Toast

A Spin or Two on a Seasonal Favorite

If you do not live in California or some such all-season growing area, chances are you are still waiting for your local produce to show up. One of the very earliest local goodies to appear around here is spinach. Like that salt-of-the-earth old salt , Popeye, I just loves my spinach.* And the tender baby leaves are so delicious uncooked, that a spinach salad is the first thing that comes to mind when it arrives. I have an old favorite, but I decided to try a couple of new things this year.

One is a spinach and pear salad using the rest of my duck confit. (I haven't forgotten about the duck breasts and the duck soup I promised. Consider this post a semi-related interlude.) The other is an idea I got from reading Karin Welzel's article in the Tribune Review**, about Cafe Zao, a local restaurant I have yet to visit-despite the fact that it is located only a couple of blocks from my workplace, and next door to the Public Theater. As you might guess, this has been mostly a cost issue.

After reading about the place, I've concluded that I need to save up for dinner at Cafe Zao. In the interim, though, I thought would try Chef Toni Pais' recipe for Cold Spinach Soup and Shellfish Salad, which you can find with Karin's article. I was so very not disappointed. Wow. As she points out, the soup can also be used, hot or cold, as a sauce for fish or poultry. Surprisingly, large quantities of pine nuts are involved, and the effect is brilliant. It's so intense, and fresh tasting- really amazing stuff. The seafood salad is also pretty special, and I found that it was well worth looking for the ponzu- a citrus-y vinegar.
It did take me some time to find it- the Lotus Market here is enormous- and not all the sauces have English labels. The ponzu didn't have one, but there was an ingredients list on the back, and it said "Ponzu" on top.

I made the soup according to instructions, but my seafood salad was a shrimp-only affair. Also, I did not do the fancy business with the PVC pipe rings, but put the shrimp salad in a little dish centered in the soup bowl instead. Another serving option might be an ice-cream scoop of the salad in the center of your dish, and the cold soup poured carefully around it. That's how I plate up rice with an estoufee or gumbo, and it works pretty well.

Here is the recipe for the spinach salad. I used toasted walnuts, as well as substituting the confit for the bacon. It was yummy.

I have an attraction to dark green vegetables that is so intense that I suspect it is based in some nutritional deficiency. I made a special bus trip to Whole Foods for dinosaur kale on a snowy day this winter, only to discover they were out of it. I nearly cried. Surely this is not normal? I can tell you that the produce guy looked at me with something between pity and fear when I, uh, ...expressed my dismay.

BTW, if you use the google search function in the left hand column, and search the blog for "spinach", there are few other nice things you might want to try.

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*I was surprised to discover, reading up on the original Popeye comics, that in the days before animation, our man Popeye did not have a spinach habit at all. He was just, well, cranky and violent and not-so-brilliant- in the nicest possible way, of course. He had a generous heart and was always, naturally, devoted to the lovely Ms. Oyl. I highly recommend these early cartoons, they are fascinatin', as he might put it. If he, say, had a blog. Or could read and write. Or was, you know, real. But, as always, I digress.

**I don't subscribe to, the Tribune Review, one of our two local papers. Thus, I was unaware of its really nice food section, which, fortunately for me, can be read on the internet. I met Karin Welzel when she emailed me to talk about peas, and I've been catching up on past articles ever since.

Elizabeth David: Fennel and Parmesan

I had never heard of Elizabeth David when I first opened a Penguin edition of her French Provincial Cooking , browsing in the University Bookstore. I was a junior in college, and though I had been cooking for myself and with my housemates for several months, I was pretty unsophisticated. I was already reading cookbooks as if they were novels, but there were fewer then. It was a long time ago.

French food to me meant fancy restaurant food- I had no previous idea of the range of French country food- real food, eaten by real people, daily, as well as for special occasions. I was mesmerized, and, of course, I bought the book. I read it over and over again, looked for the ingredients and tools she talked about, and tried out as many recipes as I could. She has stuck with me, all this time; more than any other writer on food, she is the voice in the back of my head.

Then, as now, I was struck by the economy of her recipe writing- straighforward and personal. Sometimes it seemed that the instructions were too simple to be true, but they worked. My favorite Elizabeth David recipes are usually the simplest. This recipe for a fennel gratin is so spare that it is practically not a recipe at all, the same is true of her method for toasting almonds, and quite a few others.

Somehow, if you do just what she says, it is more delicious than you would have expected. The sharp clean taste of the raw fennel, which I love in a fennel slaw, is mellowed and transformed. This gratin makes an excellent side dish for meat, poultry, bean, or tomato based main dishes. It is also great with fish. Is there something edible I have left out here?

This is all you do. Preheat oven to 425F. Trim off the tough stalks and root end of each bulb, and slice each in half lengthwise. Parboil until tender in well-salted water, drain, and place in a buttered oven proof dish, cut sides down. Sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese, freshly made breadcrumbs, and ground pepper, and dot with butter. Bake until top is browned nicely (15-20 minutes, usually) and serve. I put a few of the uncooked fennel fronds on top, because I think they are pretty.

All you have to remember to do is use good butter, real parm, and your own breadcrumbs, all of which actually matters.

Adapted from An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. by Elizabeth David

Mushroom Alchemy

Nothing is so delightful as coming upon one of these combinations, where a few simple ingredients meld in a delicious and unexpectedly special fashion. I felt like this when I learned about Mudjadarrah, and when I first baked an egg inside a tomato. Jane Grigson was a person with an especially fine nose for this sort of thing, and I am very attached to my shabby, dog-eared Penguin edition of her Good Things, from 1973.*

If you live in Pittsburgh, you should take note: The Giant Eagle has been offering beautiful fresh oyster mushrooms at $5.99 per pound. They are not at all heavy-so you can get masses of them quite cheaply, and they are gorgeous. (They also have nice fresh shitakes for only a dollar more per pound-but that is a more common occurence.) I have been eating the oyster mushrooms like crazy, afraid they will disappear, or go up to $15.99 per pound, like the other wild ones. I have had them sauteed on toast for breakfast, cooked with onions and mixed with rice and pinenuts to stuff cabbage, grilled with a lambchop, tucked in an omelet, and in a barley soup.

It was from Ms. Grigson that I got the idea for this simple combination that really knocks my socks off.In a chapter titled "Edible Woodland Mushrooms" (the oyster mushroom [Pleurotus ostreatus] is one such- it "grows out of trees such as ash and beech in a cluster of soft shelves"), she suggested a method for cooking mushrooms with potatoes, which while quite simple, resulted in the potatoes taking on a good bit of mushroomy flavor. The method I used is even simpler, and had a similar result. Given the usual expense involved with wild mushrooms, it is especially handy to have a method for cooking them which stretches them out.

This is what I did, and I would be very surprised if it did not work as well with a handful of morels, chanterelles, or other precious fungal booty. The Mushroom Lady must have been watching over me. Take some small potatoes-fingerlings or just little yukons or redskins, not much bigger than golfballs, and scrub, but don't peel them. Cut them in half. Toss them with olive oil, salt, pepper, several coarsely chopped cloves of garlic, and rosemary (fresh if possible), and put them in a metal pan in a preheated 475F oven. Roast them until they are starting to get brown and crusty- maybe 20-25 minutes, shaking them from time to time to prevent sticking. (But my oven is slow- so do watch it.)

Put some wild mushrooms, chopped very coarsely, or whole, if small- approximately the same amount as the potatoes (area-wise-they will, of course, be much lighter in weight) into a medium sized bowl and toss with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Take the pan out of the oven, add the mushrooms, and toss or gently stir it all up well. Put it back in and cook until the potatoes are done and the mushrooms have browned. This will probably be about 10 more minutes.

Serve, sprinkled with some chopped parsley. The potatoes will have taken on a lovely mushroomy flavor. So very good. If you had these with, say, some slow scrambled eggs with cream, or greens with a vinagrette, you would be really flying high. It is also quite nice just to eat them plain.

I've never had an actual truffle, but I suspect the effect I've read about, where they perfume other foods on contact, must be similar to what happens here. Pretty cool. I am such a fool for fungi, I do hope someday to have, just once, my very own truffle to play with. Maybe I could write a grant proposal requesting the award of a truffle for uh, experimental purposes?

*You lucky people- at last there is a reprint!

Real Fried Onion Rings

This is one American classic I thought I'd never try to do at home. At the Platonic Diner in the Sky (Home of the "Pie in the Sky" and other ideals-you know the one) these are prepared perfectly and an optional side to every suitable main dish. There, the batter is crisp, brown and light, the onions soft and not the least stringy, but not mushy either. The rings are round, distinct, and never stuck together; they are lightly, but definitely salted, after frying. These perfect rings are well drained and blotted, hot, and served almost instantly after they are done. They are properly made by a gifted fry cook, and are not the sort of thing one makes at home.

It is clearly a messy process, and a last minute pain in the butt- a side dish no-no in my book. Further, they excude wickedness. I like to eat wicked food out, rather than at home, so that there is no evidence around to inhibit the denial process.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really think any good food is actually wicked, except in the most delightful sense. There are just things that I have a harder time resisting than others, and they are more likely to lead to gluttony and regrets. So, I don't eat, say, potato chips at home, as I can't keep a partly eaten bag around. I'll eat them anywhere else though- so don't hesitate to offer, please.

The problem which has developed here, far from the Platonic Diner, is that halfway decent onion rings are getting harder to find. I, like many of my friends and associates, am more than willing to eat halfway decent onion rings. When someone brings in a little tray of them, at lunch, with take-out food, we all (especially yours truly) fall upon them like beasts. But they are less and less good, and harder and harder to find downtown. I find this disappointing-and I don't want to become bitter.

What really made me decide to try them though, was a recipe in the Barefoot Contessa at Home, a gift cookbook which I would not, myself, have bought. I have nothing against Ina Garten. Indeed, from watching her on television, I can see that she is a good cook, and that her recipes work. The thing is, she doesn't really tell me anything I don't already know, or fix things I haven't made before. Possibly it is just that we are pretty similar cooks in a lot of ways, though she obviously knows a lot about catering, and I certainly don't.

The other reason I have avoided her books is just well, strange. Several people-including people who have no idea that I ever made a pot of soup, have told me that I look a whole lot like her. It's not that I think she looks you know, unpleasant, or anything like that. I just truly don't see it myself, though-except that the hair is similar. But I guess there's something in it, coming as it does from so many independent sources. The one that really weirded me out was a person at work who , who said he came upon his wife watching Ms. G on tv, and exclaimed, "My god, [Lindy] has a cooking show!" I mean, he claims he actually thought it was me. I don't know why this is a little creepy, but it is.

I looked through the cookbook, and found the food commonsensical. The photos look good and appealing, and I'd be surprised if they weren't both well tested and well within the abilities of a reasonably adept home cook. And there was a recipe for real onion rings in there. So, I thought I'd try them, you know, just for me, and see if 1) they are reasonably do-able, and 2) if it seems possible to make them while getting a (compatable) dinner of some sort on the table.

I cut her recipe in half, as this was to be a sample, and took her advice about using a deep pot, insead of a frying pan, to avoid oily havoc. This is the test batch I made of Ina Garten's cornmeal-fried onions. You need:

a large spanish onion
buttermilk- 1 cup
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
all purpose flour 3/4 cup
1/8 cup of medium yellow cornmeal
tsp hot hungarian paprika (you can leave this out if you like- my addition-I like some paprika in my cornmeal coating)
2-3 cups vegetable oil

Peel the onion and slice it 1/2" thick, and separate it carefully into rings. Put the butter milk in a smallish bowl, add salt and pepper, and soak the onion rings in the mix for awhile- preferably an hour or two. In another smallish bowl, mix the flour and cornmeal, and add some salt and pepper, and the paprika if you use it . When you are ready to go-preheat the oven to 200F. (Right away- you're not finishing something else in any 200F oven, so the rest of the dinner had better be top of the stove stuff.) Line a baking sheet with paper towels.

Now, stick a candy thermometer in a dutch oven or similar deep sturdy pot, add the oil and heat to 350F. Have some tongs and the baking sheet at hand, as well as the 2 bowls and a dish of coarse salt. Take about 1/3 of the onion rings out of the buttermilk, dredge in the flour (you can do this with one of your clean hands-keep the other, preferably the dominant hand, dry for tong wrangling), and drop gently in the oil. Fry for about 2 minutes, turning once with the tongs. Extract with tongs, and lay out on the paper towel cover pan. Sprinkle with salt.Check the temperature, adjust the heat accordingly, and do the rest in 2 batches.These guys will stay warm and crisp for 30 minutes while you frantically get the rest of dinner ready.

They are ridiculously good- crisp, tasty and breeze-light, for heaven's sake. You must handle them carefully once they are fried, for they will shatter into shards if you don't. Wow. I've got to figure out a meal that I can make with them, so I can share them, and be adored. So what do you think? Maybe a pan-grilled buffalo burger (my current favorite of all hamburgers) on a homemade bun, and some slaw? Not very original, but then onion rings kind of go with red meat to me, from diner associations, I suppose. I think the slaw may be mandatory. Or maybe a big poofy omelet and sauteed mushrooms? They're awfully pretty, IMO, and not such an alarming project after all.. Any ideas for the rest of the Dinner with Onion Rings? If someone served me some real onion rings with my dinner, I'd be pretty grateful. I'm just saying.

P.S. Yes, of course I ate them. Too many. I'll make them only for company in the future. Not as if this debacle was unpredictable. And BTW, hearburn did not ensue.

Desert Island Potato Salad

I sometimes play a mental list sort of a game concerning "desert island" ingredients. I didn't make this up for blogging purposes-I've fooled around with it for years. This is how it works: You can pick 10 foods to have in reasonable supply, and must survive on them, alone and in combination. Acceptable cooking facilities are presumed, but nothing else. You can't have salt, for example, unless you pick it. And the ingredients must not be complex dishes. You may not choose chicken cacciatore, for example, and then pick out the mushrooms to prepare something else. That would be cheating. You can however, have bacon-and I always do- even though it has been prepared with salt and other stuff. Duck confit, chorizo sausage, harissa-well, those would be borderline, but probably okay-if you see what I mean. Demi-glace, on the other hand, would seem somehow inappropriate. Oh, and there's plenty of fresh water.

At this very moment my ever mutating list is as follows:
1. lemons
2 eggs
3. thick sliced, peppered bacon
4. unbleached all purpose flour
5.grapes
6. turkeys (preferably nicely prepared -I don't want to have to kill or gut anything. If that were part of the rules, I'd have to stick with fish and shellfish, animal kingdom-wise.)
7.spinach, kale, chard or mustard greens
8.unhomogenized whole milk
9.leeks
10. potatoes

I think I could go a long time without boring myself, though I deeply regret the absence of fishes and shellfishes,beans, apples,mushrooms, olive oil, garlic, herbs, sugar, peppers and spices. Probably should have picked olive oil instead of the bacon-healthier and all that, but this cook loves her bacon and needs something salty from time to time. I think it would take me a long while to get bored with these choices. And there would be some interesting projects-apart from the obvious wine/vinegar thing. I could try churning butter, capturing wild yeasts for bread, and raisin making. Anyway, I'd have plenty to read, what with my 5 books. Never mind.

Want to play? This is a very different list, in my mind, from a favorite foods list, as you must consider how the ingredients work together. I'm wondering if some stone ground cornmeal would be a better choice than the potatoes? But tonight, my islanders are having this super basic potato salad. I love all manner of fancy potato salads-there are endless excellent combinations, warm and cold. But I retain a fondness for the simplest sort, too.

This one was made from still warm potatoes and julienned leek, which were boiled in some turkey stock, and then drained, plus a few chopped hardboiled eggs. I cooked up a bit of bacon, and poured a little of the hot bacon fat over the potatoes, squeezed on some lemon juice, and added a handful of the bacon, crumbled up. Not half bad. The lemonyness is very nice with the potatoes. I can't say I've ever used lemon as the main acid component of a potato salad before. It is hard to ruin potato salad. Tomorrow: eggs florentine? Once I figure out the yeast/bread thing, I could stuff a turkey in time for Thanksgiving. I'd be a little worried about the prospect of a sugarless grape pie, though. Luckily, this is all (mostly) imaginary.

Somehow, when I play this game, I am left with a renewed appreciation for the variety of food available to me, as well as the conviction that I don't need to be always getting wound up about exciting new ingredients to have a tremendous variety of good things to eat and drink. The potato salad, which I really like, is quite different from any of my numerous previous ones. Still, no need to give that new ingredients thing up altogether; it's too much fun.

illustration is a 19th century Danish embroidery design, by Willi Koch. Seen in a paper given by Anna Wenner, in 1991.

Ratatouille Chinois: Summer Goodies

This is not some fusion food, really -it's a southern Chinese style eggplant recipe, best served, like its relative, at room temperature. It bears a strong component and functional resemblance to ratatouille. I like it for supper- with rice or rice noodles and some (out of place) flatbreads, toasted.

It also makes a good warm weather side dish along with meals where ratatouille might just not be the right thing, exactly. Or, it could be that you are just looking for another way to use the eggplants, red peppers and cilantro which are turning up in such abundance at the moment. I am not sure where I got this recipe. It was under another name- possibly at epicurious.com, except that I can't locate it there now, to link. I put lots of cilantro over it, which was not in the original. Parsley or chopped chives would be fine for the anti-cilantro contingent. It does need the little spike of a fresh herb, I think, and anyway-it looks nicer.

It's pretty rare to find a chinese-style dish which can be made ahead, so it is a nice thing to make to accompany a stir fry-for-company, which is all last minute smoke and rushing. Or, if you are lazy like me, and just want to visit with your company, and put stuff on the table, you can serve it with lamb red cooked with water chestnuts and dried bean curd sticks, as I did, and some rice-no trouble.

Whoa-found it after all, here it is. I use a bit more sesame oil than they say, and sprinkle some over the top. I like a bit of the purple skin left on, but find that all the skin makes it tough to get the right texture- so I partially peel my eggplant, before cubing it. I also take the finished product out of the fridge early, and bring it to room temperature-it's better that way than chilly-cold, for sure.

The newsletter from my CSA farmer says that now's the time to order extra tomatoes- so I've got my canning order in. He also says the winter squashes are coming along very well, this year. I love those guys. Lots of plums around, I've been putting up some more tkemali, making plum jam, and more plum jam and doing big jars of beet eggs with little beets the same size as the smallish eggs. Even in the midst of wallowing in the gorgeous tomatoes and corn, I'm ready for fall. My favorite season. Bring it on.

Pizza on the Side

Like everyone else in the universe, I love pizza. We don't all mean the same thing when we say that, of course. I don't mean the same thing every time myself. In my youth, I liked a Sicilian style pizza with a hearty crust; over time I grew to prefer a thin, crisp crust. I have always been wary of over-weighty cheeses, oiliness and kitchen-sink toppings, and fond of the classic smear of spicy tomato sauce with a sprinkling of cheese and fresh basil.

This is not to say that I am a strict classicist, however. Quite a few years ago, I had a pizza that knocked my socks off, in a small restaurant in Montreal, where I was vacationing with my then middle school aged daughter. It was shortly after my husband had died, after a long illness, and we were having a much needed mutual break from work, school,and life in general. Planning the little trip, I thought it would be fun for the kiddo to try out her schoolgirl French.

I had, of course, totally failed to consider the fact that anything which could possibly attract attention was anathema to a 12 year old. It was fun anyway. Everything did not go smoothly to begin with- our trip was nearly curtailed by an airline rule-not revealed until we were at the airport- that I needed the "other parent's written and notarized permission" to take a minor out of the US. My assurance that the other parent was permanently unavailable did not cut it. I did something very sneaky in the way of well, forgery, and got us on the plane- and after that everything-especially eating and shopping, went swimmingly.

The Montreal restaurant was our first exposure to a wood-fired oven, and this was no doubt a major factor in my euphoria. A specialty of the house was an individual pizza with a choice of interesting toppings. This was before the day of the ubiquitious fast food personal pan pizza. I had a hot, crisp smoky little number, all for me, topped with a pale, garlicky sauce and a scattering of chopped escargot. Sound a little gimicky or cute? I liked it so much that my overt happiness was deeply embarassing to my usually tolerant child. She liked hers, too.

I haven't been making pizza at home for all that long- maybe 10 years, max. The first successful venture into home pizza was the Sullivan Street Bakery's Rosemary Potato Pizza from Maggie Glezar's Artisan Baking Across America. This is a delicious one, with a magical morphing dough. I am also fond of the Peter Reihart via Heidi dough, which has the handy feature of residing happily divided up and ready to stretch in the refrigerator for a few days. (It must rest at least 24 hours there, so if you are going to have a whim, you will need to be prescient.)

The one you see here (I prefer to think of the free form style as "rustic", though "messy" would not be inaccurate) is an onion pizza I made to have with the corn and wild mushroom chowder the other night. Normally, the Reinhart dough cooks at a higher temperature, more speedily, but I slowed this one down in honor of the onions and bacon, which don't do too well at incendiary temperatures.

I like the idea of making pizzas to have with a particular soup or salad, and picking toppings that mesh nicely, or making them up, accordingly. It is very pleasant to nibble away at them simultaneously, which makes the pizza into a bit of a side, or at least, co-equal dish.You can have as little or as much as you like of either, which makes a good meal for people who are not equally hungry. Depending on how much you nibble, you have either a hearty meal or a light lunch or supper.

I am not giving exact amounts here, as I didn't measure anything, and the method I used is adaptable to all sizes. I did use about 1/9th of the entire Reinhart recipe for this individual but non-puny size, a smallish onion, and one slice of bacon. You can make it without the onion marmelade, and it will still be good.

Individual Onion Pizza, on the side

Reinhart recipe pizza dough, refrigerated for at least 24 hours
thinly sliced onion in half moons
cream
salt and pepper
fresh sage (optional)
bacon in thin slices
lobstersquad's incredibly wonderful multi-purpose onion jam

Take dough out of fridge two hours before cooking. Preheat oven to 450F. When ready to bake, you will stretch the dough out thinly on a scattering of cornmeal or semolina flour. If you have a baking stone and peel you can use them. If not you can do this on the back of a turned-over cookie sheet, and bake it on the sheet, too. I do love the baking stone effect, and keep mine in the oven always, so there is less chance of breaking it, the one I have is 7 years old, and deeply darkened.

Top pizza with sliced onions, drizzle with cream-lightly. Scatter bacon and sage, and blop on some onion jam. Slide into oven and bake 25 minutes or so, until it looks like the picture, only maybe tidier.

Two Things with Radishes

This time of year in the mid-Atlantic states, our gardens, farmers' markets and CSA Farmboxes are not yet full of variety. We are all seeing mostly lettuce, spinach, and a lot of red radishes. There is nothing wrong with a trimmed bunch of crisp radishes, nibbled with some good buttered bread and salt. Nonetheless, I decided to rummage for some other ideas, and found two, browsing cookbooks at the downtown library at lunchtime.

The first is a Radish Cream Soup With Lavender, from Cooking in the Shaker Spirit, by James Haller. This book is not about historical recreations of documented Shaker dishes. Haller was the chef for the restaurant at New Hampshire's Canterbury Shaker Village. He created these recipes there, with the idea of preparing the sort of simple, but inventive dishes, based on fresh food and herbs, for which the Shaker's were known. This is the only recipe I've made from the book, and like some of the others, it seemed decidedly odd.

Actually, I think it is delicious. Whether this is due primarily to the lavish quantites of cream and butter, I am not sure. I can definitely taste the radishes though, as well as the lavender, and I like both flavors here. This soup is meant to be served hot, but would likely also be good cold. I'd make a thinner version to serve cold- with less roux, as it seemes thicker when chilled. I liked it hot, though, with seeded crackers.

The pale pink color makes it seem a bit doll's tea-party-ish, leading me to serve it in the decorated tea cups. These are, though, kind of frilly, and not awfully in tune with the Shaker spirit. A simple, sturdy, nicely designed pottery bowl would be more suitable. I suppose. The soup is not at all wimpy tasting, and it is very rich. It can be served in quite small portions. When I cooked the radishes to begin with, I tasted them, and I can report that sliced red radishes stewed in plenty of butter are very good indeed. Some fresh dill on them would make a nice veg side dish.

The lavender I used was from a friends (unsprayed, untreated) garden. If you would like to try this soup (I hope someone will, and tell me if you think I'm crazy ) this is what you need:

sliced red radishes 2 cups
unsalted butter 1 stick (1/2 cup)
flour (1/2 cup)
white wine 1 cup
cream 2 cups (I used part creme fraiche, because I had some)
milk 2 cups
lavender a few sprigs

Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add radishes and cook slowly for 5-7 minutes. Whisk in flour, and stir well, making a roux. Stir in wine and cream and milk to combine. Blend with immersion blender (easiest) or other method, until smooth. Add lavender and simmer 30 minutes. I added salt and white pepper-it didn't need much of either.

The second dish is even simpler to fix. From the Second Moro Cookbook, by Sam and Sam Clark, it is a Radish Salad with Orange Blossom Water, "refreshing and exotic." You need:

sliced trimmed radishes
finely grated orange rind of 1 orange
orange blossom water 1 tbsp
chopped flat leaf parsley
chopped fresh mint
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and black pepper

Toss together and serve. This is very nice with flatbreads and/or grilled meat or chicken. It is sort of halfway between a relish and a salad.

Sadly, I only got to eat one bowl of the soup. The rest perished due to the weekend demise of my fridge (really my landlord's fridge, but my food) , which apparently stopped working sometime on Friday night, not to be discovered until my return home Saturday afternoon. All sorts of ruined goodies and groceries. And I had just made stock! Aaargh.

Addendum: I have just realized that both of these radish things fit within the
Perfumed Garden "Spice is Right" event at Tigers and Strawberries. I'm late, but what's new?

Side of Slaw

The baker/writer/teacher and bread maven, Peter Reinhart, once ran a small restaurant and wrote a cookbook with the recipes he served there. This cookbook was called Sacramental Magic in a Small Town Cafe,, and it contained the perfect coleslaw recipe. There is nothing really unusual about this slaw, which is quite traditional, and has no secret ingredient of any kind. It is a classic American coleslaw of the mayo type, but the proportions are perfect and fail safe.

My daughter had a friend whose father consistently made the most satisfying coleslaw, and he told me that it came from this little book. Before I had these ratios to refer to, I made a similar kind of coleslaw. I didn't have a rule of thumb -I went by eye and nibble, and added or subtracted ingredients at whim. This earlier coleslaw of mine was never horrible, but sometimes it was much nicer than other times. Now my standard coleslaw is "just right" all the time, and never the source of disharmony in a meal. There are many other perfectly good slaws-including the classic vinagrette type. I like a lot of them, as well as numerous other cooked and raw cabbage dishes. And I love fennel slaw. But if you want the classic diner-side coleslaw, this is the recipe for you.

There are some foods which absolutely beg for this sort of slaw-on-the-side, in my view. These include homemade baked beans, fried fish and chips, fried or spicy steamed shrimp, pulled pork, fried chicken, and main dish chowders. It is great with other diner-esque dishes, hamburgers, meatloaf, liver and onions, grilled cheese, mac and cheese- the lot. Its cool creaminess and accompaying crunch perfectly set off that which is hot, soft ,chewy,fatty and/or gooey. It is insanely wonderful with barbequed ribs, and very nice indeed with a pastrami sandwich on rye. I like it heaped on a split and fluffed baked potato in its jacket, for any easy, cheap supper.

Personally, I prefer to make my slaw with cabbage I have shredded finely with a knife. I have had it, however, with grated cabbage, and it is good that way too.Once I made it with cabbage cut into 1/2" squares, and it was nice and looked somehow fancier.

To make P.R.'s perfect slaw, you need:

1 large cabbage, shredded or as you like
finely diced onion 1/2 cup
mayo (Hellman's, not homemade, for this recipe) 1 1/2 cups
cider vinegar 1/4 cup
granulated sugar 1/2 cup
freshly ground black pepper 1 tsp
salt to taste

Mix everything together, and let it sit from 2 hours to overnight, chilling. Taste for salt and pepper before serving. Keeps 2 days in fridge. Then it goes watery, and isn't as nice. This is the fifth recipe ever added to Volume One of my little notebook of recipes to keep. I've been making it a long time, and it has never failed me.

Note: A couple of new food blogs to check out: Try Little Bouffe. If you thought your kitchen was inadequate, see what she does with no real kitchen at all. And have a look at June's brand new Bread,Water, Salt, Oil.., for some good food writing with a real sense of place.

Noodge: If you are thinking about submitting a post to the Something Out of Nothing event, but have not yet done so, please send me the permalink by email today. I'll be starting to work on a roundup tomorrow.