, I wanted to make some tomato jam, and I'd been looking around at recipes. I decided on this simple one, because it sounded good, and because I trust this book and Ms. Johnston. This recipe differed from those I have been making of late, where the fruit cooks briefly, after macerating overnight with sugar. However, I saw that her recipe for preserves with green tomatoes did use that method. So this method was a conscious choice on her part. And as I said, I trust her.

This is what I needed to make Confiture des Tomates Rouge (mine are actually a bit on the Orange side, as I included both red and orange plum tomatoes, and assorted varieties of roundies):

3 lbs tomatoes
2 lbs sugar
juice and rind of small lemon
5 tsps dark rum

Peel seed and juice tomatoes. Halve them. Put tomatoes, lemon juice and lemon rind and sugar in a nonreactive pan. (I did not use my copper jam pan, due to the longer, slower cooking time. Rather, I used my favorite Analon 5 qt dutch oven). Bring to boil.Stir with a non metal spoon. Turn down and cook at a healthy simmer for about one hour until the tomatoes are transparent.

If the liquid does not look thickened at this point, boil it and cook it down until it foams and the foam dies down a bit. The liquid will look sticky. Test for gel (either 220F with thermometer, or drop a tad on a cooled saucer, and see if it blobs, rather than runs.) Add rum and stir. Ladle into 3-4 sterilized 8 oz. ball jars. Top with lids and gently screw tops on. Allow to cool and check seal.

Process in boiling water bath if you want to be safe. There are many sites explaining how long and how to process preserves, according to government standards. I follow them precisely if I doing something other than smothering fruit in sugar, acid and alcohol. I am a bit more of a daredevil with sugary fruit preserves, and permit the heat to seal the jars, european style. I do check the lids the next day, and if they boing when pressed, I keep them in the fridge and eat them up right away(not a hardship). I would certainly recommend the hot water bath processing of your preserves for safety, however.

MJ suggestd serving this for dessert, with a plain cookie, or on good bread for a teatime or afternoon treat. It is awfully pretty, and more red than it looks in the photo. If I can get some green tomatoes, and make the companion recipe for that preserve, the two together would make a nice and colorful Christmas gift, no? Curiously, MJ pointed out, in Aix, eggplant is mixed in with the red tomatoes. This does seem an unusual item to include in a sweet treat-could it perhaps be of Middle eastern origin?

Mirielle Johnston was born in 1935 and died too soon in 2000. Her father was a major figure in the French Resistance, and she spent her school years in England. I believe her American husband ran Robert Kennedy's New York Office. She is probably better known in England than here, as she hosted a well regarded BBC series. I love her books, which incidentally were designed by the graphic artist Milton Glaser, a friend. Ms. Johnston was also the english translator of "The Sorrow and the Pity", the famed 4 hour French documentary on the Resistance.

D.K. , my CSA farmer, has just replied to my email query saying that yes, I may have some green tomatoes. So I think I will try to make some of her green tomato jam as well. And perhaps some pickles? I'm trying to remember where I recently read a nice looking recipe for "fried" green tomatoes which were actually baked.

Bill's Duck 1974 Continued...Part II

The plot (and sauce) thickens. ......Today, I made duck a l'orange for my friends for a middle-of-the -week 3 person dinner party. Rather than take pictures of our food while trying to be hospitable and letting it get cold, I'm afraid I called upon a stand-in from my assortment of rubber ducks. I am sorry to confess that the "oranges" surrounding it are, in fact, some sungold tomatoes from my porch . But I guess you knew that.

I have no idea why, but I love to fuss over a roasting bird, even when it is entirely unnecessary. Julia C. seems to have favored this approach, so I felt sanctioned. I got home from work at 3 pm, preheated the oven to 450 F ,and settled in to hovering happily. I allowed 2 1/2 hours for my 5 lb, completely defrosted duck, just to be sure. I figured I could always slow it down if it cooked up too fast. I did briefly wonder if it wouldn't have been smarter to cut the bird in four quarters to roast, so I could give the leg-thigh bits longer than the quicker cooking breast sections. I decided that I wanted to see the whole bird, with orange garnish, at least this one time.

I put the remaining 1/3 of the blanched peel in the duck cavity with a bit of onion, tucked a slice of bread behind it , pulled the generous skin flap over all,and set the duck in the preheated oven on a rack in a smallish roasting pan. After 15 minutes, I turned it down to 350 F, and began to prepare the 4 oranges, which had to be peeled and sectioned.

This is something I handled much better than I did the first time, in 1974. I have watched any number of television chefs demonstrate the efficient peeling and sectioning of citrus fruit by the knife between the sections method, which leaves behind all the stringy bits in a tidy accordian. This skeleton can then be squeezed for its juice, and neatly tossed away with the peel. Perhaps the best thing a home cook can take from watching pros at work is knife skills, which are awfully hard to pick up from a book- even well illustrated. These are every bit as useful for home cooking as for elaborate chef food.

Although no one thinks you need baste a duck, J.C. believed in giving it 1/4 turns every 15 minutes, and this satisfied my need to fuss. Once duck fat began to appear in large quantities in my pan, I siphoned it off with my baster, to hoard greedilyfor later uses. When the duck was all done and and crisp brown, thigh juices running clear, I untrussed it, and set it on a platter in the oven (turned off) to keep warm, and finished the sauce.

I poured all the fat out of the roasting pan, deglazed it with a half a cup of port, and added this to my sauce, which I had been defrosting in a small pan, along with 3 tbsps of orange liquor. This got heated up and swirled together. I decorated my duck platter with the orange sections, poured a little of the hot sauce over the duck, and served the rest of the sauce in a warmed gravy boat alongside it.

No starters, everyone was hungry after work. We had our duck with some merlot (often scorned as boring, but this was very nice, I thought) which I brought back from a spring winery visit, bitter greens (without the beans) and some rosemary roasted fingerling potatoes. There was mocha gelato ( first homemade icecream with a new , and very basic machine) and my favorite little salty french chocolate cookies for dessert.

Yes, it was a lot easier than last time. and I still like it. But I am less impressed by it than I was in 1974.
I am looking forward to making some duck soup, and a salad or two, and using the fat for some evil sauteed potatoes. But I'll probably make a different sort of duck dish next time. Fruit is certainly good- maybe prunes? And I'm pleased to be mulling over more ideas for the ice cream machine.

But right now, I've got some dishes to do.

Bill's Duck 1974-Part I

I was trying to bring some order to my cookbooks, which are shelved, two deep, in one of two great big, white wooden bookcases which I bought with an unexpected and sweet little cash bequest from my Uncle Ted. Apart from the Uncle Ted Memorial Bookcases, my book situation, not only as to cookbooks, is dire. Someday I will have floor-to-ceiling bookcases in a giant diningroom/library. Until I hit the lottery, I am resigned to moving piles of books around to clear surfaces for day to day life. When I attempt to select a few to give away or sell, I invariably wind up sitting on the floor, reading some gem I forgot I had.

I was engaged in this noodling activity, when I came upon The French Chef. the cookbook which Julia Child wrote in conjunction with her first set of PBS programs. I had watched most of these on tv in my parents' bedroom. Although I eventually acquired the two volume Mastering the Art, this was the first Julia Child cookbook I owned. I bought it, with its midcentury modern design of rotating whisks, used at the college bookstore.

I used to read it, for entertainment, when I was in school, and imagine having a kitchen like hers, with all the right tools hanging neatly arranged on pegboard. (This imagined event has not yet taken place.)

So it happened that I remembered that once my husband Bill, who died in 1987, but who then was about to be twenty-six, asked if he could have duck a l'orange for his birthday dinner. I said, like a loon, "Sure, I can do that." And I did, too. But boy, was I a sweaty wreck by the time I landed it on the table. It was the most complicated thing I had made, to that point. Although I had pre- shopped for all the ingredients, I hadn't actually read through the recipe before the morning of the birthday party.

And I haven't made it since, not being one, on the whole, for elaborate french restaurant style cooking. But man, it was good. Crisp, crackling skin, and rich juicy meat, nicely cut by the tang of the sour/sweet orange sauce. So I've been looking for an occasion, a small but festive dinner, where I can make it again. I wanted to see if it's still good, or a sort of cliche, and if I would handle things better, after some experience. My brother's birthday dinner seemed a possibility, but I decided to make it for friends I and D. With three people eating, I could do one duck, while the birthday dinner would need at least two. I figured if the whole thing was not too insane, I'd consider repeating it, with two ducks, for the September birthday. I would not be making this now at all, if I did not have air conditioning to pit against the stove.

First, I had a look at the recipe, to see what I needed from the shops, and if there was anything I could do ahead. I already had the port, and some homemade beef stock in the fridge. I needed the duck, plenty of valencia oranges, and some orange liquor. My duck choice was but one, a frozen long island duck from the Giant Eagle. (I am not in an economic category which allows consideration of airfreighting my choice of special duck from New York. Indeed, the mere fact that I know this can be done causes me to question my sanity.)

It is too bad that there were no fresh ducks to be had, for taste reasons and also because the giblets and neck would be unavailable, welded together icily inside the bird, until the duck was nearly completely defrosted. I bought the duck, and put it in the freezer. Rather than invest in a whole bottle of orange liquor, I picked up an airplane drink sized minature at the liquor store.

Checking the recipe, it looked to me that the sauce, with the exception of last minute finishing with cooking juices and butter, could easily be made ahead, and would probably freeze reasonably well. I'd have preferred to do it all fresh. The problem was that the recipe for the sauce called for the wing tips and giblets from the (frozen) bird. I therefore decided to make the sauce ahead the weekend before, and put it, almost done, in the freezer, because I will be working until 2:30 pm on thursday , the day we have the duck.

The weekend was much too soon for the duck to be totally defrosted. This business with the frozen trapped giblets has led me to find fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving over the years. I wish they would give you the giblets and neck in a little sack outside a frozen bird. Duck broth has a pretty distinctive (and very nice) taste, and it would have been definitely preferable to have the duck giblets for the sauce. I decided to compromise on this aspect. I figured I have the tools to wrest the wing tips from the frozen bird, and I would use these, and a turkey wing for the broth for the sauce. I can save some duck broth for next time, when I make soup from the duck bones and frozen giblets next weekend.

So this is what I did, to make the sauce ahead:

I browned the turkey and duck wings, a chopped carrot and a half an onion, in a heavy bottomed saucepan and two tbsps. light olive oil. I then added a cup of beef stock, and water to cover, plus a bay leaf, a sprig of parsley, and two sage leaves. I brought it to a boil, turned it down and simmered it about 2 hours , until the liquid was reduced to 2 cups, and looked rich and brown. I discarded the solids, and strained the liquid.

While the broth was cooking, I used my zester to make a fine julienne of all of the orange part of the skin of 4 valencia oranges. I actually bought 8 oranges rather than four, because of doing this in advance. I felt the orange fruit, once semi-denuded, would dry out fast. So I had this denuded fruit promptly in a salad, and will use fresh oranges on Thurday for the the duck garnish. The julienned zests were blanched for 10 minutes, then drained and dried.

In a medium saucepan, I combined a quarter cup of sugar, with 3 tablespoons of sherry vinegar , brought this to a boil, and cooked it down until it looked caramelly. I turned off the gas, and whisked in the broth, half at a time. To this I added 2 tbsps of arrowroot, mixed with 2 tbsps of port. Heat back on, I added 2/3 of my orange peel , and cooked the sauce until it had thickend a bit, and was transparent. After adding salt and pepper to taste, I cooled the sauce, and put it in a freezer bag, and into the freezer. Likewise, the remaining 1/3 of the orange peel.

I felt fairly well set up,and made a note on my blackboard to start defrosting the duck on Tuesday. In the absence of any actual suspense, this story is nonetheless, to be continued............