Feeling Saucy: It’s Spring

In the past few months, I’ve read some good books about food, so good their authors have inspired me to get off my you know what and get back to this blog. Here are the books, from the most recently- read backwards:

-This Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg, creator of an early, as in 2004, food blog called Orangette. I had read Molly’s columns in Bon Appetit for awhile, saw her book in the Colby College Library and had fun reading it while working out on the treadmill. I’m not sure whether reading about food while working out negates the calories expended, but I’ll vote that it doesn’t.

Of the many recipes I want to make, I did try the French-Style Yogurt Cake with Lemon (p. 204). I love it when I have all the ingredients on hand for a recipe, and for this you’ll need flour, baking powder, salt, eggs, sugar, butter, oil, lemon and yogurt. Icing: powdered sugar and lemon juice. Light and delicious, it was easy to put together, another plus for me when baking.

-Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows, by Kathleen Collins. The author’s specialty is the media and she’s a librarian at John Jay College in New York City. The book tracks the trajectory of TV cooking shows from 1945 through 2009, the publication date. It’s a fascinating history of what Americans watched, who sponsored them, the trends in foods and cooking methods. No recipes, but a fun and authoritative read, endnotes and all;

-Pizza: A Global History, by Carol Helstosky, Assoc. Professor of History at the University of Denver. Part of a series of books which each deals with a single subject, this book is a nicely illustrated volume which tracks the history of pizza from its origin in Naples in the early 1800′s to present day. There are recipes in the back, as well as endnotes and bibliography. This is a great gift book.

-Tender at the Bone and its sequel Comfort Me with Apples, by Ruth Reichl, once-editor of defunct Gourmet Magazine and restaurant critic at the New York Times and L.A. Times. These are fun reads with recipes at the end of each chapter. Reichl grew up during the decades I was a young cook and although her background trained her in much more classic French cooking than I had, her involvement with many of the food personalities of those times is great history and background. She lived and worked in Berkeley when Alice Waters began Chez Panisse and has stories of dumptster picking while living as part of a group of young activists there. Lots of food celebs to read about here and some recipes to try.

I don’t know why I’m fascinated with all this food history, but I am. I grew up in a household where parents worked, and I was responsible for making dinner. I often shared that task with siblings, but after I really got the cooking bug, I got a lot of joy from grocery shopping, planning meals and making them. I baked, although mostly from mixes, but did venture out on my own with from-scratch cookies, breads and meals like ratatouille. I read Hints from Heloise at a very young age, read Confidential Chat, the Wednesday recipe and hint-sharing section of the Boston Globe, read cookbooks and magazines for their recipes. And best of all, I watched the Merv Griffin show. Merv came on before The Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr, and he made a big impression on me. So the bug bit early and has never left. Reading all the memoirs now brings it all back, Julia, Franco and Margaret Romangoli, Graham Kerr….the new food writers keep the cycle going. Now to finish The United States of Arugula….

Once More to the Lake

I can’t believe it has been over four months since I blogged. I had a wonderful summer that passed too quickly … got married in June, traveled by car (!) to see friends and family from Maine to Long Island to Virginia, North and South Carolina. There are lots of food stories to tell and over the next weeks, I’ll do that here.

My blog post today is the title of a famous essay by E.B. White, editor of The New Yorker for many years and Maine resident in the summer. It’s  about the end of the summer season, when Fall looms, foreshadowing winter. And it’s also about the end of the summer of our lives, when it isn’t merely foliage and snow we face, but our mortality. It’s a short essay,  beautifully crafted and evocative of those languid, liquid summer days full of memories.

White is pleasantly surprised that not much has changed in the decades since he has visited the lakefront camp where he spent every August of his childhood. He brings his own son there, knowing there will have been changes, but tossing off the ones he notices with the refrain, “There has been no passage of time.”

Time is tricky like that.

Rumi, on the other hand, says, “Time passes. Time passes, wearing out all clocks.” There is part of E.B. White, the denial, and Rumi, acceptance, that time is at once, stopping and fleeing.

I’m not sure I’ll post a recipe or photo to this post…just my being here is enough. Time is indeed flying by for me. My kids are growing up. My oldest child got married in February, my youngest child is on a 10-country sea voyage and has been away for 6 months and my middle child is a senior in college and will be graduating in the spring. All of them make me proud and teary-eyed in their beauty and make me astonished at my own capacity for love. I cook for them, all the time, even when they are not here.

If “there is no passage of time,” it’s my denial that my life is changing drastically in my empty nest. If “time passes, wearing out all clocks,” it is an urgency to do what I love and that is cook til I drop. So to quote another writer, Kurt Vonnegut, “And so it goes….”

Well, I can’t resist telling you some of the great food we had since I last posted: Brandad at our wedding: salt cod mixed with mashed potatoes on crostini; Fried Green Tomatoes at Poogan’s Porch, Charleston, South Cackalacky; Lobster at Our House with Meg before she left on her Semester at Sea; Dinner at Samos, Mt. Pleasant, S.C…..can’t remember what we ate, (horrors!), except my husband got his beloved grilled octopus. We drank copious amounts of good house wine of the night and had a blast eating Greek small plates. Survival road food was gotten at Whole Foods in Richmond, Chapel Hill (which offered breakfast) and Mt. Pleasant. Low-fat Greek yogurt, cut up fresh fruit (blackberries, blueberries and raspberries was my favorite, but the pineapple was also deeelicious), hummus, ready-made sandwiches on ciabatta….we ate healthily during the day on the road and had fun at night. In Gettysburg, PA, we couldn’t find a WF, but had great luck at a big grocery store. Same type of food. More later! Tonight I made fried tiny pizzas and got 10 from a single pizza dough.

Grilled Pizza

May 23, 2010….in Maine that could mean rain, sleet, maybe even snow. But this year we have had a genuine Spring, albeit bad with the good, as all marriages have. If you live here, you have a serious relationship with weather…no speed dating, no dabbling, no non-commitment.

Today was a spectacular day….so warm I didn’t wear a jacket or sweater when I took a drive out to Belgrade Lake just to see the water. Stopped for coffee at Day’s store in Belgrade center, sat at one of the picnic tables out back and soaked up some sun…just a bit, enough to make me feel like I had warm blood running through my veins.

I had “grill-itis,” meaning I wanted to cook dinner outside. At first the wild-caught Alaskan halibut at Shaws supermarket beckoned, then I remembered I’d thawed out a pizza dough the night before. We decided to try grilling small pizzas, and I encourage you to do the same.

Dough, Sauce and Cheese or Toppings: go with what you usually do.

Technique: We had two sources. One said pile the charcoal on one side of the grill and cook the pizzas on the other side. Noted. Another recommended oiling the grill and gave the cooking time: 5 minutes per side, cooking one side first, flipping it over, spreading the topping & cheese, then finishing for 5 minutes with the cover on the grill. Perfect!

Any sauce you like will do.

Pizza on the grill, just right for summer eating

Garlic Soup (Aigo Bouido) Feeds the Soul

Julie and Julia was my favorite film of 2009. I saw it twice and cried both times when Julia Child’s husband Paul toasted her at their long-ago Valentine’s Day dinner party in Paris. Such love between a couple and such love for good food and cooking it permeates every moment of the movie, and I highly recommend it.

I’ve presented a twist to one of Julia’s recipes in my Red Devon Bolognese post, and I just tried a soup from Mastering the Art of French Cooking that is perfect for a chilly spring day in Maine.

If you love garlic, and you’d better, you’ll adore this soup. It’s made with sixteen cloves of this magical ingredient plus sage, thyme and cheese-covered croutons. Julia describes it in “My Life in France,” the autobiography on which the film is partially based: “…the garlic flavor wasn’t harsh: it was indescribably exquisite and aromatic. That evening we all feasted on it with lip-smacking gusto. Aigo Bouido was said to be good for the liver, circulation, physical tone, and even one’s spiritual health.”

After teasing us with beautiful days of sun and temperatures in the seventies and even eighties, spring will inevitably deliver rainy weather in the forties, like today. This soup is relatively easy to make, will take the chill right out of your bones and put a grin on your happy lips.

Julia Child’s Aigo Bouido

16 cloves of peeled garlic (I buy it already peeled in the produce section);

2 quarts water; 2 tsp salt; pinch of pepper; 2 cloves; 1/4 tsp.sage; 1/4 tsp.thyme; 1/2 bay leaf; 4 sprigs parsley; 3 T. olive oil; 3qt saucepan.

Place all ingredients in the saucepan and cook 30 minutes at a slow boil.

Next: Place 3 egg yolks in the top pan of a double boiler, or in a metal bowl perched on top of a pan of simmering water; Beat in 3 T olive oil slowly until mixture thickens.

Next: Julia says to strain garlic mixture through a strainer. I don’t have one, so I liquified the garlic soup in my blender, then slowly added the egg yolk/olive oil mixture. It separated a bit, so I but it all in the blender for another go-around. Julia is the biggest proponent of fixing a recipe before giving up on it, so I figured this short cut was okay.

Ahead of time: Cheese croutons: Slice a good quality bread, such as baguette, pain au levain or other leftover bread with grated cheese and drops of olive oil and run under broiler til cheese is melted and bread is browned.

Serve soup with croutons on the side, or floated on top and enjoy.

Takes the chill out of a rainy Spring day

Pizza and Vino

When I learned how to make my own pizza at home a few years ago, I was liberated from being slave to pizza stores that never quite met my expectations. As a single mom raising teenagers from 1994 until June of this year when my “baby” turns 20, I have spent hundreds of dollars (at least I HOPE it’s “only” hundreds and not thousands) on delivery pizza. Even in the years when I lived beyond the delivery area, which is not hard to do in Maine, I stopped on my way home from work to pick up boxed pizza with too-sweet sauce and too much cheese costing too much money.

I tried to make my own when the kids were small, making it a Friday night ritual the kids recall fondly. But even then, I used small, round cake pans that resulted in a crust that never got quite brown or crisp enough. I abandoned the project when I went back to work. Never could I find the type of pizza I remembered standing in line for at Pizzeria Regina in Boston’s North End. I still haven’t gotten my pies quite like the oily, supple-crusted Regina’s, but I also don’t have a wood-fired oven. Yet mine is fresh, healthy, preservative-free with a homemade sauce that contains not a grain of sugar and a crust that is browned on the bottom, not spongy or wet.

The crust: we try a variety, the supermarket brand dough or the one made by Portland Pie Company and most recently that made by Rosemont Market. Let it warm to room temperature, and stretch it to fit a standard pizza pan. I have a black steel pan and I encourage you to find one, however long it takes. But you can also use a heavy aluminum pan. The thin aluminum pans found in the supermarket are too thin.

Spray a coating of Pam or a “schmear” of olive oil on the pan, then dust lightly with corn meal. This makes it a Brooklyn style pizza and keeps the dough from sticking.

Oven temp: the highest your oven will go. Ours hits 550 degrees. Preheat the oven for at least 10 minutes before you put in the pizza.

Sauce: A can of Cento or Pastene San Marzano Style, or if you’re feeling flush, actual San Marzano tomatoes, drained of liquid and blended. Simmer for about 20 minutes with olive oil and chopped garlic.

Cheese: We are still looking for a good blend of pizza cheese, but like to grate Sargento or Polly-O mozzarella and some good Parmesean if we have it. You can get creative here, as people like to do.

Toppings: We keep it simple, sometimes sprinkling some fresh oregano on top when it comes out of the oven. Or roasted red peppers, mushrooms and sometimes cooked Italian sausage.

Cooking time: 10 minutes, rotating pan halfway through. This is the crucial part. You can make do with the crusts, sauce and toppings, but you have to have the hot oven and monitor the pie’s progress, meaning STAND RIGHT THERE AND DON’T GET DISTRACTED. (More a note to myself than to you.)

Plating it Up in Maine, Kate

Red Devon Ragu aka Bolognese Sauce

When my fiance first arrived in Waterville, Maine in the 1960′s to teach at Colby College, he couldn’t find fresh garlic or parsley at the then non-chain grocery stores that used to thrive in rural places. There was no Whole Foods, Sam’s Club or farmer’s market. I went to Colby in the dark-ages of the 1970′s, but hadn’t lived here since my college days. I moved back with him last year. The  most difficult part for me was giving up the ocean view in Harpswell, but the second most difficult part was being an hour further north, which put us 90 minutes from a bustling food scene in Portland.

After a year of mewling and crying, I realized recently, “I’m in Waterville, I’m not in exile.”  Although a Buddhist, I am not the Dalai Lama, forced out of Tibet and living the exiled life in India. No, I have a vehicle and a driver’s license and a cell phone and I can actually drive back to the Midcoast to see friends, get that haircut and shop for  all the ingredients and tools a good cook needs and just can’t get in Central Maine. As this blog progresses, I hope I’ll find closer sources, because although I want to get “out of Dodge” as much as I can, I don’t like paying Halliburton any more than I have to for gas.

One of the great features on my Blackberry is email and I love reading the missives from Joe, one of the owners of Rosemont Market and Bakery. The Yarmouth Rosemont is closest to us, and when I received the email several weeks ago about their acquiring a Vermont farmer’s Red Devon products, I called immediately to reserve some ground beef and a couple of steaks, just to try it out.

The first thing I made were burgers on the grill, which I’ll write about in another post to follow. Yesterday, I decided to make a classic Italian Bolognese sauce, which Marcella Hazen notes is also referred to as “ragu.” Everything about Italian cooking I’ve learned over the years depends on which part of Italy you are talking about or come from or have visited. I have yet to get there, but armed with a couple of good cookbooks and magazines like Food and Wine and Bon Appetit, I’ve been able to make great, classic recipes my kids, my greatest fans, love.

Marcella’s Classic Italian Cook Book, which I received in 1981 as a wedding gift,  was then in its eleventh printing and my copy is so worn it’s embarrassing to have out on the counter. But I take a secret pride in its worn, stained pages, because they are like medals earned in the self-taught-cooking Olympics.

This is a great first stab at a sauce that can vary in ingredients as the number of cooks who make it, just like any good home cooking. With grass-fed, lovingly raised Red Devon beef, it was superb. Plus, I cooked it the recommended 3.5 hours, putting my big red kettle in the oven for 3 of those so we could go….what else….food shopping.

Marcella Hazen’s Ragu: Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style

2 T. chopped yellow onion

3 T. olive oil

3 T. butter

2 T. chopped celery

2T. chopped carrot

3/4 lbs ground beef

salt

1 c. dry white wine

1/2 c. milk

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

2 c. canned Italian tomatoes, chopped

I’m going to paraphrase the directions, which go on for a page in the book. If any of this looks difficult, consult the book. I’m not sure whether the recipe is available online. For future reference, I’ll check that out for the recipes I post.

Using a deep, cast iron or stainless steel pot, saute all the onion, celery and carrot in all of the butter and olive oil, about 2 to 5 minutes or the onions are translucent;

Add the ground beef and 1 tsp. salt, cooking only until the meat has lost its raw color;

Add the wine and cook at medium high heat until the wine evaporates;

Turn heat down to medium and add milk and nutmeg (nutmeg is optional) and cook until evaporated;

Add tomatoes, turn heat down to a slow simmer and cook 3.5 to 4 hours. I put the Big Red Kettle daughter Sam got  me for Christmas in the oven at 200 degrees for 3.5 hours and that frees me to go out if I need to. I also cook many soups and braises this way, if they require a long cooking time.

You can tweak this recipe, but I recommend the first time through, you follow her recipes exactly as you can. Then you have a “control” you can deviate from later. Last night, I didn’t have celery. No  problem. I didn’t add the nutmeg, preferring to put in a bay leaf and some dried savory instead. It requires very little embellishment. It’s so delicious as Marcella dictates making it, plating it up was sheer pleasure.

It makes enough for at least 4 people, so even at over $7.00 for the pound of the stellar Red Devon beef, we’ll get at least 3 meals out of it, as it freezes beautifully!

Kate's Red Devon Bolognese over Pennoni

T

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