Kennedy: Vinegar update

On the left is the pineapple vinegar I began last month by steeping pineapple skins in brown sugar. 

On the right is the banana vinegar, made by letting overripe bananas rot and seep.

Both recipes came from Mexican cooking maven Diana Kennedy, both have been decanted and tasted.

Pineapple vinegar. This smells incredible, bright and tangy, like some bionic pineapple just exploded. (Not sure that simile works, but hyperbole is called for.) You open the jar of vinegar and the whole room is perfumed with one of the loveliest scents ever generated in my kitchen. The vinegar is also gorgeous, a cloudy gold nectar. The flavor is sharp, vinegary, very pleasant, if not complex. I would rate this a moderate success.

Banana vinegar. The aroma is so mild I can't really describe it. As you can see, the vinegar is inky, opaque, not all that appealing. I was reluctant to taste this; I shouldn't have been. It is delicious. This is a thicker, more syrupy vinegar than the pineapple; it also tastes more substantial, sweet and rich, distinctly sour but full of honey and caramel flavors, and, of course, banana. It's like balsamic, but maybe even better.

 

No one could be more shocked than I that this experiment actually worked. Thank-you, Diana Kennedy. Both vinegars need to sit for a while more, but given my exceedingly low expectations, I am exceedingly happy with the results.

Bayless & Kenndy: Some little white lies

Sometimes I wonder why I am not skinny anymore. And sometimes I wonder why I am not much fatter. 

That is a chicharron from the Azteca market in San Rafael. Diana Kennedy translates "chicharron" as "pigskin," but I think "pork rind" is more appetizing, if not much. The bright orange pork rinds you buy in bags, like potato chips, are foul, but the kind they sell hot and fresh at Mexican delis are satanically delicious. You can get big, crunchy sheets of pure skin or thicker pieces with hunks of meat attached. Yesterday, I asked a woman at Azteca which type she prefers and she gestured with tongs to the meaty variety, glistening under a heat lamp. I took her advice and bought some.

But I now think I should have gone with the skinny skins. I suspect the effect Diana Kennedy was after in her chicharron in green sauce was that of limp, soft bits of rind swathed in thin, tart salsa. I had something like this once on a torta five years ago, and have never forgotten. What I produced with my meaty chicharrones was hearty and tasty, but not what I remembered and not what I had pictured. I have not pictured it for you because pork rind taco filling makes a poor advertisement for itself.

We'll see if anyone in my family reads the blog, because I did not use "rind" in the description of the tacos last night. Not a lie, an omission.

Now for the lying. 

Do these look like pumpkins?

 

When you puree them with brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves and cream and bake in a pastry shell as for Rick Bayless's spicy plantain pie they do.

So I called it pumpkin pie. I served this comforting dessert warm, with whipped cream, and Husband was uncharacteristically enthusiastic. "They really know what they're doing with pumpkin pie in Mexico," he said. He's from New England and considers himself an expert on pumpkin pie, popovers, pancakes, potato salad, milkshakes, and grilled cheese sandwiches. All other foods are suspect or pretentious. Plantains? Don't be silly.

Isabel, who eats like a hummingbird and hates bananas, consumed a large slab.

 

After I'd finished my slice, I reached and took a little bite out of the pie plate -- you know, to neaten it up --  a habit that Husband finds irritating. "You want seconds of the pumpkin pie?" he asked as he slid the whole pie plate onto my placemat and handed me a fork. He and Isabel both laughed. It's sweet that they have this bond.

Tipsy: Pumpkin pie? You mean PLANTAIN pie.

Isabel: I just ate banana pie? Gross. 

Tipsy: No, you ate PLANTAIN pie.

Husband: You lied to me like I was 2-years-old.

Tipsy: And I'm not sorry!

Really, they should thank me. It was amazing pie.

Kennedy: Bad, vinegar, bad

I will not let this photo linger long at the top of the blog.

You know how when you have some overripe tomatoes or peaches and fruit flies suddenly appear, then when you get rid of the offending produce they just as suddenly vanish? 

It does not work like that with vinegar flies. The hideous, rotting, sea-slug bananas have exuded much charcoal-colored fluid that smells sour and seems to have a scummy vinegar mother floating on top. This is exciting. They have also attracted hordes of tiny flies. This is embarrassing. 

We had company last night and took the banana vinegar-in-progress and its cloud of flies outdoors. But an hour later we were sitting there in the living room conversing and all I could see were the several dozen insects helicoptering over the coffee table. I felt like I was entertaining in a barnyard. All I could do was apologize and take a big swallow of wine.

Fortunately, they're tiny, feathery flies, not like the big, crunchy ones infesting Colin Beavan's apartment in No Impact Man. Owen and I saw this new documentary yesterday and it gave us something to talk about besides poultry. In case you missed the publicity blizzard, it's about a New York City family that decides to live sustainably for a year, which means no elevators, electricity, toilet paper, shopping, non-local food, etc. It's an excellent film for kids, as it forces them ponder how much they'd be willing to give up to save the planet. It's a riveting, irritating, inspiring movie for adults. Dana Stevens' funny and sharp review in Slate nails it.

Anyway, I am not giving up on the vinegar, since it seems to be working. I just think Diana Kennedy might have offered some more generous warnings about what to expect. She mentions the flies, but does not describe the extent of the problem. She's a withholder, that Mrs. Kennedy.

We are leaving for Morgan Hill, Owen and I, and when we return will have a frizzle chicken. I hope we do not also have rabbits, quail, and a pig.

Kennedy v. Bayless: Solid Gold soup

Here's a straight up-and-down comparison in which I prefer Diana Kennedy. 

I made Rick Bayless's tortilla soup on Friday night (Book: Mexico, One Plate at a Time.) The recipe and florid preamble stretched to four pages and included this: "My favorite tortilla soup dances salsa in the bowl. While swaying with deep, sweet tones, it surprises with colorful flourishes. It gently slides its hand around your waist, then does an unexpected turn with the muscle of herby epazote. It tickles you with the tangy fresh lime, then nudges you gently with fresh cheese and creamy avocado. And then comes the whirlwind of turns. .  ."

Et cetera. He goes on, but it seems kinder to look away. 

Diana Kennedy's recipe for sopa Tarasca barely fills a page (Book: Art of Mexican Cooking) and I made it last night. It tastes just like Bayless's (spicy, delishcious) and contains almost precisely the same ingredients. But fewer trees had to die.

This round goes to Mrs. Kennedy.

Kennedy: Udderly delicious

Author: Diana Kennedy

Book: The Art of Mexican Cooking

Recipe: scrambled ricotta 

Scrambled ricotta with chopped onions, serrano peppers, tomatoes.  One of the few dishes from this particularly scary Diana Kennedy book that I can actually bring myself to attempt.

Some choice excerpts:

blood sausage: "If you are not using commercially packed blood (which will come strained), you will need to pass the blood through a coarse strainer. Discard stringy blood tissue and fat and break up the coagulated blood. . . "

brothy beef stew: "Put the meat, bone and udder into a large soup kettle. . . "

 

Scrambled ricotta seemed do-able, was actually stupidly easy, very yummy, and reminded me of South Beach breakfasts, which I sort of enjoyed. I also baked a raspberry streusel coffee cake from Dorie Greenspan's Sweet Times.

Can you see it's actually pink? From raspberry jam.

What a domestic goddess. Ha! Lie. Owen came downstairs and sat playing with a Transformer at the table instead of eating coffee cake, dawdled, fussed, eventually made himself tardy. I got so frazzled and impatient that, to quote my friend Stephanie, if I had had a nannycam, I would have fired myself. A Pop Tart in the car would have been preferable to this morning's well-catered circus. The symbols of domestic happiness are not domestic happiness. I need to write that on an index card and tape it to the refrigerator.

The banana vinegar: not looking so hot. The bananas have turned completely black, collapsed upon themselves, and are growing mold. Can anything good come of mold? Aren't we supposed to avoid mold at all costs? 

Bayless: Guacamole

Author: Rick Bayless

Book: Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen

Recipes cooked: Tomatillo-green guacamole

Score: 10

I cooked so much for our Saturday night party that I'm going to break the report down into a few posts. Guacamole is a good place to start because that's how we started and because there's a tiny debate not-raging about whether tomatoes belong in guacamole. 

I'd never given guacamole any much thought, but Rick Bayless's tomatillo-green guacamole was so superior to the usual that I had to pause for ten seconds to figure out what made it so. Without weeping chunks of tomato, this guacamole was suave, rich, handsome, entirely green. PERFECT. I'll let Rick Bayless describe it:  "This is my favorite twist on guacamole -- a little zippier than the tomato version, a little more unctuous because the tomatillos that replace the raw tomatoes are roasted."  

I just opened one Diana Kennedy's books and see that she, too, has a tomatillo guacamole recipe. Mrs. Kennedy's headnote is as (characteristically) chilly as Bayless's is chipper: "I have eaten this guacamole on rare occasions at homes in the state of Mexico bordering on Morelos. Although it's not my favorite, it makes an interesting change from the more popular version and is particularly suitable when tomatoes are not at their best."

There are some other noteworthy guacamoles in the collected oeuvres of Kennedy and Bayless. On his web site, Bayless features recipes for mango guacamole and sun-dried tomato guacamole, neither of which . . . well, shouldn't knock 'em till I try 'em. Kennedy has a recipe for guacamole that contains pomegranate seeds, chopped peaches, and grapes. I'll make that one this week, while there are still peaches. My hopes are not high.

Bayless: He's definitely lower maintenance

Much culinary activity to report. Let's start with Friday

Author: Rick Bayless

Book: Mexico, One Plate at a Time

Recipes cooked: green tomatillo salsa, classic guacamole, tortilla soup, mushroom and cheese quesadillas, rustic cajeta apple tarts with berry salsa

Score: 7.5

Only one complaint: Tomatoes, get out of my guacamole. You may be vine-ripened and heirloom and FROM MY VERY OWN GARDEN but your presence is not always welcome. You don't belong in green salad either. Your proper place is beneath a slice of fresh mozzarella, or in a BLT with lots of mayonnaise. 

Mushrooms, on the other hand, do amazing things for a quesadilla.

 

That pretty item at top is the rustic cajeta apple tart, one of Rick Bayless's friendly Mexican-inspired desserts, as opposed to the scary authentic Mexican desserts preferred by Diana Kennedy. 

I already know who wins this contest between Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless, and probably so do you, but I'll proceed with testing for a few more weeks. It's not exactly a hardship, and the kids are really happy. 

 

Bayless: stirring, stirring, stirring

Author: Rick Bayless

Book: Mexico: One Plate at a Time

Recipe: cajeta

I got prodigious amounts of work done this morning by heeding the wisdom in this piece by Laura Miller, the book critic at Salon.com. A certain writing project, over which I have agonized and intermittently labored for months, was almost completed in under two hours just by forbidding myself email, Facebook, and online shopping for a duvet cover. I imposed other restrictions: no snacks, no fussy tidying chores, no visits to the henhouse to look for eggs. The increase in productivity has been shocking. I should have done this years ago. I should do this every day. 

But the two hours off-line are up, I've earned my screen time, and am also making cajeta -- Mexican goat-milk caramel sauce -- because I bought the goat milk a few days ago, it needs to get used up, and my mother and grandmother are coming to dinner. This cajeta recipe takes an hour during which you are supposed to stir the simmering milk, sugar, and cinnamon stick "regularly." Here's Bayless on cajeta: "Perfect cajeta is like perfect wine: silky smooth, balanced and complex."

The wine comparison -- not the most vital simile. But I love the long, impassioned, scholarly preamble about his collection of antique Mexican cookbooks (in which he has found recipes for desserts containing jicama and fava beans) and the history of cajeta. I like Rick Bayless. He's friendlier than Diana, who can be very starchy and severe.

The plan is to read and stir. I'm no longer sure A Gate at the Stairs is working for me. Specifically, I don't feel that the narrator's voice is that of a college-age Midwestern farm girl. It's the voice of a nervy, worldly, middle-aged woman, i.e. Lorrie Moore. It's one of my favorite voices, but an underage virgin who grew up on a potato farm and has never flown in an airplane just doesn't know this much about Bartok, and marriage, and race relations, and the semiotics of food, and she probably doesn't use words like "verklempt." 

Though maybe Moore will convince me that she does. Maybe all will be redeemed in the end.

Must finish now.

Kennedy: There may be maggots

Author: Diana Kennedy

Book: From My Mexican Kitchen

Recipes: banana vinegar, pineapple vinegar 

I've always wanted to make vinegar, but the recipes have made it look harder than I was up for, requiring trips to a winemaking shop, mothers, jugs, airlocks, crocks.

Diana Kennedy, however, offers several recipes for vinegar that involve no special materials. They also look like recipes written by an insane person, but I have now started both. 

Banana vinegar. You slit the skins of overripe bananas, put them in a colander over a bowl, drape with cheesecloth, leave in a "very warm" place until the fruit emits all its juices. "Turn the mass over from time to time and gently press down to extract the liquid," Kennedy writes. "Lots of little flies will swarm around because of fermentation." Within several weeks there will be a cloudy fluid that you mix with crushed piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar) and continue to ferment. Kennedy insists it is delicious. 

Pineapple vinegar. This involves placing the peelings of a pineapple in a jar with water and pounded piloncillo. Macerate. This seems more reasonable than the banana vinegar, until: "If things don't go according to order, small white maggots will float on the top (they may anyway.) Strain the liquid, and if it doesn't become acidic within a month, throw it away and start again."

Rick Bayless would never write recipes like these, and despite their obvious grotesqueness and the fact that I doubt they will work, I love these recipes. I hope they work. I can always bake banana bread, but a way to make use of pineapple peel is on a par with watermelon rind pickle.

Kennedy: She loses the tinga throwdown

Author: Diana Kennedy

Book: My Mexico

Dishes cooked: tinga de pollo

Score: 8

Behind on my posting. On Monday, I made Diana Kennedy's chicken tinga: "This recipe is an interesting version of the better-known pork tinga of Pueblo," she writes. 

As some of you may know, a tinga is a super-spicy, rich melange of meat, tomatoes, chorizo and chipotle chiles that you eat with tortillas and/or rice. A week ago I made a killer pork tinga from Rick Bayless, and I chose this Kennedy recipe to compare. Not a fair fight. Kennedy's tinga rocked, but pork -- especially pork shoulder -- always wins. The only meat pork shoulder can't trump is aged ribeye.

Owen: "This is hot sauce with little sprinkles of chicken. I want chicken with little sprinkles of hot sauce."

I've started making Kennedy's banana vinegar, but I think that bizarre procedure deserves its own post.

Kennedy: Pictures only a cook could love

Book: The Cuisines of Mexico

Author: Diana Kennedy

Dishes: chilaquiles, queso de Napoles

"The word chilaquiles comes from chil-a-quilitl, meaning 'herbs or greens in chili broth' -- colloquially, a 'broken up old sombrero,'" writes Kennedy in the introduction to her recipe for chilaquiles, a bubbling cauldron of which you can see above.  This recipe -- "a real peasant version that resembles a tortilla soup and is wonderfully robust" -- came originally from her maid, Godileva, and is full of fatty chorizo, queso fresco, tortillas, and chile sauce, topped off with a generous cup of crema.

Kennedy says chilaquiles makes good hangover food, and I believe it; you don't have to think when you eat, just shovel. Unfortunately, what I most like about Mexican food is how you customize every bite, how you can mix cool things with hot things, spicy with mild and creamy. I like the tiny bit of thinking involved when you eat even a plate of Chevy's nachos. I don't know if hearty stewishness is true of all chilaquiles, or just Godileva's version. Bayless's chilaquiles recipes look totally different -- one includes Swiss chard. Maybe I'll try that one this week.

Dessert, not quite a disaster, but close.

 

This is queso de Napoles (Neapolitan cheese) which Kennedy describes thusly: "a white delicate flan with a spongy, nutty layer at the bottom."

It contained egg whites (no yolks), milk, sugar, almonds, a caramel coating for the dish, and it reminded me of those old-fashioned lemon puddings in which the pudding separates into a foamy layer and a creamy layer. Except this just wasn't right. For one thing, look at it; for another, no one objected when I suggested feeding the leftovers to the chickens. 

Speaking of the menagerie, our alpha cat, Emily, has expressed extreme displeasure with the unnamed new cat, and that makes us all sad because Emily is a strong, beautiful queen who will look you in the eye for hours and purr, then go off and catch giant rats. Krazy Kat is totally fine with the new cat, possibly because he now has an ally against Emily, who barely tolerates him. Or possibly because he is an incurious dolt who would accept a coyote into the household.

I'm still pissed at myself for letting this happen. The cats were coming and going, mewing and growling and scratching all night. It was a delight.

Kennedy: She pulls ahead with the enchiladas

You might need an MFA to attractively style and photograph Mexican food. 

I made enchiladas verdes last night using Diana Kennedy's recipe in From My Mexican Kitchen. They were filled with roasted poblano peppers and rotisserie chicken, sauced with tomatillo salsa, topped with queso fresco, lettuce, crema. 

I give this dish a perfect 10. 

It was also easy. Rick Bayless has his work cut out for him.

 

Slipping through my fingers

I was all set to go forward with Rick Bayless, but Diana Kennedy's banana vinegar recipe changed everything. I MUST make banana vinegar. 

So, I'm going to do both Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy. Like a bakeoff, at the end of which I will know, once and for all, who is the #1 Mexican cookbook writer. I've wondered for years. 

Last night's meal confirmed that Mexican cooking is an ordeal. We had chicken enchiladas with tomatillo salsa, rice, and guacamole. My able assistant and I used every saucepan and skillet in the house, plus the Cuisinart, and the dishes were not all washed until mid-morning.

I also made margaritas, which I rarely do and never should, but just did again.

Speaking of margaritas, a commenter directed me to this site. Uncanny! I am not drawn to her margaritas (Corona???? frown.) but she did a really amazing job with her macarons.