Weekend Update, June 23, 2014

"Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow"

lots and lots of people

There are some adages that are older than dirt. But those are the adages about what came before dirt, and no one remembers them because no one was there. Then there are adages like the one above- slightly younger than dirt, which is to say to say old as humanity.It's likely that even before there were words to express pleasure, a successful mastodon hunt was more fun when you hunted as a team. 
It's a brain boggler. Take any pleasure, any hobby...take for instance a hobby like one of mine:

trying to sew stuff.

Chances are that you have that pleasure because someone shared a pleasure with you which they had received from someone else, which they in turn had received from someone else...one joy to another, on and on,back and back

Nope, even further back....

back and back until the first designer discovered that when you stitched one thing to another thing, it made a whole different thing,

and that was a pretty good thing.

Downside: Cast out of Paradise.
Upside: a really cool botanical bikini

Of course one could suggest that if the joys of our lives grow greater when shared, and if we owe most of the pleasures of our lives to those who first shared them with us, then the icky bits in our lives must be someone one else's fault. 

Well, maybe and maybe not.  

The thing is, there's a human phenomenon of blaming and passing the buck that is about five hours younger that the phenomenon of shared human pleasure,but we're not going to talk about that tonight.

unless by "passing the buck" you mean that there's
venison for dinner, in which case, please do pass the buck,
and the gravy too.

Tonight we're going to talk about the great things that happen when shared passions team up and land on a plate. Like this:

The classic team of fish and chips gets a grilling

Ok, so maybe it wasn't a legendary battered-and-fried fish and chips. But I did learn (finally) how to grill potatoes without burning them: the America's Test Kitchen Technique of soaking the potato pieces in hot water. Douse the taters in hot water, let them sit awhile, dry them off, toss them in olive oil and salt and throw em on the grill. Viola! the insides are cooked before the outsides are charcoal.

that technique worked equally well when it was tried on another veggie that burns before it cooks- 

that's grilled broccoli next to chicken and waffles,
The mustard sauce on the chicken was even better on the broccoli.

You'd think that the most exciting teams of the week were either those on the plate or those playing in Brazil. Not so. The most exciting teams of the week by far were two that I met this afternoon at Farmer's Market in Dallas: 

the brilliant mother-daughter team that's
building The Brownie Cottage

who are responsible for the best gluten-free treat
I have ever put in my mouth. That's it on the left.  Honestly. Wow.

These two set my mind spinning on the wonderful things that can happen when a joy is transmitted from one generation to the next, how much more fun pleasures and challenges are when they're shared with someone who love you, and how fantastic cooking is when it's played as a team sport. So much fun! 

and then I met this guy: 

the hard working man behind the Palmieri Cafe

who is responsible for some of the best not gluten-free
treats I ever put in my mouth.
Yes, I pretty much ate my way through Farmer's Market.

You may think from that picture that the man behind the Palmieri is all on his own. But that's not true. Because the man behind the man behind the Palmieri is an Italian pastry chef with decades of devotion to the art of beautiful food. And behind the man behind the man behind the Palmieri is an entire Italian village, a village where a young man learned that when every player on the team, when every dancer in a festival, when every instrument in a band, when every ingredient in a recipe comes together just right, what you have is a moment of joy.

And that is, of course, what I wish for your week.
Whether it's a perfect pastry,
or a perfect paragraph,
or a perfect spreadsheet,
I hope your week is filled 
with perfect moments.
And that you have teammates
near or far, seen or unseen
that somehow share those moments with you,
and with the sharing, turn them

into moments of perfect joy.

Menus, June 18, 2014

“The strength of the team is each individual member. 

The strength of each member is the team.” 

Phil Jackson

Ask any one who knows me to describe me in a single word, take about twenty five of those words, stir them together, bake them at 350 for thirty minutes, cover it with chocolate and you know what you'll get? A chocolate covered slightly scary something.
The thing is, I don't know what you'd get. But if you peeked under the icing, what you probably wouldn't get would be the phrase "sports fan".

 And yet.
And yet this week I, like everyone else who loves watching basketball played beautifully, was absolutely under the jingle-jangle spell of the San Antonio Spurs. 
And yet, before the Spurs had closed the oven door on the Heat, the World Cup Soccer Schedule was bookmarked on this computer. So sometimes I wonder. Can a clumsy, awkward, "oh-my-gosh-that-ball-is about-to-hit-me-right-in-the-glasses" type of person grow up to be a sort of sports fan?

Maybe so. Especially when there's a chance to watch a great coach lead a top team in an exciting game in front of a big crowd- it's sort of like this:

except the outfits are more colorful and
the players run faster.

All this daily reveling in the delight of a team sport well played had me wondering-
It's a funny thing that cooking is so rarely a team sport. 
I mean, think how often one hears the possessive pronoun 'my' before the noun 'kitchen'.

As in, "Ya'll stay outta my kitchen now, ya hear?"

And who hasn't heard a story or two about the consequences of disregarding territorial boundaries in, say, a mother-in-law's kitchen?

"Look, I told her to stay out of my kitchen.
Is it MY fault she got the poison mushroom?
Dessert, anyone?"

That's sort of sad. Because being a part of a team in a kitchen can make things possible

that just aren't possible alone.

A teammate in the kitchen can come to your rescue 

when things go a little too right

and help you clean up the mess 

when things go a little too fast/

Cooking is, for most of us, a solo sport. Yet working with and learning from people who share your passion for good food is a surefire, straight line way 

to create some real kitchen magic.

You may be playing alone in the kitchen this week, but that's no reason you can't turn dinner into a perfect team-up. This week, as our TV is tuned to whatever channel is broadcasting a game, and those amazing athletes are working as hard as they can to propel their teams forward, we'll be feasting on some of the world's all time classic food teams. 

Sort of like this:
Wednesday: Brazilian black beans and rice

You might have guessed that I'd do a whole week of Brazilian food. Not a chance. The food of Brazil often takes a long, hot time to prepare. Too hot and too long for this Texas kitchen. Like the Brazilian staple, black beans and rice. Worth every steamy second though, and a perfect teaming of protein and carbs. The beans are great in a slow cooker, and that may reduce some of the heat in the kitchen.


Thursday: Grilled Fish and Chips 

My Anglo-Saxon roots mean that I'll be cheering for England today, and what better way to cheer for England than with the classic English pairing of Fish and Chips? Well. I'll tell you what would be better. It would be better to be 17 again and be able to eat crispy battered fish and salty fried chips and not think for one minute about the side effects. Here's the version for conscientious grown ups, and it looks pretty good.







Friday: Spaghetti and meatballs 

Italy plays today, and in their honor, we'll be having two things that go together like...like, well, like spaghetti and meatballs. I've linked to a recipe for grilled meatballs in an effort to keep the kitchen cool, and because grilling meatballs sounds pretty fun.
While the meatballs grill, I'll be grilling a few chicken breasts for the next two night's dinners and using the ideas in this article to keep them from turning into leather. Tomorrow night's sliders use red sauce, hopefully I'll remember to set some aside and since the grill is on, we'll be having grilled vegetables with this.





Saturday: Parmesan chicken sliders 

All the players on the bench (or, in more pedestrian language, the leftovers in the fridge) come together in these yummy sandwiches, perfect for a party or eating in front of the game. The eternal all-star team chips and dip will probably come into play- how about guacamole and hummus to really make the plate international? 







Roasted Chicken and waffles 

Team USA goes for it again today, a team that defied history and predictions to  beat Ghana in their first game. To support that team of unlikely winners, here's an all American duo that should not be great, but is: Chicken and waffles. I love these things. Don't like waffles? (but really, who doesn't like waffles?) Try chicken and biscuits instead. A side of pan roasted tomatoes or sauteed spinach would be perfect- well, why not both! Why settle for one good teammate when you could have two?

I hope that this week, your goals are as clear and close
as a net at the end of the field.
I hope you have a chance
this week to do your very best
when it matters most.
And I hope you have one or two people around you
who share your goals,
who are firmly on your side-
who bring out the best in you
and know how to make the hard work
of achieving the impossible

feel like a really great game.

Menus, June 4, 2014

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring,

 close-knit family in another city.” 

George Burns

Anthropologists have a word for knowledge that's passed directly from one generation to another: vertical transmission. It's a different sort of learning than that which we receive horizontally from our peers- it's a straight line, because I said so transmission of tradition and.... oh, how about instead of talking, I tell you one of my favorite old stories......
Once upon a time, there was a brand new bride.

Not long after she'd purred her way into her new home, she decided to make a ham dinner. In a moment of love-struck insanity, she decided to do this while her dearly beloved was home, slinking around the kitchen, doing a little back seat cooking. 
What he saw amazed him.
His adorable honeybun had taken a sharp knife and was sawing away at the end of the ham- like this:

"Why are you doing that?".
"Doing what?", she asked.
"Cutting the end off of the ham. Why are you doing that?"
"Because this is the way to cook a ham."
"It is? Why?"
"Because it is. This is the way to cook a ham. That's what my mother taught me."
"Hmmm." Said her beloved. 
Her curiosity aroused, she phoned her mother....

"Mum, could you explain a couple of things to me?
Why do I look like a cat, and you look like a human?
Also, why do we cut the end off of the ham?"

Her mother answered, "Well, Kitty darling, first, remember when we told you that you were adopted? About the ham, hmmm....I don't know. That's the way my mother taught me to do it. I'll ask her"
And so, in the home of the aged relative, the phone rang....

"Hello?" said the aged relative. 
"Mother", said the Mother, "What is it about cutting the end off of the ham that makes our baked hams so delicious? Why do we do that?"
"Oh, honey", answered the grandmother, "It was never about the flavor. I always cut the end off of the ham because I just never had a roasting pan big enough

to fit a whole ham..."

We'll leave off any jokes that compare faulty transmission of knowledge to a faulty transmission in a car, ok? Because the point is, for better or for worse, the knowledge of what to eat and how to eat it is transferred in a straight vertical line like few other things are. Food can tie you to a group of people with bonds that are stronger than those of love or matrimony. You may have a difficult time relating to the relatives, yet still hold as the proverbial gold standard your mother's cornbread, your Dad's grilled steaks, your Nana's banana pudding. And chances are that the way you yourself eat and cook is a reaction to, or an imitation of, the food knowledge that was vertically transmitted to you. 

These five sisters, for instance
grew up eating spaghetti in a house with only one fork.

Like allergies, thoughts of family come in seasonal waves. Christmas, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving, and June. Why June? Because right now, at my mother's house in the Piney Woods of East Texas, this is happening:

Which means that before too long, this will be happening:

It's my plan to drive down and collect a basket full of the fruits of her labor sometime this week, before she labors to transform them into jams and pickles and relishes (and then in the fall wander on down for a basket full of jams and pickles and relishes....) so naturally, my mind is hovering on both the people I'm a child of, and the people who are children to me.

The ties that bind cling as tough as a blackberry vine this time of year, and since I was a little hungry, I got in touch with each of my adult children, just to say 

"Hey....Love ya....Miss ya...
What cha eatin?"

Upon their suggestions, menus for a week were built. And though I may not be able to see my all-grown-up children this week, I think that maybe we can still have dinner together.

 Here's how it'll (maybe, probably) work out:

Wednesday: Potstickers and Asian Salad.

This is my son Robert's plan for at least one meal this week, and it's one of my favorite fast and easy dinners. Grab a bag of frozen potstickers and cook them just as the package directs. Robert will be dipping them in Whole Foods peanut sauce, but you can stir up a peanut sauce of your own with 5 ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry. Or try this always fantastic Ginger Scallion sauce. Remember the Asian slaw topped with ramen that took every communal dinner by storm in the nineties? This is a lightened up version of that salad that will be great with either of the sauces as a dressing.



Thursday: Grilled Burgers and Carrot Slaw

Our grill master Daniel was flipping burgers as we spoke, and told me that in his opinion, using anything leaner that an 80/20 ground beef guarantees a dry and chewy burger. The hunt for a lean yet flavorful burger will continue around here anyway. I'll be trying out the Texas 2Step Rub that I got last week on these, and taking some of the suggestions in the best burgers link above.  Carrots seem to multiply in our fridge faster than any other vegetable- once again there are two bags of them in there, and this slaw looks like a great mayo-free way to use them up.


Friday: Pan Fried Tilapia and Blackberry Salad

With any luck at all, this summer-in-a-bowl type salad with feature a handful of hand gathered blackberries from the woods around my mother's house. The fish will be ready for the plate even faster than the salad- we'll just stir together a mix of cornstarch and dry rub, press it on to frozen tilapia fillets, and fry  them in coconut oil. Coconut oil's not as hard on the body as some other oils, it gives such a nice crispy edge to things, and can take the high heat of frying in a way that olive oil can't.  The dressing recipe here would be great on Sunday's salad too, so how about making enough for two meals and putting in a container til Sunday?


Saturday: Chicken and Roasted Cauliflower

My daughter Liz says she's cooking "something Indian, maybe cauliflower" this week, and that's the perfect reason to try this amazing baked brain looking thing that the internet showed me a few weeks ago! I know, not very summery. But very awesome! Since the oven will be on anyway, we'll bake some chicken, and throw in an extra piece or two for tomorrow.





Sunday: Chicken, Avocado and Mango Salad

Avocados. One of the best arguments in the world for planning dinners days in advance. By the time they're called upon to give their creamy all in this salad, they'll have been ripening for days in the avospado....aka, a paper bag. So much easier than trying to find a ripe avocado for a dinner that needs to happen in an hour.. If, that is, I remember to put avocados in the shopping cart on Wednesday. Mango and avocado together make a delicious start to any summer salad- this recipe uses chicken as the protein, but shrimp and even ground beef are delicious too. If there's any goat cheese left from the blackberry salad, crumble it on, and you'll think you died and went to tropical salad heaven...


I hope that this week, once or twice
you have a chance to be fed with the food 
that ties you to the people you love,
Whether it's prime rib or pizza.
And I hope you know that it matters-
the way you work to put good things
in the minds or hearts or hands or tummies 
of the people around you.
It matters.
 Because when you work hard
to feed the world good things
you just may find 
that you have, in an unexpected 
and unlikely way, made for yourself

a wonderful new family all your own.

Menus, April 22, 2014

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” 

William Shakespeare

Perhaps you thought that because we didn't eat our way around Easter last week that I'd forgotten all about it.
 Not a chance! Sweet memories pack this holiday like eggs fill an Easter basket. It's of deep significance historically, culturally, religiously, there's chocolate every where, excuses galore to buy cute things for the people you love,  and it's second only to Christmas

in its creepitude capacity.
(creepitude capacity is a real thing. It's the
ratio of time exposed to a spooky stimulus to
the duration and number of nightmares afterward.
I am not making this up.)

 Though individual traditions range from the quirky to the staid, Easter is the biggest holiday til the holidays, and I've always appreciated the fact that it falls, in the Northern Hemisphere (where most of the holidays significant to my own culture-of-origin originated) during Spring.  Passover, Easter, Persian New Year, May day- this week I learned that just as people all over the world celebrate harvest and midwinter, the whole globe, in one way or another, celebrates Spring. 
It's just that spring is a whole lot more fun. 
Because in many of the festivals of Spring, grown ups get to do what young people do, and young people get to do what young people do,

and nobody gets in trouble for it.

Case in point, the celebration pictured above- the amazing two day public water fight otherwise known as the Thai festival of Songkran, when the streets and everyone in them are awash with the cleansing waters of a fresh new year.  In India, Holi also celebrates the return of life and color to the world in a way that gets everyone covered.

Just not in water.

This week we'll be eating our way around this beautiful planet again, and in honor of Earth Day, we'll hanging around the bottom of the food chain, eating a whole lot of the good stuff that springs from the ground. 

Let's start in Bosnia! 

Wednesday: Scrambled Eggs, tomatoes and bacon

Eggs are a nearly universal symbol of  the life stored up and let loose in Spring, and you may have the spilled Easter egg stains on your floor to prove it. Boiled and colored eggs here, but in Bosnia, 1,500 eggs get cracking to celebrate the first day of spring. A whole town gathering by the edge of a river for a scrambled egg breakfast on the first day of Spring. 

We can't do that, but we can still have breakfast for dinner and wish for a river. We'll thrown in some nutrient rich tomatoes and probably a nice slice or two of bacon as well



Thursday: Navratan Korma

It's Holi, the Hindu festival of colors that is celebrated in India this time of year- friends, family and strangers alike pelting each other with handfuls of powdered colors. These super fun festivals are catching on in the U.S., and you might be able to find one near you.  If you can't, you can still have a nice curry for dinner, and Korma is one of the traditional varieties of the festival.  This recipe is for the real deal, and it's long and complicated and full of love. A jar of korma sauce can be full of love too, and I'll probably use that. And premixed garam masala.   Because it's Spring, and I'd rather be outside than in the kitchen, wouldn't you?







Friday: Pan fried white fish and Papaya salad

Along with eggs and vegetables, many Spring celebrations feature fish as a symbol of life and abundance. In a crazy cultural mash-up, we're going to try the sort of fried fish that sees in the Persian New Year together with a Thai salad. There is no deep symbolic meaning to the mash-up; the fish, with its hour long soak in an egg marinade really interests me, and the salad was enthusiastically recommended by a new friend who grew up loving the food of her Taiwanese mother. You'll notice in the fish recipe a step-by-step-by 19 more steps recipe for Persian rice with herbs. We love rice, and all things (well, most things) green, so I may try it. But probably not.


Saturday: Cob Salad 

Back to my beloved homeland, and the dozen or so leftover hard boiled eggs that most of us have loitering about in our refrigerators. We'll be slicing a few onto a simple Cobb salad, but if you've got baskets of em, Real Simple has a few more ideas on how to use them before they smell up the house. The recipe I've linked is a vegetarian version of this classic salad, but a slice of leftover Easter Ham or a grilled chicken breast would be great.



Sunday: Pad See Ew

I have confirmation from a reliable source (other than the always reliable, never nonfactual internet) that Songkran really is a thing. Thailand is one among many cultures that begins the year in Spring, and it really is true that for 2 days, the celebration of the New Year creates one big happy gigantic water fight. Water festivals are showing up in cities all over America, but we might have to settle for a homemade version of one of my all time Thai favorites. 

It's a funny thing that cooking through celebrations, even celebrations that are foreign to me, feels like a week long dinner party. 

And not the boring kind.

And whether or not you find a festival,
I hope your week refreshes you
like a water fight on a hot day.
I hope that as this old earth
grows young again
it drenches you in life and color.
and I hope you're able to catch that joy
throw it up into the air
and love whoever it lands on.
Even (especially) if some of it
lands again

on you.