Fat: Some preliminaries

I had one Irish great-grandmother who was supposedly kind of bossy and mean, which is fitting because she certainly had bossy genes. All of my life people have stopped me on the street to ask if I'm Irish. Even though I'm (mostly) not, I smile and nod, because they're proud of themselves for making the call and it's a fine thing to be. But then, what isn't?

Last night, to mark St. Patrick's Day, my father had us all up to his house. I was in a dark and reckless mood and consumed, in large quantities:

corned beef

soda bread

Guinness ice cream float (it was actually delicious)

Shamrock-shaped cookies

Bushmill's whiskey

In tiny quantities:

cabbage

carrots

Today, I'm fasting in penance and preparation for launching into Jennifer McLagan's Fat tomorrow. The challenge with this book will be acquiring essential ingredients which include marrow bones, caul fat, suet, kidneys, duck fat, leaf lard. I've found sources for some of this, but not, for instance, caul fat. Another issue: McLagan offers a number of enticing sausage recipes, and I'm considering buying a grinding/sausage stuffing attachment for my mixer. We're not rolling in cash at this moment, but I've always wanted one. Yes or no?

On a related topic, I'm putting us on a food budget. For the next few weeks, I'm just keeping track of what we spend so we have a baseline. It'll be embarrassing, I'm sure. Trying to figure out what a family of four should be shelling out for food is a fraught and fascinating question to which none of the so-called experts have the same answer.

Finally, I finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which petered out in the end but still: great. One of the novel's two narrators is obsessed with something called "gloutof," which she describes as a "rather voracious Alsatian cake." (Can you use voracious that way? I don't think so.) She says, "Everything that is dry and heavy about Alsace is transformed. . . into an aromatic masterpiece."

I had to know more about this incredible cake, started looking for recipes online, and found nothing but indignant French comments on Amazon saying that "gloutof" n'existe pas and what she really means is "koglhopf." For which, as you can see from the poll on the right, McLagan just happens to offer an unusual recipe, one I find not the least bit tempting. 

 

Because there's more to life than food. . .

The full circle of a reading life:

5-11: read strictly for pleasure, decent books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Beverly Cleary, P.L. Travers, etc.

11-16: read strictly for pleasure and sex education, crappy books by John Jakes, Judith Krantz, Sidney Sheldon, etc.

16-22: read mostly for self-discovery, books of dubious quality by Herman Hesse, Carl Jung, Robert Pirsig, etc. Self remains undiscovered.

 

22-37: read mostly for self improvement, any book by any moderately serious writer who lives or ever lived. Occasionally read strictly for pleasure (P.D. James, Ruth Rendell) plus compulsive rereadings of the complete works of Barbara Pym. 

37-42: read exclusively for job. During vacations read anxiously and ambitiously to fill holes in reading so as never to appear stupid. Fail. Though not infrequent, pleasure is strictly coincidental.

42: career as book critic over. Valiantly struggle through 2666. Try to read The Dark Side. Try to read American Lion. Try to read Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life. Fail. For several weeks, in confusion, look at the pretty pictures in Jamie at Home and do not read at all.

43: pick up The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Forget everything but funny, transporting, juicy novel. Until further notice, read strictly for pleasure.

What should I read next?

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Earnest Summation

First, the stats.

I made 63 dishes out of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Worth the price of the book: 7

Great: 13

Good: 25

So-so: 18

Flat-out bad: 0

A stunning performance. Although Alice Waters' Art of Simple Food scored a tiny bit better, I prefer How to Cook Everything Vegetarian for its scope, imagination, flexibility, and general friendliness. Mark Bittman's recipes are easy and mostly wonderful. Not a single complete dud out of 63 recipes? Dude.

A few criticisms: There are a number of trivial errors in here, repetitions, discontinuities, obvious goofs. For instance, in the intro to his recipe for cheese shortbread: "After just one of these crisp, melt-in-your mouth snacks you'll never want another of those bright orange cheese puffs (gougeres.)" 

I think he means Cheetos. Particularly because he published a recipe for gougeres in How to Cook Everything where he describes them as "almost perfect finger food."

Significant? Of course not. This is small stuff in a great, fat, generous book. He's bitten off a lot here, which is admirable. He just needs a proofreader.

Other little problems: I don't like his breads. Maybe because he's wedded to his food processor and I'm wedded to my stand mixer, his recipes never work for me. (Question: Is there's a gender divide over processor vs. mixer? I decided there may be after spending a month with Bittman and then reading this. Any smart girl in that boy's situation would get money out from under the mattress, go to Target, and buy a mixer just like her grandma has on the formica counter back in Brigham City. The girl knows it's a lifelong investment; the boy thinks it's. . . effeminate? bourgeois? money better spent on a meat grinder or fancy knives or a Bose radio? Silly boys.)

Back to Bittman: While his breads disappoint me*, I have other cookbooks I can use for baking. And if you really want to delve deeply into a specific cuisine, or a specific dish, or bread, you should go to a dedicated cookbook anyway. Bittman is a generalist. He's not aiming for the most authentic, best-of-show saag paneer, or tamale, or sandwich bread. What he wants is to give you the confidence and know-how to make not so much everything as anything, using ingredients you might find at Stop & Shop. He's an enabling cook, not a prissy standard-bearer, and we need that.

I don't want to leave the impression there aren't spectacular recipes in this volume. Because there are. Just when you think "everything" is pretty good, but never spectacular,  you stumble across some recipe so casually dazzling and scrumptious that you want to write it on your kitchen wall. For me, that was the nut chutney, page 784, one of the most crazy delicious things I've ever tasted. Over a few days, I ate almost the whole recipe myself, which has not helped my slimming regimen. Worth the price of the book three times over. (Though I only counted it once.)

*I don't include his phenomenal no-knead bread in this criticism. I've made said bread, as has half the world, and it's truly a miracle, even though it melted the knob off my dutch oven. The no-knead bread doesn't appear in this book. 

Eating Down the Fridge: I think I've actually gained weight

This Challenge is turning out to be a nonevent in our (apparently) grossly overstuffed house. We're out of sugar and we're running low on milk, but won't even touch the lentils, the canned clams, the latke mix, the evaporated milk, the mung beans, the onions, the potatoes, the green tomato chutney, the garbanzo flour, etc.

As of last night, I'm officially done with Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. It's a masterpiece, though the final meal was a bit weak:

-Tempeh with rice and spinach. Owen likes tempeh, so I bought another 8 oz package last week. It cost $2.79, which, as I've pointed out, is more per pound than ground beef. But tempeh is its own, yummy, crunchy, nutty thing, and it's grown on me. I see the point. It was not, however, at at its best in this dish, a lemony, spinach-laden gruel. That was my opinion, anyway. Curiously, Mark and Owen liked it. 

-Carrots with raisins and dates. Carrots already fall in the "possibly too sweet" category, and don't need gooey fruits to underline the point. 

Summation of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian coming soon. 

Eating Down the Fridge: If we run out of something it will be sugar

A few months ago, I read an inspiring story about the varied flavors of different sugars written by the visionary chef at Coi, a San Francisco restaurant where I ate one of the most bizarre, beautiful meals of my life (it included a savory pistachio marshmallow, about which I had mixed feelings.) Shortly thereafter, I bought a sack of palm sugar and a bottle of agave nectar, put them in the cupboard, and forgot about them.

Now, of course, there's the Challenge. 

I've been a long-time lurker at 101 Cookbooks, the lovely, lovely, LOVELY  blog produced by Heidi Swanson. I'm fascinated and awed by people who calmly order their diets (and, I nervously suspect, their lives) around a set of wise and rational principles. Swanson appears to be such a one. I'm not going to run myself down -- I'm mostly fine with me -- but my body is not my temple, it's my playground and I sometimes worry that's an enormous mistake. Never more so than when I spend too much time at 101 Cookbooks.  Swanson uses only wholesome foods, like millet and honey and spinach and spelt, and her dishes always look wonderful. But until yesterday I never made any of them. I don't know why. Maybe I suspected my palate might be too crass; would her banana chip cookies or vegetarian split pea soup be fatty/salty/sweet enough for my greedy self?

But I had some agave nectar to use and I remembered her post about black bean brownies that contain no flour, very little butter, a cup of pureed beans, and nectar. Yesterday I baked them.

 

How were they? Weirdly, I found them far too sweet. Everyone ate them, and, yes, I revealed the secret ingredient. The beans aren't the problem, it's the agave nectar that makes them, to me, at least, cloying and sticky, the syrupy nectar overriding even the usually alpha chocolate. I would be willing to experiment further with agave nectar, but the bottle is now empty. 

On to palm sugar. Sampling it out of the bag, my first thought was: dirty. It tastes of caramel, and coffee, and engine grease, and earth. But funkiness can grow on a person, as with pinot noir, gorgonzola, truffles. I decided to substitute palm for white sugar in Mark Bittman's buttermilk ice cream on the theory that the tart buttermilk would make a great, counterintuitive partner for the eccentric, tropical sugar.

It didn't. Owen took one bite, said, "Nope, I don't like this," and walked away. My mother and I ate ours, and agreed that it wasn't awful, but it wasn't right. Buttermilk just isn't the girl for palm sugar. 

I remain convinced that he can find happiness; I'm trying this recipe next.

Eating Down the Fridge: It would take 6 months to eat down this fridge

I've been remiss in describing our meals since starting the (still unchallenging!) Challenge. I'll stick to dinners.

Sunday: leftovers

Monday: defrosted Kenny Shopsin chili served over macaroni

Tuesday: spaghetti with Marcella Hazan's tomato-butter sauce. I had planned something more elaborate and non-pasta, but schedule did not permit.

Which brings us to Wednesday, when my mother comes over and we always make fresh pasta. Pasta three nights in a row. The children were thrilled.

Isabel has a thing for pumpkin ravioli and while we don't have a root cellar full of pumpkins, let alone a root cellar, we had some sweet potatoes so decided to make sweet potato ravioli using Mark Bittman's recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Personally, I'm not crazy about whipped, yammy things, but can be objective: these were very good for what they were trying to be. Sauce: melted butter and toasted pumpkin seeds.

I'll write about the incredible foraged salad and interesting palm sugar ice cream in separate posts. Since I had one sweet potato left, this morning I made sweet potato biscuits from Beth Hensperger's Bread Bible, which is truly a bible. The biscuits are easy, pretty, and, everyone agreed, fantastically delicious. You can find the recipe right here. 

Eating Down the Fridge: Food Wars, Part XXVII

That's Owen, yesterday, trying to finish his homework and eat the 4-grain pancakes I made out of the Joy of Cooking. According to the notes in the margin, I first made these in August '06 and the kids "loved" them, probably because they are full of honey and cinnamon and taste like oatmeal cookies.  Mark rolled his eyes when he watched me mixing the cornmeal, oats, and wheat flour, but once again Owen "loved" them. Isabel, for whatever reason, did not partake.

So, this morning I pulled out the remaining batter and Isabel said: "I don't like pancakes with oats in them."

I then turned to Mark and asked, "Would you like some?"

He said: "I don't like wheat pancakes."

A vision of loveliness I was, standing there with uncombed hair and mismatched pajamas, holding a bowl of batter and shrilly berating my husband. Betty would never scold Don, nor allow him to see her in such disarray. I accused Mark of "poisoning the well," but I think what I meant was "poisoning the minds of our children." I hadn't poured my first cup of coffee and was not mentally agile.

Lately there's developed a little conspiracy between Isabel and Mark to make fun of me and my cooking. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand: infuriating. It's unhelpful for a grown man (George H. W. Bush is included in this indictment) to boast of narrow food preferences in front of children, pointing out the gory aspect of beets, the hatefulness of broccoli, a distaste for whole grains, etc. 

On the other hand, dissent is healthy in any political regime and I like to think of the kitchen as a benevolent dictatorship with me, naturally, serving as wise and revered president-for-life. I don't want anyone to seriously challenge my supremacy, God forbid, and maybe the best way to avoid that is to give my subjects some freedom. Let the peons doodle mustaches on my image and quietly hum the Internationale so long as they show up at the dinner table and obey.

 

Plus, if it brings them closer together, cements a father-daughter bond to resist Mother and sneak cans of Chunky classic chicken noodle soup into the house during the Challenge (which they totally did yesterday) then pretend to "find" them on the pantry floor, maybe it serves the greater good. They can chortle about their hijinks for years to come, beside the fire, around the Thanksgiving table, laughing through uncontrollable tears at my memorial service. Yes, I want that for them.

Owen didn't hear the pancake commentary and is enjoying his pancake breakfast as I type. I intend to recruit the little boy to my side. 

Eating Down the Fridge: I got creative

Two days into the (so far) unchallenging Challenge, we've been mostly eating as we normally would. Last night I heated some frozen chili from the Kenny Shopsin era and poured it on macaroni. Sophisticated!

For dessert, Isabel and I invented a cake.

A few weeks ago, a friend wrote on Facebook about how she grinds the freeze-dried strawberries from Trader Joe's and folds them into angel food cake batter. I tried her formula and it was tasty, though the flavor wasn't quite emphatic enough for me. Still, the concept had possibilities. Last night Isabel and I were making angel food cake and I remembered the crystallized rose petals someone gave me, and which I have never known how to use.

Now I did. We ground them up in the food processor. . .

and then folded the powder into the batter.

The results were amazing. Not delicious, but amazing. The cake was soft and collapsed when I took it out of the pan so it was more of a fluffy pink mound than a cake.

Also, it was a little like eating a heavy perfume, even for someone as fond of rose flavoring as I.

But all these problems can be fixed! What matters is that I successfully imported rose flavor and color into a cake. Now, I just have to tinker.

The question is, does anyone in the world but me even want a rose angel food cake?

Do I even want a rose angel food cake?

Eating Down the Fridge: Still alive

Day one of the experiment went fine. Little to note except the sourdough bread I baked using Mark Bittman's starter, Beth Hensperger's recipe from The Bread Bible, and whey instead of water. I've always liked the recipe, but this may be the best batch I've made, lofty and handsome and basically perfect. Attributable to whey? Can't be sure. I baked two big loaves and less than 24 hours later, one is gone.

I asked Owen take a neat, careful bite out of his toast before I photographed it this morning. Mark and Isabel made a mockery of my efforts. They think they're so sly.

But teasing is easy, people. It's food styling that's hard. 

Eating Down the Fridge: Obviously we won't starve

Disgraceful.

The challenge starts today. I have mixed feelings because I like having split peas and yucky canned clams in our pantry. If there's an earthquake, we will find sustenance. Why compulsively eat it all up?

On the other hand, foodstuffs I thought were imperishable have perished, or become hatcheries for moths. And dried beans have turned into pebbles. I guess it's okay to eat everything up so long as we replenish. 

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Leftovers with benefits

Last night we reheated Indian leftovers and I added a couple of dishes to fill it out, all from Bittman. Thanks to Layne, I used whey to make chapatis, a rustic, tortilla-like Indian flatbread that made a sturdy platform for dal and nut chutney. I don't know if the chapatis were better because of the whey, but they were delicious.

Also made the brussels sprouts with coconut milk, a recipe I'd been eyeing since I first opened this book. It goes to show how food combinations can surprise you. I love coconut, I love brussels sprouts, but they have no chemistry. It was just a wrong marriage, the coconut wanting to be all unctuous and tropical, the repressed sprouts unable to loosen up. And why should they? They're nice and dignified the way they are; everyone doesn't have to dance the samba.

So, we're at the end of our successful How to Cook Everything Vegetarian experiment, though I'm going to make a few more straggler dishes from the book over the next few days. (The summation will come when we're done done.) Meanwhile, there was a piece introducing a new vegetarian column in the New York Times that caught my attention last week. The author writes that vegetarianism is having its moment whether because of "health, ethics, concern for the planet or pure whimsy."

Is it true vegetarianism is having its moment? There are certainly fewer in my world than there were twenty years ago, but that could be age and suburbia. What really stopped me, though, was her list of reasons. She doesn't mention economics. I get bent out of shape when chickpeas cost more than $1.79/pound but think $20/lb. salmon is a steal. I'll never be a vegetarian for any of the reasons she cites, but I think we'll be eating a lot of meatless meals in the near future because of the price. 

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: You're better off with Madhur Jaffrey

Cheese again, another of Mark Bittman's chewy paneers. I brought the children home from school via the supermarket and while I was unloading groceries, like horses to the barn they headed straight for the computer, leaving me to carry everything in. Little pashas, they are. I called them to the kitchen and gave them an embarrassing lecture about hard times and pitching in around the house and how I want them to be the kind of kids who help unload the groceries without being asked.  It went over like a platter of pig's ear salad. Isabel was unmoved and faintly scornful ("We GET it, Mom!") and Owen grew tearful and promptly vowed to help me with all my domestic chores. Which was sad. It turns out he's actually been listening intently to our conversations about jobs and money while pretending to play mindlessly with his light saber. He's a flake, but also a major worrier.

I put him to work stirring the paneer and lest this sound like an episode of The Waltons, he was soon whining that his arm ached and after the cheese was done, disappeared.

It has been frustrating me to pour all the whey from making cheese down the drain. The picture below is of whey. Got that? It's whey.

But what to do with it. The other day I was reading Anne Mendelson's authoritative and engrossing Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk through the Ages and she suggests you drink whey: "It is delicious poured over ice with a pinch each of salt and crushed dried mint. . ." I'm not going to do that, but she also includes a recipe for bulgur pilaf cooked with whey and I am going to do that.

Anyway, we had what may be the final all-How to Cook Everything Vegetarian meal and it included: 

-biryani, the classic Indian rice dish, into which I put the paneer. I crave paneer and bland cheese almost as much as I do spicy food. A cube of essentially flavorless paneer, ricotta, or fresh mozzarella -- so restful, like a white room. 

-dal. The best recipes for dal call for frying the spices, ginger and garlic before adding to the lentils, which softens their pungency. Bittman, in his usual streamlining style, skips the tempering step and has you put everything in the pot all at once, which yields a harshly flavored dal. I often appreciate the way he simplifies recipes, but this is one corner that shouldn't be cut.

-aloo paratha/flaky potato flatbreads for which the recipe was not detailed enough. A diagram of how to roll these out would have helped immensely. I winged it and these were a mess, with mashed potato filling squishing out of the wheaty little discs. They were actually tasty this way because the bits of extruded potato acquired a delectable, crispy crust, but: not quite right.

-nut chutney. Yummy ground cashews and spices, a crunchy sprinkle rather than a jam or sauce. Like I've always imagined dukka. 

-mint and cilantro chutney. Fiery, damp, green. 

-honey spice cake. The one dud so far in Bittman's astonishing cake section, porous and dry. ((UPDATE: Changed mind. The cake was perhaps too modest to serve after a big dinner, but I just had another piece and it's great. More of a daytime cake. I am trying to resist getting another slice.)) 

I go back to what I said the last time I made an Indian meal from Bittman: you're better off with an Indian cookbook. Everything was fine, but Indian food can be so much better than fine. 

Housekeeping

I want to try this "Eating Down the Fridge" challenge next week, which I found after following a trail of crumbs from Mark Bittman's blog. Sounds like a fun game and a fine segue from How To Cook Everything Vegetarian because some of the ingredients we will have to "eat down" are items purchased expressly to cook from Bittman's book. Like vital wheat gluten.  

Also, I love the idea of no food shopping for seven days. During the time saved I may write a novel. Should the heroine be a disheveled out-of-work book critic germinating rhubarb seeds* in her living room, or a lithe redhead prowling for a mate in pre-meltdown Manhattan? 

Really. You think?

Another also: I've picked the next cookbook to review, which is Fat by Jennifer McLagan. I flipped through it yesterday and it's irresistible, full of challenges and novelty and humor and delicious-sounding food that is a little weird, but not (to me) off-puttingly so. The first meal I want to make will consist of marrow bones, steak and kidney pudding and brown butter ice cream. McLagan's introduction: "Jack Sprat was wrong!"

My kids will be dismayed. I think crabby Regina Schrambling would approve of my screw-the-kids approach to cuisine. I'm not sure even I approve of that approach, but why change horses.

One more thing: This post about Alice Waters/elitism/food policy is fascinating and super-smart. Especially the last line. 

 

*they live! I have nine tiny rhubarb plants. I wish it would warm up so we could move this awkward operation outdoors.

Forget Fraulein Maria, I'll take the Baroness

A few years ago I thought I'd discovered the perfect drink. My wicked friend Lisa made me a brandy sidecar and overnight I went from wine-loving innocence to drinking exactly two brandy sidecars every night. Here's how you make a brandy sidecar: 1/3 cup brandy, half as much Cointreau, the juice of a lemon. After you've juiced the lemon, run it around the rim of a martini glass and dip the glass in sugar. Shake the cocktail in ice until very cold. Strain into glass. You'll definitely want another, but must absolutely stop at two or you will behave foolishly, awake with a hangover, and get really fat.

After a year, I decided: enough with this nonsense. I stopped buying brandy so I couldn't make sidecars.

I quickly learned one could make an even better sidecar -- one with a more voluptuous, smoky flavor -- using the bourbon I had in the cupboard. See recipe above, but substitute Maker's Mark. 

Another year passed, during which I drank exactly two bourbon sidecars every night. I even got my mother hooked -- she called them "those drinks of yours" -- though she's the kind of person who can have a sidecar at my house and never import the bad habit into her own orderly home.  

After a year: enough with this nonsense. I stopped buying Cointreau so I couldn't make any sidecars whatsoever.

I quickly learned one could make another marvelous drink with bourbon, sweet vermouth, and a maraschino cherry. The manhattan isn't as flirty and approachable as the sidecar, but it's a lot more interesting. It turned out that the sweet-tart sidecars were just training so I could appreciate this serious, world-beating cocktail.

Manhattans lasted about six months and then, enough of this nonsense, etc. but this time it actually worked. Until I recently got into the "joke" Old Crow which, I have to say, is vile. So I think the story really does end here. I don't want to be fat and get cancer and everything else rotten or just mediocre that goes with hard liquor.

These days, I almost never drink cocktails at home, but having a manhattan out is another story. I met my friend Melanie last night and she just had a beer which made me feel grimy and hardcore when I ordered my second manhattan (I believe in sets) but I'm too old to bend to peer pressure. 

I started thinking about the evolution in my taste in cocktails, which reminded me of my The Sound of Music odyssey. When I first saw it, like all kids, I hated the Baroness and thought Fraulein Maria was the prettiest woman in the world. Her twinkling eyes, her peachy skin, her clear, angelic voice. And her hair -- hair the color of apricots, though so badly cut. Even an 8-year-old can recognize a stupid cut. But still: beautiful.

Years passed, I bore children, they acquired a Sound of Music video which they watched several hundred times, as did I. But it was a completely different movie. Maria? What a simp. Clearly, it's the Baroness who has a soul, who knows life and suffering. She gets one eyeful of Maria and the Captain dancing that Austrian folk dance and realizes there's even more suffering in store for her, even if she does successfully scare off the ninny governess. She's wise enough to know to try, and, later, when to give up. 

Who would I rather have a drink with? Obviously, Christopher Plummer, but if he weren't available, the Baroness. Of course! She is the manhattan. Maria isn't even a sidecar, she's a Shirley Temple. Though to be fair, that was the character. If you read Julie A's memoir you'll never think of her in quite the same way. In life, definitely a sidecar, perhaps even a manhattan with a few extra cherries.

Anyway, today I have a mammogram which always makes me regret all of it, every single lousy drink.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Beans & Rice, repeat, repeat, repeat

I read recently that you should never use a flash when photographing food, and since I am usually cooking after dark this has put a cramp in my blogging style. I may have to go back to old, amateurish ways. Meanwhile, sadly unillustrated, the march through Mark Bittman's estimable How to Cook Everything Vegetarian proceeds.

SUNDAY DINNER:

black beans with orange, white rice, spicy no-mayo cole slaw, cornmeal poundcake with coconut glaze

  

Comments: Much loved by everyone, though Mark thinks "no-mayo cole slaw" is an oxymoron. Another phenomenal Bittman cake. 

MONDAY BREAKFAST:

bran muffins 

Comments: The batter was like thin soup. I ladled it into the muffin tins and hoped for the best, but there was nothing to keep the raisins from all sinking to the bottom. Otherwise: adequate.

MONDAY RANDOM: 

rich golden bread

Comments: Bittman is a lover of the slashing food processor in bread making, while I remain a devotee of the gentle stand mixer. We may never see eye to eye.

MONDAY DINNER:

fast braised tofu with tempeh, white rice, stir-fried broccoli, chocolate bread pudding 

Comments: Bittman describes this tofu dish as a vegan version of ma po tofu with tempeh standing in for the ground pork. It didn't remind me of ma po tofu at all, but was lovely in its own right. Here's the bizarre part: Owen almost threw himself off the deck the last time I served tofu, but last night he bent his face over his plate and shoveled it into his mouth the way old Chinese men slurp noodles. He's either going through a growth spurt or has a short memory. Definitely needs a lesson in table manners. Chocolate bread pudding was supremely easy and delicious, though Mark criticized its "unsightly" appearance. I believe he prefers his desserts to come out of a vending machine.

 

Economic Indicator

Mark bought this for me five years ago as a joke. A joke in the spirit of, who would every drink this cheap swill?

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Tempeh chili & saffron ice cream

Mark was not fond of Mark Bittman's tempeh chili, which he deemed strange and too spicy. He decided he would rather have a bowl of cornflakes, and did. I thought the chili was terrific, and ate his leftovers, then dished the rest of the pot into little tupperware containers, labeled them and put them in the freezer for future lunches. I am always putting things in the freezer and almost never take them out. Let this not be the fate of the yummy tempeh chili.

I do have doubts about tempeh. I liked its nutty flavor and I didn't miss meat in the chili at all, but the packets of tempeh I bought (wrapped in two layers of naughty plastic) cost more per pound than premium Whole Foods beef. While I understand that for vegans and vegetarians tempeh is a valuable source of protein, does it really makes sense for the rest of us?

Kids came home from Spaghetti Bingo (fun! everyone was there!) in time for dessert, which was saffron ice cream, a buttercup-yellow ambrosia that I kept patting myself on the back for producing. 

Mark thought it was "weird." 

Tempeh Chili or Spaghetti Bingo? That's a tough choice.

So efficient tonight. The cornbread is ready to bake, the saffron ice cream base is mixed, and I was standing there at the stove a few minutes ago stirring Mark Bittman's tempeh chili when the phone rang. (That's tempeh -- a.k.a. fermented soybean cake -- in the photo.) It was Isabel's best friend inviting her to Spaghetti Bingo at the community center. Before I had even set down the phone, my sister called, inviting Owen to. . .  Spaghetti Bingo. 

What is up with Spaghetti Bingo???? In all my years living in this fancy pants town, this is the first I've heard of Spaghetti Bingo. And tomorrow night there's a crab feed at the retirement home down the hill. A crab feed. What next, a pancake breakfast?

Bizarre. I love it! Isn't Spaghetti Bingo what they did in the Depression, when people hung together and had good values? Or was that soup lines? 

I should have scrapped dinner and gone to Spaghetti Bingo, but I'm just not spontaneous like that. So here I sit in an empty house awaiting a husband who is riding the commuter bus as I type and will be delighted beyond all measure, I'm sure, to come home to a bubbling pot of tempeh chili.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Fettuccine Alfredo & Raw Beets

I borrowed that picture from Disney, but they can have it back any time they ask. It's a caricature of Alfredo di Lelio, the Roman restaurateur who invented fettuccine alfredo in 1914 to soothe the stomach of his pregnant wife. Or so says the internets. 

Very proud of last night's fettuccine alfredo dinner, which I made from scratch using Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Two reasons for pride:

1. Spinach pasta. First time ever, huge hit. It was a little gnarly rolling this out because the dough was super-sticky even after copious additions of extra flour, but we muddled through and the results were a brilliant grass green and ridiculously delicious.

2. Wicked alfredo sauce. I've never had an alfredo this good. I attribute its excellence to the eggs that Bittman has you whisk into the warmed pasta bowl along with cream and a mountain of Parmesan. Yes. Horribly fattening. But great.

I also made Bittman's raw beet salad because I had this vision of a painterly red-and-green meal. My expectations for the salad were low, as I think of raw beets as a food people ate out of desperation while hiding from Nazis in Ukrainian barns.

But it turns out that raw beets you shred in a Cuisinart and dress in a mustardy vinaigrette make an earthy salad that is as tasty as it is bright. 

At least I thought so. I was the only one in the family willing to try it. 

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is an awesome book. I appreciate it more every day. While I don't feel any healthier and I'm definitely not slimmer, our food bills have dropped noticeably and precipitously during this meatless period and we've been eating really well.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Granola

Lovely, fragrant crunchy granola from How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. Sadly, my children do not love it. 

Sadly, I do.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Honey Sorbet

Mark Bittman loves to show how ingredients can be combined in infinite variations. So, instead of giving you discrete recipes for five different sorbets in How to Cook Everything Vegeterian, he provides a bare-bones chart with roughly 30 different sorbets formulas. 

The formula that caught my eye was the honey sorbet, which calls for melting a cup of honey in 2 cups hot water. That's it. Then you freeze it in your ice cream maker. 

I admit that my motivations were impure when I decided to make honey sorbet. I thought: This can not possibly work. And when it doesn't, I can analyze what such a clearly offhand, bad recipe, casually thrown into a chart, says about the work of Mark Bittman. 

Instead, I'm writing about one of the weirdest, most thrilling desserts ever alchemized in my kitchen.

At room temperature, honey is somewhat translucent; water is completely translucent. You mix them together and you have a see-through amber syrup that you envision freezing into an amber slush, probably not very delicious.

 

Not so. Churned and frozen, honey and water transform into a rich, opaque cream. See above. Doesn't that look like ice cream? No! Sorbet.

You have to really like honey and you won't want to eat a lot of this at one sitting, but it was altogether exquisite. A dazzling little jewel of a recipe that Bittman just inserted into a chart.

 

He's definitely casual, but not in a way I can criticize.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Indian Food

Here's an obvious criticism of Mark Bittman to balance out my rapturous review of this book: He's a know-it-all and -- surprise! -- doesn't actually know it all. 

The more specialized cookbooks you own, the less useful you'll find his work. 

For instance, if you want to make some snappy little crackers, Bittman supplies a serviceable recipe -- but you'll have better results with a dedicated baking book. Ditto for bread. And if you're planning an Indian banquet, he can help -- but his recipes won't be as delicious or varied as what you'll get from a volume with the words Bombay or Calcutta or Krishna in the title.  

On Oscar night, I served this passable Indian dinner from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian:

-Fresh cheese, spinach and yogurt (saag paneer). The homemade cheese was too dense and chewy. I've cross-referenced with Julie Sahni and hold theories as to why. Anyone truly interested can email me and I will reply at technical, didactic length. Also, the flavors in the spinach were off and Bittman has you create what amounts to a roux, which left a grainy brown film on the greens. Did I do something wrong? Maybe, but I was just following directions.

-Flaky Indian bread (paratha). I don't know where in his concise instructions Bittman errs, but I've made better flatbreads. Perhaps it's the concision that is the problem? These quasi tortillas were popular, but only because people love a homemade bread, however tough and drab and unflaky.

-Pineapple chutney. Juicy, hot, delelctable, tangy. Get your mind out of the gutter, people, I'm talking about a relish. Sheesh. Actually, I don't have any complaints about this. A yummy condiment I'd make again, unlike the rest of the meal.

Conclusion: Everything would have been better if I'd turned to Julie Sahni or Madhur Jaffrey or Niloufer Ichaporia King. I know this because it has been better.

BUT. . . I have rarely made anything quite so strange and magical as Bittman's honey sorbet, which we ate for dessert. More on this mysterious dish to follow.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Tuiles

So fetching, chocolate tuiles. See how cunning and sophisticated with the crushed pink peppercorns? Mark Bittman's idea. 

Too bad these weren't just a little more delicious, a little crispier, a little less leathery. 

That's the thing about glamorous food styling -- it's so often a lie. 

I'd rather eat a graham cracker. Trust me, so would you.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Crackers

Very stoked about Heath Ledger's Oscar win. Not so stoked about Mark Bittman's crackers. They were like a stale tortilla torn into random pieces, chewy and raggedy and kind of lame. Occasionally Mark Bittman is a bit too casual, but we can cut him some slack. After all, he's trying to tell us how to cook everything. I just don't feel this basic cracker recipe was his highest priority.

Problems: First, he says to roll the dough (flour, butter, water, salt) to 1/4 inch thick. But crackers need to be incredibly thin -- you know, wafer thin -- and anything close to 1/4 inch is too chunky. I rolled my crackers much, much thinner. Then he calls for baking at 400 for 10 minutes which barely warms even skinny crackers. 

It's kind of exciting to try to recreate a ubiquitous, taken-for-granted foodstuff you've always purchased in a box. I decided to compare the King Arthur Baker's Companion recipe, as one would think crackers would be a priority in a flour company company cookbook.

And so they were, though King Arthur mysteriously omits salt. I corrected this oversight. They properly advise rolling the dough to 1/16 of an inch, cutting in shapes, and baking for 25 minutes at 350. See tidy, superior crackers at left.

We had a lot of crackers.

Here's the crazy thing. I can't sell cookies or cake around here to save my life, but my children devoured the crackers, both kinds of crackers. It's hokey to gush about how much your kids loved a dish, but: oh well. Isabel ate maybe a dozen crackers. Owen had friends over and they ate crackers like popcorn while screening the 12 Farts of Christmas on YouTube.

Good times. 

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: A perfect cake

It needs a new name, but Mark Bittman's olive oil cake is one of the best, loveliest, simplest cakes I've ever baked, moist and fresh and brightly flavored and basically incredible. I served it for dessert after last night's fiasco of a dinner, and it really did make us all feel better.

Odd how I seem to be collecting these amazing cake recipes (cardamom cake, nutmeg cake, vanilla chocolate layer cake) because I never thought of myself as a cake person. So much for self-knowledge.

Here's Bittman's recipe, in my words:

ORANGE-OLIVE OIL CAKE 

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a 9x13 inch pan. 

2. In a bowl, combine 2 cups flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil with 3/4 cup sugar until creamy. It will be a beautiful celadon green color. Add 4 egg yolks and beat until thick and fluffy -- 7 minutes or so. 

4. Mix the dry ingredients into the batter, along with 1/3 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice and 2 teaspoons grated orange zest. 

5. In a separate bowl, beat 4 egg whites with 1/4 cup sugar until soft peaks form. Now stir this gently but thoroughly into the batter. It's not really possible to "fold" the egg whites into the batter, which will be very dense and heavy. You'll worry about losing all the air in your egg whites, but just do your best and it should be fine. Pour into pan, and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. 

6. Meanwhile, make a glaze by mixing 1/4 cup fresh orange juice, 1 1/2 teaspoons grated orange zest, 1/4 teaspoon vanilla, and 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar until smooth. As Bittman puts it, this "should be about the consistency of thick maple syrup." If it's too thin, add a bit more sugar, if it's too thick, a bit more juice.

7. Let the cake cool for a few minutes, then pour the glaze over the top while it's still in the pan. Cut into squares. Serves 12-16. 

I've got it in my head that I want to try a grapefruit version of this cake. And tangerine.

So, this is the first real recipe on Tipsy Baker. I was worried about copyright infringement, but a few weeks ago a newspaper food editor told me it's permissible to replicate a couple of recipes from a book when writing a review. I sure hope she's right. I was tempted to post the recipe for Bittman's excellent vanilla-chocolate layer cake, but had some issues with the frosting and wanted something really perfect on which to spend my recipe allotment. This cake is really perfect.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: There is still tofu under his chair

Last night was sad. I'm no longer permitted to photograph my children crying, a most proper rule, but I'm still allowed to describe such events. Owen pitched an epic fit over Mark Bittman's Provencal tofu. There was much sobbing, histrionic self-pity, haranguing, spluttering rage. I thought I'd remember his choicest lines because there were some beauties, but have forgotten everything except: "I'll have tasted every food by the time I'm TWENTY. I want to eat NORMAL foods, but you cook me things that no one else in America has even HEARD of." Spoken between gales of weeping.

I do feel for him. I realize I've occasionally been horrible and borderline abusive in the cooking department and I regret that. But last night's meal was tasty and truly inoffensive -- cubes of mild tofu in a sweet tomato-and-pepper sauce. I just wanted Owen to try one tiny cube! I want him to grow up and be big and strong! Like Popeye!

Anyway, he slyly dropped the chosen tofu cube under his chair when he thought I wasn't looking. He apparently doesn't realize I invented that trick.

I wasn't going to punish him; I thought it was funny. But his pride was so wounded at being caught that he grew hysterical, and once he starts down that slide he stays for the whole ride and all we can do is watch and make sure he doesn't swallow his tongue. Poor little guy.

Like I say, the tofu: lovely. Isabel had seconds. Easy, inexpensive, healthy, and I'd make it again except, see above. 

Bittman's recipe for polenta was even better and will henceforth be my standard. By far the best polenta I've ever cooked was Barbara Kafka's recipe that calls for stirring a cup-and-a-half of cream into the cornmeal. Breathtaking, but you really do feel, to quote Rhoda Morgenstern, that you might as well spread it directly on your thighs. Bittman makes his polenta with a modest amount of milk mixed in with the cooking water, just enough to transform the dish from austere gruel into something you might actually crave.

Dessert was so fabulous it's getting its own dedicated post.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Vanilla finally stands up for herself

Doesn't look like much, especially as iced in sloppy manner by me, but this was a marvelous and fascinating cake. 

Mark Bittman's chocolate vanilla layer cake contains both cocoa powder and a whole chopped up vanilla bean. I have never chopped up a vanilla bean, and when I read the recipe had to try it immediately. As I've said before, one of my problems with chocolate is that it overpowers all other flavors, especially shy ones, like vanilla. 

But maybe vanilla is not so shy as we had thought! The flavor of this cake was spectacular. It was definitely chocolatey, but there was this intense, warm vanilla presence unlike anything I've tasted before in a cake. Bittman describes it as a "perfumey and musky aroma" and I guess that will have to do, though I'm never sure about using the word "musky."

The cake contained little bits of soft vanilla bean that some people took for raisins. I think if you ground the bean in a food processor you could avoid this, though it wasn't really a problem.

I am now eager to chop up more vanilla beans and throw them in sugar cookies and shortbread and ice cream and if I buy them from amazon, I can actually afford to. No, I'm not shilling for amazon, I'm just shocked at how much cheaper they are in bulk from amazon than at the supermarket. I wonder if the amazon beans are any good.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Ravioli & frozen yogurt

Another Wednesday, another pasta night with my mother. Yesterday, she taught me how to make a whisky sour and showed Isabel how to stomp on egg shells until they're the perfect consistency for the worms in our new worm box. She's a great mom. 

Mark Bittman's pasta dough is supple and lovely, the filling for his spinach and ricotta ravioli superb. If we'd just made a butter or tomato sauce, all would have been well. But I was determined to make the walnut sauce which Bittman describes as "a rich, bread-thickened nut sauce that's unbelievable with stuffed pasta."

Mistake. The sauce was super-garlicky and rich and totally overpowered the delicate spinach ravioli. Don't know what he was thinking.

For dessert: blondies (identical to recipe in How to Cook Everything, but with a small amount of whole wheat flour subbed in) which were fine, and frozen yogurt.

 

Isabel and I are slightly obsessed with replicating Pinkberry frozen yogurt. If you've never had Pinkberry, imagine a tangy, snow-white cream with a pure, very sour yogurt flavor. Bittman's recipe calls for some yogurt, a little milk, sugar syrup and lemon rind. We omitted the lemon rind and you would think the resulting dish would taste purely of yogurt. And it did. Which is when I realized that Pinkberry tastes more like yogurt than yogurt does. How is that possible? An internet search quickly revealed things I didn't really want to know about Pinkberry. 

 

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Soon we will purchase a loom

Isabel, the cheesemaker. 

Now I just need to acquire a cow, and she can become a milkmaid.

Here's a crazy fact: miniature dairy goats are legal in Seattle -- yes, Seattle, where they invented coffee -- but not in my own backwater suburb. Is it not wrong that one can own three slavering, barking Rottweilers, but not a pair of tiny, bleating ungulates who trim back the fire hazard brush, fertilize the earth, and provide both milk and old-fashioned chores for 21st century children?

Well, obviously it is wrong.  

Back to the cheese. This was our second outing with Mark Bittman's ricotta. This time we made it with Straus organic whole milk, as opposed to supermarket 1%. Definitely softer and creamier, and again the flavor was vastly superior to the ricotta you can buy. Last week we did a side-by-side tasting with a tub I bought at Whole Foods and there was no comparison. Fresh homemade cheese is hard to beat.

Here's how you make ricotta, in my own words, based on the Bittman formula:

1. Slowly bring to a boil 1/2 gallon of milk (preferably whole), stirring constantly. Slowness and stirring are important because it will save you from having to scour scorched milk off the bottom of the pot, an ordeal that could turn you off ricotta making forever.

2. When the milk starts to rise up in the pot as if it's going to overflow, pour in 2 cups of buttermilk. Take off heat. Stir. Add a pinch of salt. 

3. The cheese will separate into curds and yellowish whey within 30 seconds or so. Let it get nice and clumpy. Pour into a strainer that you have lined with cheesecloth or a piece of clean white pillowcase.

4. Let the whey drain away gradually. You will have roughly 3 cups of excellent cheese to use in lasagna or ravioli or cake.

 

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Cheese souffle & maple cookies

That picture is such a cop-out, but my single photograph of last night's tawny souffle was problematic (too much hand in the shot) and when I tried to crop out the ugly, squished fingers, I completely ruined the composition:

See what I mean? 

This food styling business, an ongoing ordeal.

Now, to the cookbook at hand and the meal it yielded.

Mark Bittman doesn't invent recipes, he collects and adapts the recipes of others. Far from a failing, this is is the power of his work. He takes all the recipes that we know and love from celebrity chefs and our mothers' kitchens and tradition and cookbooks and then makes them a little more straightforward, excising the frills and fussy extra steps.

His cheese souffle from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is basically Julia Child's, though his makes a larger quantity and is considerably more concise. And like Julia's cheese souffle -- and every other souffle I've ever baked -- this one was easy, frugal, handsome, and tasty. As far as I can tell, it was a perfect souffle.

The trouble is that my children do not eat even perfect souffle. My husband is not crazy for perfect souffle. And even I would rather eat a perfect grilled cheese sandwich. The recipe is great; the problem is souffle. Or us.

Desserts have never been Bittman's forte, and its the weakest section of his otherwise outstanding How to Cook Everything. I was initially dismayed by the thin selection of sweets in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, but on closer examination -- exciting! Many of these recipes incorporate unusual flours and alternative sugars, which I find fascinating. For dessert, Isabel and I made Bittman's maple snaps which were sweetened with syrup and contained both wheat and rice flours. These were neither crisp nor "snappy" as Bittman had promised, but cakey and incredibly delicious.

Plain-looking, though. Would a little geranium flower garnish have helped the shot? Yes, I can now see that it would have.

As my friend Lisa says . . .

You know you are in an expensive hotel when they charge for wireless. 

Isabel and I were on a brief shopping-and-eating trip to Los Angeles with the aforementioned Lisa and her daughter, Juliet. I couldn't bring myself to pay the Loews Santa Monica another dime, so I didn't have internet for a few days.

Highlights from trip: 

1. Lunch at Spago, where we saw Wolfgang Puck in the worn, middle-aged flesh. The calzone with four cheeses was the best single dish I tasted the whole weekend and has inspired me to buy the Spago cookbook.

2. Pinkberry frozen yogurt. More than enough rhapsodies have been composed about this sublime, tangy frozen yogurt, all of them true.

3. Looking in a mirror at the Beverly Center I realized I was dressed exactly like an orthodox Jewish woman, except with an uncommonly lustrous and natural-looking wig.

Actually, #3 was a low point. I do find the modest attire of orthodox women -- the long skirts, flat shoes and dark cardigans -- appealing and elegant, as I do the clothing of the Amish. But I don't remember when, exactly, I chose that as my own particular fashion statement. 

Because I didn't.

Today: Rethinking my look, and picking up where I left off with Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. 

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: I have been remiss

We've made Mark Bittman's pizza and his mint chocolate chip ice cream and his pancakes. I attempted the recipe for fresh ricotta (yes) for use in his vegetable lasagna. The ricotta was amazing, but the real secret to great lasagna: homemade pasta. Bittman's recipe worked just fine.

(Ed. note: In future, crop out wine bottles that seem to regularly appear in unstaged shots, especially those featuring small, cherubic children.)

I also baked Bittman's pineapple tart, which was lovely and exotic, and this morning served his overnight waffles, which were even lovelier and not exotic. 

Having now crashed out my notes on recent cooking activities, however perfunctorily, I feel better. I was starting to procrastinate. Just the fact that I've kept this blog fed and watered for 9 months gives me faith in my own lazy, procrastinating self. The world doesn't really need the blog, but I need the faith.

(Ed. note: "Perfunctorily" is an ungainly word. In future, pls. avoid.)

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

In the interest of economy and nutrition, the next cookbook I will be testing is How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. The children were aghast, but I won them over by making Bittman's pizza and mint chocolate chip ice cream the other night. 

Bittman is one of my heroes and it's all been very tasty so far. I am looking forward to experimenting with his recipes for tempeh, seitan, and parsnip gnocchi.