What IS my cooking?

happy homework days are here again

On our last night in Wales we were sitting under an umbrella in the garden of a grotty pub waiting for our fish n’ chips as hundreds of shrieking sea gulls wheeled overhead. (“We’re not responsible for what the gulls do,” the dour barman had said before suggesting we sit under that umbrella.) Looking anguished, Isabel said, “I really can’t wait to get home so I can eat food I like.”

 “Aha!” I said. “So you do miss my cooking!”

She studied me for a moment then replied, “You never make the same thing twice. I don’t even know what your cooking is.”

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth. Isabel wasn't being 100% fair, as I pointed out to her. I make the same green salad almost every night and the same kale salad every couple of weeks. Same pesto, same brownies, same popovers, same carnitas, same cole slaw, same cornbread, same pancakes, the list is long. But there was truth in her words. When I started this blog, I became obsessed with trying new recipes. And it's been big, big fun.

Since returning home from vacation, I’ve cooked only recipes that I've tried before. As an experiment and to silence critics. Is it a coincidence that I’ve only written one blog post in two weeks?

Here’s what I’ve learned:

A lot of the dishes I tried once and chirped about in recent years didn't sit well on second making. A short list of recipes that didn’t survive round two: Ed Lee’s piggy burgers from Smoke and Pickles, Smitten Kitchen’s gnocchi in tomato broth, Smitten Kitchen’s red wine velvet cake, Smitten Kitchen’s Mexican-style eggs. There were no outright failures here, but for whatever reason, we changed our minds about all of these dishes.

A few recipes held up beautifully. Smitten Kitchen’s immense and cheesy eggplant calzone was even more popular the second time than the first. Also great: The cocoa-cumin tri-tip from Eat Good Food and Dorie Greenspan’s chocolate gingerbread. 

You don't really know a dish until you've made it a few times. I didn't really know any of these dishes and it makes sense that some of them lost their luster on closer acquaintance. It was only when I started mining the deep past that I began consistently digging up treasures. Pre-blog, I had what some people call “a rotation.” Easy, reliable dishes that I made again and again. Unsurprisingly, everything from this pool of recipes has been fabulous. Roughly once a week I used to serve Marcella Hazan’s famous chicken with lemons. How did I live without it all these years? I made it last week, I’m making it again tonight, and if you've never had it, you must try it. Rub a roasting chicken all over with kosher salt (under the skin, on the skin, in the cavity) and let it sit in your refrigerator overnight. Then proceed with Hazan’s recipe. 

I also took another pass at Hazan’s messy, time-consuming eggplant parmesan, a dish I loved in the 1990s. I reminded everyone in my family of how much they enjoyed Smitten Kitchen's eggplant calzone and referred to this as "eggplant lasagna." Despite my efforts, it didn't go over well. I sat there crowing about how good it was while they all tried to separate the eggplant from the cheese, which is like trying to enjoy an omelet without consuming any egg. The recipe is excellent, you just need the right audience.

More popular was the mulligatawny soup from Julie Sahni’s Classic Indian Cooking. No complaints from any quarter, despite the fact that it contains parsnips and lots of curry powder. Last night we had Yunnanese pork from The Seductions of Rice. That was a big favorite back in the day and I would say it's a big favorite today. Try it. There are few easier dinners. 

So why haven’t I felt compelled to post about any of this? I'm not sure. Maybe it's that I find it a little boring. Where's the adventure? Where's the learning curve? I like novelty and excitement and growth, which is great. But on some level my relentless kitchen experimentation over the last eight years has been very selfish. This is part of what Isabel was saying and why it made me defensive. What I need to do in the future is find a better balance. 

A funny little party

 A new photojournalistic low, but I don't like to post pictures of people without asking. That would have meant explaining what a blog is. Maybe even the internet. Maybe even computers.

It’s hard to do justice to the charm and oddity of the ESL class where I volunteer once a week as an aide, but I’ll give it a shot.

Picture a group of (mostly) senior citizens just about evenly divided between sophisticated Iranians and working class Latin Americans. There’s so little cultural overlap between the two groups, it’s not even like apples and oranges. It’s like apples and shiitake mushrooms. A couple of the Iranian women dress like movie stars from the 1960s. A couple of the Latin American men are illiterate. One woman has Alzheimer’s. Another hobbles along with a cane. A few students are very earnest and motivated and a few of them come only to socialize. But everyone likes Wenceslao, a cheerful Salvadoran who wears a hat, plays the accordion, and has something like 57 grandchildren. Personal charisma transcends culture.

The end-of-term party on Wednesday was sweet and, well, a little funky. Mohammed brought Iranian CDs and played them very loud. He and Fatemeh danced for a while. Mohammed was an accountant in Iran and now breaks down boxes on the nightshift at Safeway. “But I’m happy!” he said, happily. I talked to Orfelina and Isila about the difficulties of making pupusas and Orfelina said she doesn’t stuff them, just mixes all the filling ingredients with the masa and fries ‘em up. Adolfo gave me a can of Coca-Cola for Mother’s Day. 

I'd brought in my two Persian cookbooks for vetting by the Iranian ladies, who dismissed The New Persian Kitchen, winner of the 2014 Piglet, but approved of the stout, encyclopedic New Food of Life by Najimieh Batmanglij. (I think New Persian Kitchen is too slim and contemporary for old-timers.) Najar had cooked a lentil dish for the party and Fatemeh had prepared a platter of really tasty baqala polow (rice with dill and fresh fava beans), a recipe for which I found on page 162 of Food of Life. Rosario, who is Mexican and whose front teeth are capped in gold, contributed a big foil container of very soft spaghetti.

Boy, did I eat. I ate like someone who'd spent the morning baking and hadn’t consumed anything except coffee, brownie scraps, and blueberries as of 2 p.m. and now had a splitting headache. I ate and ate and soon the headache was gone.

I ended up bringing a bunch of old favorites: these Essential New York Times Cookbook brownies, the Flour banana bread, Marcella Hazan’s (gluten-free) almond macaroons, and some cut butter cookies from Alice Waters’Art of Simple Food. 

All winners, except the butter cookies. I’d always frosted them before and learned that without frosting they’re not sweet enough.

Sometimes I wonder how I ever found myself in this strange, delightful group of people for whom I feel so much affection, but the answer is simple: I answered a Craiglist ad back in December. One of my best decisions of 2013. 

She's no mall rat

I need to correct an error from a previous post. Isabel wanted to go to the mall strictly to buy Secret Santa presents; she and her friend had no other agenda. I was wrong to poke fun and will be more sensitive in the future.

We had a second "family" birthday party for her the other night, this one with my father and sister. Divorce may be hell on the kids, but it's a bonanza for the grandkids. Isabel didn't get to choose the whole menu, just the dessert.

We started with two easy appetizers out of Moro.

The paprika roasted almonds are billed as a "delicious accompaniment to a glass of chilled fino sherry." I'm sure they are.  I went to the Spanish Table today and looked at all the sherries and was impressed and fascinated by both the variety and the prices, but while I'm eager to learn more about sherry, I need to do more research before investing. 

Even without a glass of chilled fino, it's hard to pass up a roasted nut.

 

I also assembled some Manchego with membrillo (quince paste), one of the genius food pairings of all time.

I have enthused about Manchego and membrillo before and while it's not exactly a recipe, Moro finally taught me how to serve it properly -- in triangles cut to 1/8 the circumference of the cheese. Almost worth the price of the book. It would be interesting and thrifty to learn to make membrillo should our quince tree ever fruit.

 

For the main course: Moro's pork loin braised in milk, which is similar to the incredible Marcella Hazan version. If you are unfamiliar with Hazan's dish, you should to try it immediately -- recipe is reprinted here.  I prefer Macella's to the Moro version as she permits the use of pork butt while Moro is very specific about pork loin, a cut that, as always, I found pallid and dry. Justine says she's coming around on pork loin, that when she eats pork butt she feels sick afterwards. I wonder if this is because it's fattier or because it's so much better that she eats more.

Dessert was a fat-free angel food cake that used up a jar of egg whites.

Isabel did not approve of this frumpy, unadorned cake and requested I make some rocky road ice cream to go with. Which I did (David Lebovitz recipe, awesome), because she's a lovely daughter and a girl only has three thirteenth birthday parties.