Can't Beet It

Yes, I know tomorrow (Monday, May 28^th) is Memorial Day in the U.S., and the “traditional” start to summer and the grilling season.  Yes, I will be grilling, carne asada, (hey, it’s a Pan-Cultural-Fusiony thing), which is so ridiculously easy and also so similar to the marinated pork I just wrote about, that I won’t bore you with the details (OK, *if* you’re interested, marinate some skirt or flank steak in some red wine vinegar, some oil, some S&P, some herbs [cilantro, dried oregano, garlic] and maybe some lime juice.  How long you marinate depends on how thick the steak.  Flank overnight, skirt 2 to 4 hours.  Covered, in the 'fridge.  Grill, slice against the grain, make tacos with corn tortillas and some salsa fresca.  Carry on.)  But this post isn’t about grilling, although I suppose you could do both dishes on a grill, and they’d work.  No, it’s about roasting and pan-roasting and the magic of old time, old-school, French-style pan sauces.  And yes, I am fully aware that the picture of those beets up top looks like some sort of oozing, alien life form.  Sorry.  Roasted beets apparently aren’t very photogenic, but they sure are tasty, especially when mixed with a tangy dressing and made into a lovely salad.

First up the beets.  Like many of the veggies I cook with lately, (thanks to my CSA, The Growing Experience), I came late to the beet love.  Oh, we ate enough of them when I was a kid, and I liked them just fine.  They were always canned, and my Mom usually mixed them with thin-sliced onions and some vinegar with a touch of sugar, to make sort of a quick pickle.  As an adult, I bought them, again only in cans, for the same preparation, or julienned to toss into a green salad.  But they were only rare guests in the little kitchen.  Too many other, bright, shiny, trendy things to play with.  I certainly never bought fresh beets.  I wouldn’t have had a clue as to what to do with them.  They were, well, intimidating.  Hard, leafy, and they *gasp* STAIN THINGS.

Yeah.  Like dishrags.  OK, that rag was a little tired even before the run-in with the beets, and frankly the beet stain rinsed out pretty quickly (and came off my fingers just as easily), but the juice color is an issue.  I wouldn’t use a good towel around them, jus’ sayin’.

IT'S TACO TIME !

¡ Hola amigos !  And that, sadly, is about the extent of what my sad little brain retains from many, many years of high school and college Spanish lessons.

That and “¿ donde esta el baño ?”, which is frankly just as important of a phrase.  Perhaps even more so…

But, I digress, as always.  This, however, may be the earliest digression yet.  No, apparently that tendency of mine didn't go away during my hiatus.

Tomorrow (or today, depending upon where you are and when you’re reading this) is Cinco de Mayo.  Which, although it is most likely, what I call a “faux-li-day” or a contrived holiday (see other examples, St. Patrick’s Day, Groundhog’s Day, Sweetest Day, and darest I say…Halloween), is still however, in the grand tradition of holidays, faux or real, an excellent excuse for some “good eats” (to borrow a phrase, thanks AB).  Yikes.  THAT sentence structure even hurt MY brain…..let’s carry on, shall we, and try to recover from that horror ?

For dinner tomorrow, I’m planning on making a very traditional Mexican dish that features all the colors of the Mexican flag, which of course I’ll share with all ya’ll in a bit.  But for immediate inspiration, not to mention satisfaction, here’s a suggestion for the star of your particular fiesta.  I made these earlier this week, and they were a) easy and b) tasty, which, in my book, makes the recipe a winner.  Even throwing together some refried black beans, salsa and guacamole from scratch didn’t add to the stress/effort level all that much.

So, let’s make some tacos, shall we?

Quick ! Go To The Grocery Store NOW !!

OK, I know we’re all on the wrong side of the turkey coma right now, and we’ve got such full and satisfied bellies that the last thing on our minds at the moment is more food.  Especially if it involves getting into potentially *tight* clothes, rousting ourselves up off the couch, out from under the Snuggie and foisting ourselves into the cold, menacing BIG BAD WORLD of crazed shoppers.

Trust me.  I’m as agoraphobic and hermit-like as the next person.  Never in my life have I participated in the scrum that is after-Thanksgiving shopping.

But I will be going to the grocery store tomorrow.  And you should too.

Because we need to stock up on cranberries people, during this brief window of opportunity when the little critters are available.  Come December 26th, cranberries will be gone with the wind, like the ghosts of holidays past, not to be seen again until mid-November 2012.  And we’re gunna want them before then.  Oh.  Yeah.  We’re gunna want them again.

Lay in the stock of cranberries folks.  Stash ‘em in the deep freeze and then you can make this ridiculously easy, ridiculously delicious, ridiculously amazing Cranberry-Pepper Jelly whenever you want it.  Because once you taste it, you’ll be looking for ways to eat it, in addition, that is, to simply shoveling it into your mouth with a soup spoon, while you’re standing shoulder-deep into the fridge.

It’s that good.  No.  It’s better.

Now, don’t be afraid.  We’re gunna make a jelly.  Another one of those scary *BIG* culinary projects (like pickles…..).  Well, we saw how easy pickles can be, and this jelly is in that same league.  No hot water baths, no exploding jars, no sugar syrup dripping from the cabinets and your hair.  Just a zesty, sweet, tart, hot burst of flavor in your mouth.

Time to jell, folks….

In Praise Of Iceberg Lettuce

As far as I’m concerned, it’s time to stop hating on iceberg lettuce.

OK, I’ll cop to it.  I’ll fess up, I’ll come clean.  I was one of the foodie trendoid herd that turned their finely calibrated palates up into the air, along with their oh, so sensitive noses, and shunned the humble head of pale green crunch as *ahem* (be sure to use über-snooty, très chi-chi voice here) “tasteless” and “watery”.

And, frankly, yes, it can be.  But, you know what else the lowly iceberg can be?  Crunchy.  Hearty.  Sturdy.  Able to stand up to really strong, acidic dressings, or heavy, thick ones, and hold it’s own.  It’s like a great supporting actor.  You don’t realize what a fabulous job they’ve done until the movie is long over, and you’ve fawned all over the star.  Then you realize the star looked so good because of the work that the supporting actor did.

So, it’s been years, years I say, since I’d had an iceberg lettuce salad.  Now, you have to understand.  In my “formative” years, when we talked about “salad” we meant iceberg.  Until I was 20-ish, I really didn’t know there were other lettuces than iceberg.  OK, we had the occasional spinach salad (usually when we went out to a fancy dinner), but at home, salad was iceberg.  It was just….what was around in the late 60’s and 70’s.

Then, I discovered other salad greens.  Romaine, Bibb, red and green leaf, escarole all came into my salad vocabulary.  Then came the baby greens and the micro greens and the field greens and the bitter greens and the arugulas and the oak leafs and the Cos and the limestones and so on.  And they’re all good !  They’re all spectacular, especially in the Spring when they’ve just been cut from the head, and are so sweet and tender.

And poor iceberg, well, it was discarded like a bad prom date.  Tossed aside on the pile of “things I’ve outgrown”.

Which is a shame, really, because with some care, and in the right circumstances, iceberg can be just as fulfilling and satisfying as that spinach salad with the hot bacon vinaigrette, or the perfectly dressed Caesar, tossed table-side (with anchovies, please…) or the delicate Spring greens candied pecans, bleu cheese, sliced strawberries and a light dressing (my all time favorite salad).

About two years ago, I had splurged and purchased a lovely, huge rib-eye steak I planned on grilling over a screamin’ charcoal fire.  I also wanted a baked potato, with all the “goods” (sour cream, chives, maybe a hit of shredded Cheddar).  So, in a nutshell, I wanted a steakhouse dinner.  What’s more in keeping with a steakhouse dinner than a wedge salad ?  Usually, I’d been making them with Romaine, after all, iceberg, feh !  But Romaine wasn’t speaking to me, and didn’t look all that great at the MegaMarts, so I thought, hey, what have I got to lose if I get some iceberg?

Well, actually, nothin’.   In fact, I had a lot to gain.  And learn.

Pickle Me This

So, this is going to be an almost picture-free post.  Why, you may ask (come on, I can hear you asking…..).  Well.  For a couple of reasons.  First, I again, really didn’t think the outcome was going to be worthy of a photographic extravaganz-o of the steps and preparation and mise en place that went with making these delightful little nummies.

More importantly (she says, looking sheepish and sort of embarrassed), I didn’t think I’d like the output enough to want to share them with all y’all.

Frankly, I was just looking for a reason to be able to throw away excess, rapidly decomposing produce without feeling guilty about it.

I figured…….I got teeeeeny-tiny green tomatoes off of my valiant plant that would a) never ripen and b) never grow large enough to bread and fry.  I *could* just toss them into the trash now, or….*FLASH OF BRILLIANCE*….I could pickle them and then throw them into the trash when I realize I hate the finished product.  Why, the latter is the obviously more attractive option !  No shame in tossing something that sucks, as opposed to tossing something that rots because you can’t figure out what the hell else to do with it.

Same deal-io with the zucchini.  I had a surfeit from The Growing Experience.  I stuffed ‘em, I roasted ‘em to toss into pasta, I grilled ‘em, I ate ‘em as crudités.  I was getting done with zucchini….(and I have another 2 giant specimens in my crisper as I type….zucchini fritters are up for later in the week….).  So for those zukes starting to get a little long gone on the Road To Slimy….let’s try a zucchini pickle and I can toss them with a clear conscience, since they will clearly suck because, well, homemade pickles are…..A Project.

Oh, and the radishes.  Bought ‘em.  Forgot about them.  In the pickle frenzy thought….ehhhhh, why not.  For the same reason.   To far gone to leave too much longer in the crisper.  Not fitting in the delightful may-new (thanks, Julia) plans for the week.  Why not…..PICKLE ‘em ?!?!?  So I can then toss them with no tsuris.

Well, why not ?  Hmmmmmm.  First up.  Pickling, as I said is a “PROJECT”.  Canning jars.  Jar lifters.  A huge, HUGE vat ‘o’ boiling water into which you which you drop those canning jars, and lids, and rings, and *gasp*…..sterilize them !  Now, I know enough about microbiology to know that I shouldn’t be messing around with this stuff.  After all, I never actually, technically, passed a college-level math class.  Add in the fact that you’re usually doing all this canning stuff in the dead of summer, when the humidity is 90-plus percent, and the temperatures are 100-plus degrees, and *I* have no air-conditioning, and well, that doesn’t sound like a good time in Cow-Town for me.

I’d much rather be sitting on the verandah sipping a tall, iced, cool, delightful adult beverage, fanning myself gently with a lace fan and charming the pants, errrrr, socks off of the Tarleton Twins……(raise your hand if you got the “Gone With The Wind” reference….).

But I digress…..

The Continuing Chronicles Of The Lost Recipes…

Sometimes, sometimes……you just gots to take the easy way out.  Somedays, the magic in the little kitchen is just rolling.  I mean, *ROLLING*.  I am on fie-yah, baby.  I’m like Harry Potter with the Elder Wand in his hand (sorry, just finished reading The Deathly Hallows, and watched the first half of the movie over the weekend….I guess I’ve been “Potter-ized”).  Everything I touch just…works.  Pita bread from scratch ?  But of course !  Handmade corn tortillas that would make an abuelita proud ?  No hay problema !  Pierogies that would bring a tear to the eye of my Polish babushka ?  Routinely !  Cookies, and cakes, and stews, and roasts, and braises, and breads…..OH MY !  I can DO that.  I *DO* do that !

But somedays, (yes, I realize that’s not a real word, but its how I talk, so therefore how I write), somedays the train just doesn’t ever leave the station.  The ship never sails.  The horse never leaves the barn.  Insert the no-go metaphor of your choice here.  In other words, I’m the little engine that couldn’t in the little kitchen.

Rather than resort to the evil pizza delivery Megalopolies (which really don’t sell very good pizza, do they) or the even eviler Golden Arches, or the shame of the Blue Box ‘O’ Cheeze Goo, I go back to my neophyte cook roots, and go for the easy route and the “what can I pull out of the pantry using good quality packaged stuff” meal.

I….I….(twitch, shudder, twitch)…become…..Semi-Homemade (AARRRRRGGGGHHHH, there I’ve said it).

Confession is always such a difficult thing, isn’t it ?  But so freeing once it’s out there.  Now.  I don’t do this often.  Most days I am a firm believer in fresh and local and seasonal and scratch.  Because I have come to learn that those elements make a dish taste better.  Good ingredients treated respectfully and well, lead to good meals.  Pretty simple equation.  And now that I have the luxury of time, much more achievable than when I was working 50-plus hours a week.

But some days, quick and dirty (not to mention easy) works just groovy, and in this instance, the results are more than adequate.  In fact, they’re pretty damned good.

Celebrating The Harvest

It’s that time of year.  There’s just…something…in the air.  Lord knows, in Southern California, I wouldn’t dare call it a *nip*, but there’s something.  Of course, the days are getting noticeably shorter.  The afternoon sunlight hits the living room floor at a lower angle, the shadows are deeper.  Although our days are still plenty warm for the most part, the nights have a definite edge to them.  The froggies that live in my front flower bed and in the neighbor’s bed that runs along my driveway are not quite so boisterous in their night songs.  In fact, the froggie in the front seems to have already gone wherever he/she goes during the fall/winter/early spring.  I no longer hear him/her as I fall asleep, and I miss him/her.  The froggie by the drive, I only hear, very softly, when I let The Grrrrrlz out for their last Dooty Duty/Yard Patrol of the night.  By midnight, he’s tucked in for the evening too, chilled no doubt by the dampish Fall air.  There are smells of cinnamon in the grocery stores, from the scented pine cones and brooms that will soon become seasonal décor.  I love that smell...

But still, I have to celebrate, while not quite “The Harvest” in the true sense of the world, surely the bounty that comes at this time of year.  The past few shares I’ve received from my CSA, The Growing Experience, have been absolutely overflowing with goodies.  Figs and corn and tomatoes and greens and salad mix and herbs and apples, OH MY !

Plus the overload of tomatoes that my heroic, beleaguered, embattled, but so valiant surviving tomato plant has produced against pestilence, disease, plague, mockingbirds and all odds has been peaking in the last two weeks or so.  Sadly, soon to end, but certainly appreciated while it lasted.

So, between the heroic yield of the tomato plant and the CSA farm’s output, menu planning for the last month has been much less about “what do I feel like making/what do I crave” and much more about “what do I need to use before it rots”.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad way to cook, it’s just not a way to cook that I’m particularly familiar with, nor particularly comfortable with.

I *used* to be a list maker.  Back in the day, Friday night, as I walked in the door from work, I’d toss my cocktail glass in the freezer, get into my jammies, pull out my recipes and cookbooks and the grocery sale fliers, make a dirty Tanquery martini, not too dry, with two olives and two onions, (shaken hard, please) heat my frozen pizza or other ready-to-heat snacks (Fridays were always cook’s night off for me), and peruse my menu options for the coming week.  It was the only way that I’d pull off making something resembling home-cooked food during the week, and not fall into the trap of “I’ll just swing by the MegaMart and pick up something easy”, ensure I had sufficient leftovers for lunch that I didn’t have to hit a drive-thru everyday and also unwind from a usually over-the-top intense week at work.  I’d set my menus for the week, make my shopping lists, eat my snack foods, have another martini and then get up Saturday and hit the grocery schleps.

It’s a lot more free-form now.

It’s A “Corn”-ucopia Of Corn Dishes

It’s that time of year, yes, it is….just makes me want to burst out into song.  “When the corn is as high as an elephant’s eyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeee”...

OK, sorry.  If you know me, you don’t want me singing anything at all, let alone the libretto from “Oklahoma”.

Actually, even if you DON’T know me, you don’t want me singing anything at all, let alone the libretto from “Oklahoma”.

Trust me.  Ella Fitzgerald I ain’t.

But, as always, I digress.  This isn’t about singing, or 1940’s musicals, or simply the best female singer that ever lived (that'd be Ms. Ella thankyewvermush), it’s about corn.

Corn.  Specifically, summer sweet corn.  The last leg of that perfect triangle of summer-only goodness; tomatoes, figs and sweet corn.  A trifecta, if you will.  Oh yeah, stone fruits and melons and berries are important now, and certainly welcomed in the little kitchen (I just ate a perfect peach, and was again amazed at how wonderful a creature that is).  But summer without sweet corn, figs and tomatoes is unthinkable.

Since we’ve done our homage to tomatoes, and I shared the seductive glory of a fig upside-down cake with all y’all, it’s time to complete the trilogy.

Let’s talk corn.

When Life Gives You Tomatoes….You Eat Really Well

Isn’t that picture just the epitome and embodiment of Summer ?  A huge, (and I do mean HUGE, that puppy weighed in at over a pound !), vine-ripened beefsteak tomato, dripping with dew (OK, full disclosure, that was water from my having rinsed it before I cooked with it, but still, it *could've* been dew).

Here’s a shot of that monster in my hand, so you can get an idea of how gimogeous this thing really was.

It was truly massive.  *AND* it had flavor, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

I love tomatoes.

No.  Let me qualify that.

I love tomatoes that have ripened on the vine, and have been grown carefully and fed and watered regularly, and have had lots of sun and lots of care.  Tomatoes that are soft and sorta squishy, and that spew juice all over your counter when you cut them.  Tomatoes that are warm from the sun, that you rinse off and slice and inhale as is, or on bread, or in a Caprese salad, or over pasta.  Or that you just bite into on your way from the garden to the kitchen, the juice and seeds dripping down your chin, and over your hands.  The tomatoes that explode with sweet, tangy, acidic, tomato-y flavor, and fill your mouth with tomato joy.  The tomatoes so full of that lovely “jelly” interior they remind you of one of those fruit gel candies called "Pâtes de fruits”.

*THOSE* tomatoes (and these) I love.

I most assuredly do NOT love those supermarket cotton balls with the mealy, tasteless centers, the ones you could pitch a major league baseball game with, the ones that are picked totally green and gassed with ethylene oxide to turn their skins a pale imitation of the deep red color we expect, but which will never, ever achieve the glory that is a REAL tomato.

*THOSE* tomatoes I loath.

I’ve grown tomatoes before, and while they’re not particularly a difficult plant to grow and harvest, like anything alive, they need some care and some fussing with.  And, due to some health/mobility issues, I can’t work any kind of a garden in the ground any longer.  I could probably get DOWN to sit by the bed and work it, but it’d take a sky-hook crane to get me back up.

A couple of years ago, I tried one of those “topsy-turvy” tomato growing things.  It was….not a success.  I put the thing in the same spot (a narrow bed by my driveway, with a Western exposure, against a light stucco wall) where I’d successfully grown tomatoes (albeit in the ground) before.  The plants (I had three of them in the hanging baggy thingy) started out great guns.  And rapidly faltered.  I had only used really easy-to-grow cultivars I’d successfully grown in the ground in previous years, so I thought it was going to be a slam dunk.  Not so much.  I think I got a total of 20 tomatoes out of the 3 plants that year, and they were small, fairly tasteless and generally not stellar.  I think the soil in the bag got too hot, and steamed the roots when I watered them.  In the plastic, there was no way for the soil to "breathe".  Plus I don’t think there was enough soil in the baggy thingy to support 3 full plants, even though it had 3 ports for planting and the instructions indicated it could support all three.  The bag was unwieldy, it was hard to water and fertilize, and as I said the yield was dismal.  It finally went into the trash and recycling bins as was appropriate to the parts of the contraption.

For the next few summers, I tried to make do with tomatoes from the local farmers’ markets, Trader Joe’s “Heirloom” tomatoes (which are actually pretty decent, not top tier, but not bad….) and lately from my CSA, The Growing Experience.

This year, though, I was determined to grow my own.  I had an unused, huge PVC pot, which had previously held a rose bush, so I knew it was plenty big enough, I had the tomato cage/support gizzies, all I needed was the soil and the plants.  Which, I promptly obtained in mid-Spring.  I planted, I caged, I watered, I fertilized, and I waited for the succulent harvest.

It started out really well, and then took a dramatic turn to disaster land…….

Get Your Grill On

Ah, yesssss.  ‘Tis Summah time, and the livin’ is easy.  Or should be, lest you  raise a sweat and begin to, shall we say, *glow* in the summer heat and humidity.

OK, true confessions time.  This has been, for the second year in a row, an uncommonly cool and cloudy summer here in SoCal.  NOT THAT I’M COMPLAINING.  Not at all.  I tend to get cranky when the temperature gets too much above about 85°, and downright surly and churlish (LOVE that word) when it approaches triple digits.  So mid-seventies to low eighties is just ducky by me.  Granted, my roses look a bit forlorn and ratty, they do like their hot days and clear nights, and my tomatoes were damned slow to set and ripen, but me, I’m diggin’ my very cool Left Coast Summer and hope it lasts.

The rest of you, especially those in the middle of the U.S., babe, I feel for ya.  I see the news reports, and, having spent my early years in Chicago, and having visited the South and D.C. in the summer, I sure don’t envy you.  And I hope all y’all get some relief soon.  I’d love to send you my marine layer.  Some screwy weather going on for sure…

Anyway, for most of us, even those of us still sleeping under a blankie (with two hermetically attached fuzz bombs), in Mid-July, Summer certainly means grilling, because who the heck wants to turn on an oven, or heat up a range-top when the mercury’s about to blow out the top of the thermometer like it used to in the Loony Tunes.  (Do they still even PUT mercury in thermometers any longer?  I’d bet not….hazmat and all that stuff…but again, I digress.)

No single day, of course, speaks more to grilling and cooking outdoors than the 4^th of July.  Here’s what went down in the little kitchen, and the larger patio, for that commemoration of our Independence.  As you can guess by the header shot, there was an adult beverage (or 2….maybe 3) involved and these guys made an appearance….

Salad Daze

Now that the weather’s turned towards Summer’s warmth, (OK, sorry…..downright, screachin’ miserable hot in most of the country, and I feel for ya, I really do), a lot of people are thinking about salads.

Living in SoCal, I think of salads year ‘round.  We have 100-plus days in October regularly, and I’ve baked Christmas cookies in shorts, a tank top and with all the windows open more than once.  Plus, I’m just not a huge fan of cooked vegetables.  (Unless they’re battered and deep-fried, which may be why I take cholesterol-lowering medications, ya think?)  Some cooked veggies I do love, grilled corn on the cob, oven roasted or grilled asparagus, ARTICHOKES of course, oven roasted Brussels sprouts, maybe some caramelized carrots.  But steamed or boiled green beans, peas (fresh peas I’ll eat raw thankyouverymuch) or broccoli, sautéed zucchini, I’ll pass right by on those.  They just seem so *boring* to me.  I HAVE had some transcendent veggie sides in restaurants….so I know it can be done.  Maybe I just haven’t figured out how to cook them well.  As a component in a dish, like an Asian stir fry, I do OK.  But as a stand-alone dish….eh, not so much.  Maybe I get too distracted by the main, so I can’t give my full attention to the veggie side.  I dunno….in my little kitchen, unless it’s a salad of some ilk, or is the focus of the meal, veggies get short shrift.

But I LOVE the taste of raw veggies.  Raw broccoli, raw zuke, raw cauliflower, they rock my world.  Short of serving them just as crudités though, there’s not a whole lot of creative options out there for veggies au natural.

And of course, I’m always conscious of the ever-looming-now-discarded-and-replaced- by-the-FDA-food-plate, food pyramid.  I KNOW I need to get more fruit and veg into my diet than I currently do….

And so we return to salads.