eat.sing.ride

Do You Follow Lance on Twitter?

2012-01-23T18:23:00.000-08:00

ride. It’s been a while since I’ve written about cycling, and high time for another post. So when I saw this video on Facebook (hat tip to Sandy S. for posting it), I laughed so hard I knew I had to pass it along to y’all.

Are those carbon wheels?
(all photos of 2008 Santa Cruz Criterium)

Folks who ride bikes, follow the Tour de France, or hang out with cyclists will no doubt appreciate it the most, but I think others will find it amusing too. And no, it’s not all that far-fetched; I’ve heard lots of those phrases come out of the mouths of Lycra-clad road warriors. (Okay, so I’ve said some of them, too).

The video was made in support of an organization called Peopleforbikes, which has an on-line petition you can sign. They describe their purpose as follows:

We formed Peopleforbikes.org (PFB) in 2010 to help make bicycling better for everyone. We wanted to encourage individuals to show their support for safe, stress-free bicycling in their hometowns. We wanted to publicize and celebrate all the great things that happen when people ride bikes.

I’m pretty sure I have a flat.

So far, so good! After a solid first year, the PFB movement nearly tripled in size during 2011. Nearly 500,000 supporters now power our collective, unified voice. We will continue to grow in 2012.

We've rallied the PFB troops four times to show how much Americans care about the federal investment in bicycling. In 2011, our movement sent more than 100,000 letters to U.S. Representatives and Senators. These messages made a strong impression, and inspired Congress to preserve dedicated funding for essential bike infrastructure and programs—at least for now.

I’d totally be a pro if I didn’t have to work.

Nevertheless, some members of Congress still want to eliminate all support for bicycling and reallocate that money to highways. They fail to recognize how the steady federal investment is boosting bicycling and helping our nation in many important ways. They overlook the tangible outcomes and the cost-effectiveness: 3,000 bike projects are backed nationwide for less than the cost of a dozen miles of multi-lane highway in a single city.

Your voices have made a difference. But the fight isn't over.

2012 will be a challenging year for federal support of bicycling. Federal transportation funding expires at the end of March. Congress must either approve a new, multi-year bill or extend the current bill again. Either way, the value of ongoing bicycling investments will be debated. Future funding will be determined.

Peopleforbikes.org is ready for this fight, and we want all of our supporters to be ready for additional calls to action. Together we can protect key investments in bicycling that keep people safe and encourage more individuals to get on their bicycles.

Ride on, people!

Crits are so lame.

The Perfect Baguette Recipe, Now Published

2012-01-19T14:11:00.000-08:00

eat. Several years ago I mentioned here that Marty Ginsburg, the wonderful, witty, tax professor/attorney husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had divulged to me the recipe he had come up with for “the perfect baguette.” Based on two long phone conversations with him, I had written out—to his exacting instructions—a detailed recipe for his baguettes, which I sent to him, and which he subsequently approved (with some minor changes).

As I note at the beginning of the recipe, “I am not an experienced baker, but followed the recipe carefully and ended up with the best baguettes I have ever had outside of France.” And it’s true.

a batch of the "perfect baguettes," just out of the oven

The next year, I asked Marty if I could include the recipe in my memoir about the dinner I had cooked for him and his jurist wife, Cooking For Ruth. (You can read about the dinner here.) Apologetically, he requested that I not use it, explaining that so many folks were always asking to publish his recipes that he just found it easiest to say “I never let any of them be published.”

Marty and me at the dinner I cooked for the Ginsburgs

Sadly, Marty passed away in 2010. As a tribute to him, several of the Supreme Court spouses decided to put together a book of his recipes, entitled Chef Supreme. It’s published by the Supreme Court Historical Society, and is available on line, and at the Supreme Court gift shop.

When I heard about the book, I of course had to buy a copy. It arrived yesterday, and I immediately started flipping through the pages. The frontispiece is a charming photo of Ruth and Marty:

web photo, (c) Mariana Cook, 1998

And lo and behold, to my delight I saw that the third recipe in the book is entitled “The Perfect Baguette,” and is a word-for-word reproduction of the recipe I had written down and sent to Marty. (And yes, the book does give me credit.) I guess Ruth must have passed it along to the Supreme Court spouses for inclusion in the cookbook.

So the good news is that his terrific recipe is now available for all the world to use.

working, after my bike ride, on a batch of Marty’s baguettes

You can read about the cookbook, and about Marty and his famous baguettes, here. And if you’d like to buy a copy, go to this website (note that the book is $25, but there’s also a $10 shipping fee).

Real Mincemeat Pie

2012-01-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

eat. About a year ago I mentioned here my desire to make an old fashioned mince pie—the kind with meat, as well as fruit and spices. It took twelve months, but this year for Christmas I finally made one.

This recipe is not for those whose new year resolutions involve losing weight, as it contains, in addition to the apples, raisins and brown sugar in your typical mince pie, beef and suet (i.e., beef fat), not to mention two sticks of butter for the crust.

you know it’s rich when the dollop of whipped cream cuts the fat

I based this recipe on one I found on line (see here), but changed it a fair bit, and cut it down to enough for just one pie.

Mince pie apparently originated in England when the crusaders brought back spices from the Holy Land, and the pies—made with mutton—became a part of the Christmas festivities. (See a history here.)

For my pie I settled on beef, as mutton is rather gamey, and hard to come by—especially in Hawaii—in any case. Start by browning and then braising one pound of chuck or other similar cut of beef:

Braise it covered until tender (at least an hour), and then uncover it and let all but about a cup of the liquid evaporate:

You can see here that after it cooled over night in the fridge, the liquid from my beef had become a yummy gelatin. Be sure to save the gelatin to add to your pie.

Getting suet here in Hilo was an interesting experience. I rang the bell at the butcher department of my local grocery store, and was met by a deaf woman who didn’t know what suet was. After a few frustrating minutes playing charades and writing down the word “suet” on a piece of paper, only to be met by a shrug of the shoulders, she went in search of her cohort. He was a big man with red cheeks and a nice smile. “Suet?” he asked. “We don’t get asked for that often.” I could tell he was pleased with my request.

“It’s for a pie,” I said.

“Well, I do get some when I break down the T-Bones. I could save it for you, but it won’t be a lot.”

“I only need a half a pound, or even less.” He stood there for a moment sizing me up and then said, “I tell you what. I was going to do it later this afternoon, but I guess I could do it now. If you’ve got more shopping to do, just come back in about fifteen minutes and I’ll have it for you.”

When I returned, the deaf woman handed me this packet (click on it to enlarge):

Twenty-five cents for pet food. What a guy. I do love butchers.

To make a proper mincemeat pie, all you do is add chopped cooked meat and (uncooked) suet to your regular mince pie filling (see recipe at end of post). Here is my beef and suet chopped up and ready to go:

For the rest of the filling, combine 2 apples, the juice of 1 lemon,

1 cup of raisins, ½ cup of apple cider vinegar, and 1 ½ cups brown sugar.

Add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and ½ teaspoon each of ground cloves, allspice and nutmeg. Finish it off with ½ cup of dark rum or brandy (this can be added either before or after cooking the filling).

Cook it all together (don’t forget to add the meat, gelatin, and suet) for an hour and then let it cool. Add salt to taste (about ½ teaspoon).

This filling can be made several days ahead, and kept in the fridge. I baked my pie on Christmas day, so it would still be warm when we ate it.

You’ll need a bottom and a top crust. For those unfamiliar with making pie crusts, I recommend this video. I don’t use a food processor, as it’s just one more thing to wash, and instead use my hands. Make sure you don’t overwork the dough; it should just barely hold together, and the butter pieces should be (as she says in the video) big—lima bean size.

Lay your bottom layer of pie crust in the pan and crimp the edges, and then spoon in the mince pie filling.

those flecks of white are the suet

Lay the top crust on top, trim the edges, and crimp it into the bottom crust. I had a lot of extra dough, so I rolled it out again and cut it into strips to make a lattice on top, using half and half brushed on first to act as a glue. Cut vents in the top, so the steam can be released during cooking.

brush half and half (or egg wash or milk)
on top of the lattice as well, for good browning

Cover the edges with foil and bake the pie in a preheated 425°F oven for about 30 minutes, until it starts to brown.

Carefully remove the foil (so it doesn’t take any crust with it) and continue baking for another 10 or 15 minutes, until the pie is golden brown all over.

Serve it warm (you can reheat it in the oven for a few minutes if it’s gotten completely cool). It goes great with ice cream or whipped cream (see photo at top of post).

And the result? you’re no doubt wondering. Truly amazing. You don’t really taste the meat, but it gives the pie an extraordinary texture and, well, meatiness. I’ve never been much of a fan of regular, out-of-the-box mince pies, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I say that this was one of the best pies I’ve ever had.

But be warned that it is very, very rich.

Happy New Year!

Mincemeat Pie Recipe

Filling

1 lb. braised beef, cooled and chopped into small pieces
liquid or gelatin from braised beef
½ lb. suet, chopped into small pieces
2 medium apples, cut into small chunks
1 cup raisins (or mixture of raisins and currents)
juice of 1 lemon
½ cup apple cider vinegar
1 ½ cups brown sugar
½ cup dark rum or brandy
1 t cinnamon
½ t ground cloves
½ t allspice
½ t nutmeg
½ t salt

Mix all ingredients in a large pot and simmer uncovered, stirring often, for one hour. Let cool. Can be made several days ahead and kept in the fridge.

Crust (for two 9-inch crusts)

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling out
1 t salt (if using unsalted butter)
1 cup cold butter, cut into small chunks
3-6 T ice water

Combine flour and (if using) salt. Add the butter and mix lightly, either with your hands or in a food processor. Add ice water little by little, until the dough just holds together. Form into two balls with floured hands, press into 4-inch discs, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour. (This much can be done a day or two ahead.) Roll out into two crusts, slightly larger than the pie pan you are using.

To Bake

Put bottom crust in pan; add filling; top with second crust. Cut slits in crust and bake at 425°F oven for about 30 minutes, until it starts to brown. Remove foil and continue baking for another 10 or 15 minutes, until golden brown.

Noodle Love

2011-12-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

eat. I blogged last year about saimin, the Japanese noodle soup which is also popular in Hawai‘i. A couple nights ago I made it again for my folks and Robin and me, as it is one of my mom’s favorite dishes.

it’s been raining steadily in Hilo for almost 24 hours;
a good day for some steaming hot saimin!

There was some smoked salmon in the freezer, to which I decided to add Chinese/Napa cabbage, green onions, ginger, and poached eggs:

Here they are prepped for the soup (slice the cabbage, coarsely chop the onions, and cut the ginger into slivers):

The base for my saimin was dashi, which I buy in packets at the grocery store here. It’s made from dried bonito (as well as MSG):

Start by pouring water into one of the bowls you’ll be using, to know how much you’ll want per serving. In my case it came out to 2 ½ cups per (large) bowl, which ended up being 10 cups total for my parents and Robin and me:

This worked out well, since the little diagram on the back of the dashi box specifies one flavor packet per 5 cups for saimin. After tasting it, though, I added a third packet, as the broth was too weak for my liking.

I also added some soy sauce (3 T), sherry (1/2 cup), and mirin (3 T) for a touch of sweetness (these amounts are guesses—I did it by taste). I also added the slivered ginger to the broth:

Bring this all to a boil, and then add the noodles to it. Mine were the frozen variety:

ohana means family in Hawai‘ian
this bag had 9 packets of noodles

I thawed my noodles first, and then dropped them into the boiling dashi stock to heat (they only take a minute to prepare, as they’re already cooked). For the four of us I used five packets, as they seemed rather small and this was all we were having for dinner.

While the noodles were cooking I poached my eggs, one per person. For those of you who have an egg-poaching phobia, here’s a video to show you how. Unlike this guy, I have the water at a simmer, and they only take a couple minutes to poach. I do two at a time.

Divide the noodles up between the bowls:

Then add the cabbage,

the shredded smoked salmon,

and then pour the stock over:

Top each with a poached egg, garnish with the green onions and serve (see photo at top), along with soy sauce and hot sauce on the table for those who want them.

Here’s my bowl, after I broke the egg yolk and let it drizzle into the soup. Yum!

Asian-Inspired Baked Pork Chops

2011-11-23T15:24:00.000-08:00

eat. Robin and Ziggy and I are back in Hilo again—yay! Because our last stay here was rudely interrupted by discovery of The Cancer, we decided it was high time to make up our lost Hawai‘ian months. Here are the cocktails we had on our front porch on 11/11/11 (aka Nigel Tufnel Day).

The dish in this post is a good one for a dinner party, since you can shove it in the oven and pretty much forget about it until it’s time to eat. For 4 chops, you’ll need a pound or so of fruit—plums, peaches, pears, apples, whatever you can find that time of year. (This being Hawai‘i in November, I settled for a large Asian pear and some frozen peach slices.) In addition, the recipe calls for honey, Chinese five-spice powder, ginger, garlic, a red chile, lemon juice, soy sauce, and black pepper.

I didn’t have any five-spice powder on hand, but I did have Tandoori seasoning. A quick check on the internet showed that they were somewhat similar, so I used the Tandoori powder, which turned out to be quite tasty.

Finely chop the ginger, garlic, and chile:

Then mix together the honey, five-spice (or Tandoori seasoning), ginger, garlic, chile, lemon or lime juice, soy sauce, and black pepper.

Lay the pork chops in a greased baking dish and spread the fruit around and over the chops. Then pour the sauce on top, making sure some gets underneath the chops.

Bake uncovered at 375°F. After about 40 minutes the dish will look like this:

Turn the chops over, and continue cooking until the liquid has thickened to a nice gravy consistency and the meat and fruit has browned.

I was worried the meat would be tough—a common problem with pork chops—but there was enough liquid during most of the baking that they actually braised, and were fine. If you don’t have enough liquid after about 15 minutes of baking to almost cover the chops (the fruit and pork will expel lots of liquid), you should probably either add some more liquid (water or stock), or cover the pan with foil. If you use foil, take it off for the last 15 minutes so the dish can brown.

Mine took between an hour and a hour and a half (I wasn’t paying exact attention to the time), but when I took them out they looked like this:

it’s those damn fluorescent lights
that make everything look so yellow

As sides, I had steamed rice, and stir-fried bok choy—white and green:

Chop the bok choy coarsely, and separate the stem parts from the greens:

Fry the stems in sesame oil over high heat in a wok or large skillet. When almost done, stir in some oyster, or other Chinese stir-fry sauce.

Turn off the heat and mix in the greens, allowing them to wilt. Season with soy sauce, if necessary.

Here’s the meal, plated up:

an ice cream scoop makes the rice look pretty

食飯 (sihk faahn, i.e., “eat!” in Cantonese)

Ingredient List (for 4 pork chops)
(this is adapted from the recipe from Pure Simple Cooking, by Diana Henry)

1 lb. plums, pears, apricots, and/or apples (sliced or quartered)
5 T honey
1 t Chinese five-spice (or Tandoori) powder
1-2 T chopped ginger
1-2 T chopped garlic
1 small red chile
juice of one lemon or lime
1 T soy sauce
black pepper to taste
oil to grease the baking dish

Dulce de Leche

2011-11-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

eat. I have a Brazilian friend, Gaby, who told me her family has always made dulce de leche—that Latin American caramel sauce—by simply putting cans of sweetened condensed milk into the pot along with the black beans, and letting them all cook together for several hours.

“What about the danger of exploding cans?” I asked her.

“I’ve never seen that happen,” she assured me.

So when my day to host our French conversation group fell on the birthday of our Argentinean member, I decided to make a dessert in her honor using this almost unbearably sweet sauce—a dulce de leche cake. And I would try the boil-the-cans technique.

I read on line that you should boil the cans in a heavy Dutch oven with the lid cracked, which struck me as a good idea. After all, it was always possible that mine would be the first exploding cans that Gaby had encountered, and a cast iron pot and lid would be sure to protect my kitchen, and anyone in it at the time, from flying shards of metal should this occur.

Even though I didn’t need that much dulce de leche, I decided to make two cans. It wouldn’t take any more energy to boil two, and then I’d have some for later use. (It keeps quite well in the fridge.)

Remove the paper from the cans, and then cover them completely with cold water in a large pot:

Put a lid on the pot, slightly cracked to allow the steam to escape, and bring the water to a boil. Then turn it down to a simmer, and cook it for two to four hours. The longer it goes, the darker and thicker it will get. Make sure you check to pot periodically and add water as needed to keep the cans covered. If you don’t, you could well be the first one with an exploding can. I split the difference and simmered mine for a little over three hours.

Take the cans out of the water and let them cool before opening. Here is what mine looked like:

as you can see, it’s pretty thick—like a thick frosting

For comparison, here’s what sweetened condensed milk looks like when it hasn’t been boiled:

I won’t repeat the recipe for my cake in this post, as you can read it here. The secret to this amazingly-moist cake is that after it’s baked, you let it cool, poke it with a bunch of holes, and then pour in a combination of canned milk, sweetened condensed milk, and cream. (I omitted the cream, figuring it was going to be plenty moist and plenty rich without it, and I dare say the cake did not suffer a whit.)

I will show you photos of the last steps in making the cake. Here it is, with all the holes I made with a knife (they’ll be covered with dulce de leche, so they won’t be seen), with the canned milk and sweetened condensed milk being poured on top:

And here’s what it looks like after the milk has been absorbed:

Next you chill the cake for several hours, and then frost it with the dulce de leche:

Here you can see a piece of the finished product:

I served mine with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream. And I can tell you that one small piece was very rich. The recipe in the link above, which is made in an 8”x12” pan, should be enough to serve 12-16 people, especially if served with ice cream.

Pumpkin Soup with Brown Butter and Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

2011-11-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

eat. Yesterday was Hallowe‘en, a shortening of the phrase All Hallows Evening. That makes today All Hallows Day, aka, All Sain ts’ Day. And tomorrow, November 2nd, is All Souls’ Day, known in many Latin American countries as the el día de los muertos, the Day of the Dead. All a very end-of-the-year, dying plants and fallow fields kind of metaphor, eh?

But truly, we’re not interested in any of this. The only thing on our minds right now is how to avoid eating all that left over candy, and what to do with all those damn pumpkins, right?

one of the 3 pumpkins I had from a volunteer plant this year

I can’t help you with the first, but here’s a recipe to help with the second. You may think that cooking with pumpkin is messy and a pain, but it’s actually quite easy—much easier than dealing with butternut squash, which have an incredibly thick skin and make me fear for the loss of my fingers every time I cut one up.

Start by cutting your pumpkin in half, scooping out all the pyuck, and slicing it into manageable sized pieces. (And yes, it’s fine if it’s been made into a Jack O’Lantern, as long as you take care to remove the candle wax first, and assuming you haven’t kept it so long that it has started to mold.) Brush the pieces with olive oil, season with S&P, and if you have it on hand, snip a sprig of oregano for each piece:

Lay the pieces face down on a baking sheet, with a sprig of oregano under each piece. (Line it with foil or parchment to ease clean-up; the baked pumpkin can be hard to scrub off.)

Bake at 350°F until a fork slides into them easily—40-60 minutes. They should have started to turn brown:

Peel off the skin, discard it and the oregano, and put the pulp into a large pot:

Add about an equal amount (by volume) of a rich stock. I used homemade chicken stock (recipe here):

you can see my stock was still frozen

Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

Then let it cool enough to blend. You can do this either in a regular blender, or with one of those “stick” blenders, which is what I have (they are a must-have if you make a lot of soup).

Now you have the basic puréed soup. At this stage you could stop and just season it with S&P. But I chose to add about a cup of half-and-half, a half cup of sherry, and about 2 tablespoons of brown sugar:

Cook it a little longer to boil the alcohol out of the sherry, and then thin the soup to what you’d like, with either water, stock, or more half-and-half or milk. You can make the soup up to this point a day or two in advance, which I recommend doing, as the flavors will meld better if it’s made ahead.

The secret to really special soups is their garnish. Not only do they make the soups look pretty, but they add interesting flavors and textures to what would otherwise be a one-note-dish. For my pumpkin soup I decided on brown butter and roasted pumpkin seeds.

I was too lazy to roast my own seeds and crack them all open, so I bought some raw ones at the store. The afternoon before my dinner party, I just heated some butter in a cast iron skillet and them tossed them in and let them brown—stirring constantly, as they want to burn—and then sprinkled them with salt:

Brown butter is simply butter which has been slowly heated to the point where the milk solids start to brown. So all you do is put a chunk of butter into a heavy skillet,

and let it cook—again, stirring often—until it starts to brown:

it’s hard to see the color here because of the black pan,
but trust me that it’s a nut brown

This should be done soon before service, so the butter doesn’t re-solidify.

To serve the soup, reheat it, and ladle it into the bowls. Then drizzle on the brown butter and sprinkle on the pumpkin seeds. I also added a dollop of my yocheese (click here to read about this). Sour cream, crème fraiche, or yogurt could be used instead.

Here’s the finished product:

Pears Poached in Red Wine with Cardamom

2011-10-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

eat. A bounty of pears on our tree again this season. So, what to do with them all? I’ve been using them in salads, eating them with slices of cheese, adding them to curries, and of course giving lots away to friends.

Last week we hosted a dinner party, and I decided to poach a few of the pears for dessert. It’s amazingly easy, and makes an elegant finish to a nice meal. Start with pears that are ripe but still quite firm:

Peel them, then cut them however you want for the poaching (I did quarters, but you could do halves, as well). Make sure to keep them submerged in water until use so they don’t turn brown.

For my five large pears, I used a half a cup of red wine (it was just some plonk that was sitting in the fridge for use as a cooking wine):

To the wine I added about a half a cup of sugar,

and the seeds from four cardamom pods (lay the flat of a knife on them and smack it, to get to the seeds):

Bring the wine/sugar/cardamom mixture to a boil, and then lay the pears in the liquid and simmer. (You can see that I changed pans at this point, realizing that I needed a skillet rather than a sauce pan to have room for them all):

(so sorry about the funky lighting)

Turn them over half way through the cooking, if there isn’t enough poaching liquid to cover them.

When a fork or knife slides easily into their centers, they’re done. Mine took about ten minutes.

Remove the pears from the liquid, and strain out the seeds.

Next, bring the poaching liquid to a boil and cook it until it has reduced to a thick and syrupy consistency.

I ended up with this much syrup.

This much can be done a day or two before you want to use the pears. Just keep them and the syrup in the fridge till you need them.

For my dessert, I laid four quarters on a plate and set a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream (Marianne’s—yum!) on top:

Then I drizzled on some of the poaching syrup, and garnished the dessert with candied pecans I’d made some time back and had in the freezer, and a mint sprig.

I was quite pleased. The acid in the wine balanced the sweet syrup and ice cream, and the cardamom imparted an exotic, but not-too-strong, perfume-like flavor.

Try it, you’ll like it!

Pork Ragú With Broken Lasagna

2011-09-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

eat. My “P” in the alphabet food game would have to be pork. (I could always use “T” for taters. But then I’d have to give up tomatoes. Hmmm...) It’s certainly my favorite of all the meats—so flavorful and full of yummy fat!

This recipe, which came from the New York Times Sunday Magazine some time back (though I’ve adapted it here), hails from the Mai alino restaurant in New York. It’s basically a braised pork shoulder, shredded and tossed with pasta and cheese. Pretty simple, and good for company, since you can have most of the work done in advance. (This recipe should serve at least 8.)

all plated up and ready to eat!

Start by chopping coarsely 1 onion, a couple ribs of celery, and 1 fennel bulb:

Sauté the veggies in olive oil in a Dutch oven or some other large stove- and oven-proof pot:

Once the veg have been softened (about 10 minutes), place a pork shoulder (aka Boston butt—about 4 pounds) in the pot, and pour enough chicken stock in to cover the meat.

Add a few sprigs of fresh thyme, and cover and bring the pot to a simmer. Then place the pot in a 350° oven. Let it cook for a couple of hours—until the meat is tender.

it will look something like this when done

Let the meat and broth cool on the countertop for about a half an hour, and then remove the meat to a bowl (keeping the broth in the pot). Shred the pork into bite-size chunks, and place in a bowl.

Pour enough of the broth over the shredded pork to barely cover it:

(Save the rest of the broth. You may need it to moisten the pork later on, and if not it would make a great soup or sauce.) Season with S& P to taste. Cover the shredded pork and put it in the fridge until ready to use.

You can do everything up to this point a day, or even two, ahead.

A half hour before service, start a large pot of water heating to use for the pasta. While it’s coming to a boil, get your mise en place:

1 cup grated aged, hard Italian cheese (e.g., Parmigiano, Romano);
fresh arugula (aka rocket);
1 fresh lemon;
¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley; and
olive oil:

You should also break up into 3-inch shards 2 packages of lasagna:

It’s now time to reheat your pork. Put it in a pan and heat until bubbling. Then lower the heat and let the liquid reduce by about half. Add 4 T butter, and stir to emulsify:

(sorry about the bad night-time lighting for these last photos)

Meanwhile, cook the pasta until al dente. Drain (saving a little of the water), and put back into the pot. Add as much of the pork to the pasta as seems right to you (I’d say a ratio of 1:3 for pork/pasta is good). Add some of the pasta water if it seems too dry.

Finally, squeeze in the juice of the lemon, and add ½ cup of grated cheese, 2 T olive oil, and the chopped parsley. Stir it all in:

Plate it up, garnish with arugula and more grated cheese, and serve! (See photo at top. The flower in the photo is borage from my garden.)

Yogurt Cheese

2011-09-05T12:58:00.001-07:00

eat. Ziggy has a best friend named Daisy. They have play dates at least four times a week, and can play, play, play, all day long:

Daisy’s human mom is named Julie, and we humans hit it off as well when we met (at the dog beach here in Santa Cruz), especially when I discovered that Julie is as into food and cooking as I am. This recipe (if you can call it that—it’s so simple it’s really more just a “method,” I’d say) comes from Julie.

Spoon half a large container of yogurt into a sieve which has been lined with a coffee filter (Julie recommends using the full-fat, plain Mountain High brand, which worked great for me):

Set the sieve over a bowl, and place it in the refrigerator:

Let it sit in the fridge for two or three days. You’ll notice that the whey separates from the yogurt and runs into the bowl, and the yogurt shrinks and starts getting firm. Here it is after one day:

And here it is after three days:

You can leave it for up to four or five days, but after a while it stops getting any thicker, because all the whey that’s going to, has run out. Here is the cheese dumped into a bowl, with my hand to show the size of the yield (about a cup):

And voilà the whey—a tangy sort of buttermilk—that resulted after three days of draining:

You could use the whey in a smoothie, or in lieu of milk or buttermilk in baking, or simply drink it (I’ve heard it makes good lemonade). But don’t drink it if you’re lactose intolerant, as it’s jam-packed with the stuff.

The resulting “yocheese” is similar to cream cheese, but a little tangier, and apparently has about half the calories and carbs. I’ve been using it in a variety of ways (wheys?):

I made bruschettas by slicing a loaf of French bread and toasting it under the broiler, then spreading the slices with a little tomato paste and yocheese,

and then pesto, and topping it with grated Romano cheese. I broiled them right before service, to melt the cheese:

But my favorite use so far is simply combining the yocheese with the lemon curd I recently made. When mixed together it’s like a luscious lemony-creamy pudding:

This combo is also delicious on toast:

Who knew it could be so easy to make cheese?

Icebox Pickles

2011-08-23T17:11:00.000-07:00

eat. I planted a Japanese cucumber this summer for the first time, and it’s been producing like crazy. What to do with all those cukes?

Why, pickles, of course!

I didn’t want to mess with sterilizing jars, so I decided to go with icebox pickles, which must be kept refrigerated after being made. (Note that the bo tulism toxin can’t tolerate high acid, salty or cold conditions.) There are a jillion recipes for icebox pickles on line, so I sort of combined a few to come up with my own (based partly on what I had on hand in my cupboard and garden). I decided on bread-and-butter style pickles, i.e., a combination of sweet and dill. A veritable Goldie Locks, am I.

The hardest part was finding enough jars. I’d had about a dozen canning jars until last year, when in a fit of “cleaning” had decided to give them away, thinking “I’ll never can anything.” Famous last words. But between some salsa jars in the recycling, and finding other almost-empty jars in the fridge, I was able to come up with enough to do the job. (Do wash the jars well in hot, soapy water before starting.)

I cut most of my cukes into spears,

but did one jar’s worth as disks, for use in sandwiches. After they’re cut, jam as many pieces as you can into each jar:

The next step is to heat your vinegar with your flavorings. Some of the recipes called for apple cider vinegar, but since I had about a gallon of plain old white vinegar, I decided to go with that.

To find out how much vinegar I needed, I poured straight vinegar into my pickle-filled jars, about three-quarter ways full. Then I poured the vinegar from the jars into a saucepan:

Next I added my ingredients: mustard seed,

crushed red chili peppers,

chopped garlic (I used the kind that you buy in a jar), black pepper corns, white sugar, and (pictured) fresh tarragon, and salt:

Bring the seasoned vinegar to a boil,

then immediately turn it off, let it cool so it won’t break the jars when you add it, and then pour it into each jar:

Top the jars with enough water to cover the cucumbers, and cap them:

Keep them in the fridge, and they will be ready to eat in about four days. But they improve with age: After about a week they were better; and after two, even better than that. Here are some of the discs on a sandwich I made:

As for quantities of ingredients, I’d say (and I’m guessing here, because I didn’t measure) this is about right for 1 cup of vinegar, which will make about one jar:

Icebox Pickle Ingredients

1 cup vinegar
1 t mustard seed
1 t black pepper corns
1 t chopped garlic
½ t crushed red chili peppers (the kind they give you at pizza parlors)
1 sprig tarragon
2 t salt
1 T sugar

Note that, since these are icebox pickles—and not vacuum packed—you can taste a pickle after about 4 days, and then add more seasonings as desired. I did this, and ended up adding more salt and sugar to mine.

And, of course, you could pickle all sorts of things other than cucumbers: string beans, okra, radishes, onions, cauliflower...

Calabacitas

2011-08-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

eat. Back in the 1980s when I lived with a gaggle of ex-college buddies, we used to take turns cooking dinner. One of Tom’s favorite dishes to prepare was called calabacitas, which means little squash (calabaza) in Spanish. It’s the perfect student fare: filling, and made with cheap ingredients (when in season): zucchini, corn, onion, and pork shoulder.

it’s perfect served up on a soft corn tortilla with grated cheese

I had a couple large zucchini that my friend Julie had given me,

you can see from the size of the ears of corn that these
were more calabazones, than calabacitas

so I decided to make a pot of Tom’s calabacitas for dinner last night. (No, Robin couldn’t eat it, alas. But I gotta eat too, right? She had TFS (i.e., that [expletive deleted] soup), and we ate our respective meals while watching Dexter do his dastardly deeds on the bad guys. We had decided not to turn on the Giants, after the last two miserable weeks of games, and learned only this morning that they actually won. But then they lost again today.)

Back to the calabacitas: Take some pork (any cut will work, but shoulder works great, as it’s inexpensive, and has enough fat to add good flavor),

remove the big pieces of fat, and cut the fat into tiny pieces and the lean into 1” cubes:

The first thing I do is render the fat, by frying it over medium heat in a heavy skillet, to release the fat from the tissue:

It takes a few minutes, and when you’re done you have fat for later use (keep it in the fridge),

as well as some crunchy bits (crackling), which you can either salt and munch on as a snack with your cocktail while you prepare the calabacitas, or you can top your tacos with them. (I did both.)

the cracklings

While the fat is rendering, cut the corn kernels off the cobs (or you can use canned, if it’s not corn season),

and cut your zucchini into bite-size pieces.

my mise en place

Once your fat is rendered and drained off, brown the pork in the same skillet, and then add your spices: chili powder, garlic, cumin, S&P, and whatever else you want (I didn’t have any onions on hand—a normal ingredient in the dish—so made due with onion powder):

Here’s the meat with the spices added:

Now add enough water to cover the meat, and simmer it for at least an hour.

Add more water if it cooks away. When the meat starts to get tender,

add the zucchini,

and the corn (and chopped onions, which I didn’t have):

Stir the veg into the meat, and continue cooking until they are done (about 10-15 minutes):

As I noted above, the calabacitas are best served with warm tortillas and grated cheese. You could also top them with sour cream, salsa, and/or cilantro.

Eton Mess

2011-08-01T17:08:00.000-07:00

eat. Last September while visiting my friend Sara Jane in Northumberland (her village is spittin’ distance from the Wall), she made a smashing dinner of roast pork, fabulously crispy roast potatoes, and several different veg. I didn’t think I’d have room for dessert, but when she set it on the table, I had an immediate change of heart: there before me was a bowl of what looked like luscious whipped cream mixed with bits of fruit. Ah, cream!

“What is it?” I asked.

“Eton Mess.”

“Eton what?” Turns out Eton Mess is a hallowed dish of the English public school of the same name, composed of whipped cream, fruit, and pieces of meringue. It dates back to the 19th century, and was originally made with bananas, but is now traditionally made with strawberries. The dessert is still served at the annual cricket match between the Eton boys and their nearby rivals from Winchester College.

As to the “mess” part, well that’s a bit obvious once you take a look at the dessert: a big bowl of creamy glop.

my finished product

I can tell you that Sara Jane’s Eton Mess was amazing: the tart strawberries perfectly cut the richness of the cream, and the crunchy meringue pieces provided a lightness that was simply heavenly. I’ve got to make this when I get home, I vowed.

Since I had egg whites left over from my lemon cur d, I decided to make meringues and use them in an Eton Mess to take to our French conversation group’s annual Bastille Day luncheon.

The Meringues:

I’d never made meringues before, but they turned out to be quite simple, using only two ingredients: egg whites and sugar.

If your egg whites have been in the refrigerator, take them our and let them come up to room temperature before starting (this hastens the rather long and tedious whipping process).

put the egg whites in a large glass or metal bowl,
to allow plenty of room for them to expand

Preheat the oven to 190°F. Line a baking pan with non-stick parchment paper (I used one of those silicone baking liners).

Beat 4 egg whites until foamy, and then sprinkle in 1 ½ cups superfine sugar, a little at a time, whipping in between.

Continue beating until the mixture becomes stiff, and shiny like satin. Be patient: this can take 10 or even 15 minutes, if you have an old mixer like mine. (My hand mixer is from the 1950s, and towards the end of my mixing process one of the beaters came loose and caused them to jam:

You’ll see when you make them that the meringue batter is very sticky. So rather than get myself completely covered in the sugary goo, I decided to just dump the beaters into a bowl of water in the sink to soak, figuring the whites were sufficiently beaten to work. They were still a bit soft, but ended making perfectly good meringues.)

Spoon the meringue batter into a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip,

and pipe the cookies out onto the baking sheet:

As you can see, mine were a little droopy and could have stood more beating, but they held their form enough to work.

Bake the cookies for about 3 hours, or until they are dry. You can test them periodically, breaking one open to make sure it’s hard all the way through. You don’t want chewy meringues for an Eton Mess, as it’s the crunch you’re after. (Some folks say to put a wooden spoon handle in the oven door to allow the moisture to escape, but I didn’t do this as it meant my oven light would have been on for 3 hours.) Here are what my cookies looked like when they were done (I flipped them over to cool):

To put together the Eton Mess:

(Note: it’s best to wait until shortly before service to compose the Mess, so the meringues don’t get soggy.)

Whip 1 pint of heavy cream (adding 2 T sugar and 1 t vanilla extract) until stiff:

Have ready your meringues, whipped cream, and fruit. Although strawberries are traditional, I opted for berries—a mix of raspberries and blackberries—so the dish would be bleu-blanc-rouge for the Fête Nationale:

Break the meringues into bite-size pieces (you should have about equal parts meringue and whipped cream):

Mix half the whipped cream with half the meringue pieces in a large serving bowl:

Top with half the berries (I used two baskets total for the dish):

Repeat for a second layer:

my mom gave me this swell trifle bowl

Spoon into bowls and enjoy the Mess!

(serves 8-10)

[By the way: Some of you may have noticed a recipe in yesterday’s USA Weekend magazine (you know—that throwaway thing in everyone’s Sunday newspaper). This is pure coincidence; I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a couple of weeks. And I prefer my recipe to theirs, which seems way too sweet.]

G’Day for Aussies!

2011-07-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

ride. After three long, grueling weeks—and I don’t mean for the riders, but for me, who watched it 4-5 hours every darn day—the Tour de France finally ended this morning. I’d been rooting for the Australian rider Cadel Evans to win, for a variety of reasons.

First, at 34 years of age, he’s getting rather old to be a serious TdF contender much longer, and after a couple years of bad luck in the Tour, this seemed like it might be his last chance.

Second, he appears to be a right nice bloke.

But mostly, it’s ’cause he has a great ass. Really, I mean it; just take a look:

he’s the one on the right, in case you couldn’t tell from the butt
(photo taken at 2008 TdF podium ceremony when he came in 2nd)

But then again, they seem to like muscular butts in the Tour de France, as evidenced by this car that drove by before the race came down the Champs-Élysées:

As an aside—and I’m not boasting here, ’cause it’s not mine that I’m talking about—our puppy Ziggy has a rather nice butt too, and it’s always reminded me of Cadel Evans’ butt, i.e., firm and muscular:

taking down her best friend Daisy

So, anyway, you can imagine how delighted I was when Cadel showed his prowess and powered up the Col d’Izoard and the Col du Galibier on stage 18 last Thursday to single-handedly regain two of the more than four minutes that Andy Schleck had gained on him at the base of the final climb.

Cadel leads the peloton on the chase
web photo [source]

And then the way he stormed through yesterday’s time trial, beating Andy Schleck by some two-and-a-half minutes. Wow. What a way to win the Tour!

More than Cadel’s win, though, what pleased me the most about this year’s Tour was the success Little Tommy Voeckler (as Phil and Paul, the Tour commentators, like to call him) had, as well as that of his Europcar team. (Europcar has the second-to-least amount of funding of any of the Tour’s teams this year, and was only in the race as a wildcard.)

I’ve long been a fan of Voeckler (see here), so I was thrilled when he pulled on the yellow jersey after stage 9. We all expected him to lose it once the race got to the mountains, but le petit Thomas has a bigger heart and more grit than even I imagined, and was able to keep it for nine days—all the way to the famed Alpe d’Huez.

hanging on to the maillot jaune at the top of the Galibier
web photo [source]

And even though little Tommy Voeckler lost the jersey that day on the Alpe, it was his trusted lieutenant, Pierre Rolland, who won the iconic stage, outpacing both last year’s winner Alberto Contador and the Olympic gold-medal winner Samuel Sanchez. (The last Frenchman to win on the Alpe d’Huez was none other than The Badger, Bernard Hinault.) And to top it all off, Rolland ended up winning the best young rider award—the white jersey.

So, good on ya, Cadel! Et bien fait, Thomas et Pierre!

Lemon Curd

2011-07-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

eat. I think the first time I tasted lemon curd was in England in 1972, when my family was living in Oxford the year my father was on sabbatical. The name is a bit of a turn-off, I admit. But when you learn what its ingredients are—egg yolks, lemon juice, sugar, and butter—it becomes easy to just overlook the “curd” bit. (In fact, the word “cu rd” is apparently a corruption of the word “crud,” a fact which makes the name all that less appealing.)

As soon as I tried it I was addicted. The rich, custardy texture along with the tartness of the lemons makes for the perfect spread for buttered toast. But it’s not cheap, so I don’t tend to keep it on hand. When my friend Cathy gave me a big bag of Myer lemons from her tree, however, I decided to try making a batch of my own.

an equal number of egg yolks and lemons goes into the curd

My friend Nancy had given me a recipe for lemon curd that you make in the microwave, after I raved about a pie she’d made using it earlier this year in Hilo. Here was my chance to try it out. It’s remarkably simple (recipe is at bottom of post).

First, separate the eggs (only the yolks are used in lemon curd, but save the whites in the fridge—you’ll see why in my next post).

Next, juice your lemons:

Here are all the ingredients you’ll need:

Beat the egg yolks with a wire whisk, and then beat in the sugar until it’s well-incorporated (use a microwave-proof bowl):

Next, pour in the lemon juice and mix well:

It will look something like this:

Put the bowl in the microwave,

and cook on high at 30 second intervals, whisking the curd in between each one:

And be sure to use a large bowl, with lots of room for the lemon curd to expand as it boils, or it will overflow, as mine did about half-way through the process:

For the recipe below, it should take about 4-5 minutes. I doubled the recipe, and it took 11 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when it becomes thick and custardy, with lots of bubbles, and it starts to turn a golden color. Here’s what mine looked like when I stopped cooking it:

Finish it off by whisking in the butter, and stirring until it’s completely melted and incorporated:

Since I was using unsalted butter, I added a little salt at the end:

I was worried that the curd wouldn’t set up, since it seemed a little thin, even after I’d let it cool for a few minutes in the refrigerator. But the next morning when I took it out of the fridge to spread on my toast, I was thrilled to see that it had set up to the perfect consistency:

I can’t think of a better breakfast:

Microwave Lemon Curd
(yield: about 1 cup)

½ cup sugar
4 egg yolks
½ cup lemon juice (about 4 lemons)
2 oz. (½ stick) butter, cut into pieces

Whisk the sugar into the yolks in a large microwave-safe bowl, and then whisk in the lemon juice.

Microwave on high for 30 seconds.

Whisk.

Repeat until mixture is thick and custardy (it will bubble and turn a golden color), about 4-5 minutes. (Note that the time could vary greatly, depending on the power of your microwave.)

Add the butter, and stir until melted and incorporated.

Let cool a little, pour into a jar, and chill until thickened—several hours or overnight.

(Double the recipe for a 10-inch pie or tart. This will take more like 10 minutes in the microwave.)

Götter Dämm-erung!

2011-07-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

sing. It’s been over a month since my last post; sorry about that. I guess I’ve just been a bit overwhelmed—mentally as well as physically—with this whole cancer thing. Although Robin had her last treatments almost three weeks ago (and is doing much better, by the way), it’s still difficult for the both of us, and it’s just been hard to get back on the ol’ blog horse.

For those who have been following Robin’s tonsil cancer blog, you know that one of the worst things for her about having “the cancer” was that she was likely going to have to miss the SF Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle—which was the reason we were originally returning from Hilo in mid-June (click here for her post).

here’s the cool poster for the SF Opera’s 2011 Ring
web photo (source)

We saw the second of the SF Opera’s Ring production, Die Walküre, last spring, and I was ecstatic about the production, especially Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde. (Click here for my post comparing SF’s Walküre with the LA Opera’s simply dreadful 2010 Ring.)

Well, the good news is that, although Robin didn’t feel up to seeing all four operas, we did go to Götterdämmerung, the last of the cycle. Robin had wanted to do standing room—as originally envisioned before the cancer—but a few days before the show, decided she didn’t really have the energy to stand for the whole 5 ½-hour opera. Her mom and dad had very sweetly and generously offered to buy us seats for the entire cycle, so Robin agreed to let them pay for tickets for the one. (Thank you Annie Kate and Duffy!)

Since the show had long been sold out she went on Craigslist, and was pleased to find a pair of tickets in the orchestra for half price (still $150 each). We picked them up Sunday morning on the way up to the City, only to discover they were in the third row! (This turned out to be terrific as far as watching the singers’ expressions and getting to see Donald Runnicles conducting up close, but was not so good for sound, since the mix was unbalanced that near the stage. I wouldn’t sit there again.)

Being so close, I was able to peer down into the pit to check out the orchestra tuning up before the start of the performance. There were the horns, so prominent throughout the Ring cycle; and there were the famous Wagner tubas. And then I noticed something interesting: Checking out the faces of the players, I observed that there were only three African Americans in the pit—and all three were on bassoon! Is there some cultural thing going on here that I don’t know about?

The lights went down, Robin got her roll of TP prepared for mucus-duty (she was quite discrete and I don’t believe she bothered anybody), and we settled in our seats.

Before I continue, I should explain that this production—a joint effort of the San Francisco and Washington National Opera companies—has been termed the “American Ring,” because of its use of American imagery. The dwarf Alberch, for instance, is portrayed as a gold-panning 49er; the Gods are clad in elegant 1920s Great Gatsby-esque garb; and the Rhinemaidens bring to mind the sirens in the Coen brothers’ movie O Brother Where Are Thou?

the Rhinemaidens
web photo (source)

In addition, the cycle moves through American history, in the process making a not-so-subtle statement about the despoliation of our once-pristine land: It opens with the Gold Rush and Roaring Twenties in Rheingold; moving to the depression-era early industrialization (think Superman’s Metropolis) in Die Walküre; then to the more contemporary world of oil refineries and scrap metal in Sigfried and Götterdämmerung.

In other words, it’s also the “green” Ring.

The first scene is the Norns (the Norse equivalent of the Greek Fates), who spin their rope and determine destiny, and who—as famously remarked by the comedian Anna Russell—“retell this whole story [i.e., the first three operas] right over again from the beginning!”

In this version, however, instead of rope, the Norns are busy hooking up enormous computer cables, and the set design places them in some sort of William Gibson cyberspace.

the Norns
web photo (source)

After the Norns tell their story (which, Robin is quick to note—though she adores Anna Russell—does indeed give us new and important information, such as how Wotan lost his eye), we move to Sigfried and Brünnhilde after a night of hot and heavy love-making. Sigfried has apparently been invigorated by this activity, and is about to depart on a glorious quest for adventure. We hear the lyrical Rhine journey instrumental music, and then the scene changes to the abode of the conniving Gibichung family. I loved this set design: a 1960s-style bachelor-pad look, with a bar complete with swivel stools and fluorescent green cocktails, cubist white sofas, and the seductress Gutrune portrayed as a Peggy Lee look-alike femme fatale:

Getrune, Hagen, and Gunther
web photo (source)

The scene where the Rhinemaidens try to convince Sigfried to return the ring to its proper place in the River Rhine was also terrific. One of the points Wagner makes in the Ring cycle (as well as in his other works) is how our endless quest for power results in the destruction of nature. Hence, the progression in this “American” Ring from the pristine pre-industrial landscape of Rheingold to the belching smokestacks of Götterdämmerung. So in this scene, we see the Rhine littered with plastic bottles, old car tires, and other trash, and the weary Rhinemaidens picking up the litter and putting it into black plastic garbage bags as they sing.

the Rhinemaidens woo Sigfried
web photo (source)

It reminded me of the beach clean-up I did last winter on the beach in Hawai‘i.

All in all, I thought the direction of Francesca Zambello was superb. And the number of sold-out shows proves wrong the LA Opera’s assertion that its dismal sales last year were because folks don’t want to see the Ring.

You’ll notice that I haven’t commented on the music or the singing. I’ll leave that to others (read one review here), other than to say that Nina Stemme was once again wonderful, as was Andrea Silvestrelli as Hagen. And if you want to hear snippets of this production, click here.

Oops (Or How I Made My First Southern-Style Greens)

2011-06-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

eat. When I got home from my bike ride Sunday morning, Robin greeted me by saying “Honey, I have some bad news.”

Uh, oh.

Turns out it wasn’t really all that bad: Just that the juice I’d been making for her had started to really hurt her mouth (which is full of sores from the radiation treatment) that morning. She said she didn’t think she’d be able to drink it any more—at least not until her mouth started to heal.

“That’s okay,” I said. “We can try to isolate which ingredient is hurting you. And if they all are, we can just start up the juice regime again when you’re better. And I’m happy to drink this juice.”

I walked over to the counter and took a big gulp from the glass of beet-red juice. “Whoa!” I exclaimed. “That really is hot! Like horse radish or something. How weird.”

I tried to think which of the ingredients could be the culprit: carrots, beets, celery, parsley, apple, cucumber, kale? And then it hit me: Maybe it wasn’t really kale. I took the rest of the bunch out of the fridge, ripped off a piece and popped it into my mouth.

Wow. That was definitely not kale. But it had looked like kale at the store, and had been under a sign saying kale.

I realized it must be mustard greens. Here’s what mustard looks like (I neglected to photograph my bunch before cooking it, so this is a web image, which shows it to be a lighter green than mine was):

[source]

And here is some real kale I bought yesterday:

They look a lot alike, don’t they? But still, my bad. The good news was, however, that Robin’s mouth hadn’t gotten any worse after all, and she could indeed still drink the juice (if made with the correct ingredients).

Now the question was, what to do with those mustard greens? They were way too hot to eat raw, and I was dubious about simply sautéing them, as they would still likely retain a lot of their heat if prepared that way.

As luck would have it, that very day the post on a blog that I follow was all about collard and mustard greens. Ken (the blogger, an expat who now lives in the Loire Valley in France) is originally from the American South, and loves Southern-style greens.

That’s what I’d do. Following Ken’s method, I chopped up the mustard greens and put them in a large pot along with some chicken stock, white wine, a few tablespoons of pork fat I had in the fridge, and salt and pepper. (Sorry there aren’t any photos of it cooking, but I forgot to take any.)

I cooked it all for close to an hour, and then just let the greens sit in the pot until dinner time. Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve ever cooked greens this way (though I always order them when I’m in the South).

They were great—they still had a little of the zing, but not too much. (In fact, I added some Thai chili sauce to them, to add a little heat back into the mix.)

I ate them with some brown rice and refried beans that were left over from a bean soup I’d made for Robin that day:

And now for the Ziggy photo: She was spayed a week ago, which has made for a tough week for us, since we’re supposed to keep her “quiet.” Right. You try keeping a five-month-old Jack Russell Terrier quiet for a week. (Benadryl has helped a lot.)

She was sent home from the vet’s with an Elizabethan collar, but we immediately went out and bought what we call “the donut” for her. Not surprisingly, she likes the donut a lot better. You can see her here, with Robin in the cone of shame.

Soft Food

2011-05-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

eat. It took a while, but Robin’s mouth has gotten progressively more and more tender over the past several weeks, from the radiation treatmen ts she’s receiving for her throat cancer.

At first she didn’t detect any change from the radiation, but about two weeks into the treatment she noticed that certain foods were becoming hard to chew. Dry things, in particular, were starting to hurt because of sores that were forming under her tongue. (The last piece of bread she ate was at the HD live-stream of Die Walküre on May 14, when we brought sandwiches to the movie theater to eat during intermission.)

It was time to make the switch to soft foods. One night Robin asked for rice, beans, and avocado. I added lots of hot sauce to mine:

But Robin mushed hers all together:

Soon thereafter, however, even rice was too much for her. I decided it was time to move on to soups. The first one I tried was a broccoli-potato purée. Unfortunately, however, there is something in broccoli that made her mouth sting. Who knew? (Luckily, I love broccoli soup, so I was happy to finish it off.)

“How about really soupy mashed potatoes?” Robin suggested (she loves potatoes). No problem, I said, and whipped up a big pot-full, adding lots of butter and milk, since keeping up the calories is important for her. This, I am glad to report, she was able to eat, as long as I diluted it to the point where no chewing was required.

Robin wanted to try eggs, but unfortunately runny yolks—the only way she likes them—are on the no-no list right now, since yolks must be fully-cooked to ensure that any salmonella lurking therein is killed. (Chemotherapy significantly lowers one’s white-blood cell count, making the body less able to combat illness of any kind.) Robin’s never liked scrambled eggs, but volunteered to try some, with the mashed potatoes, for breakfast. I grated some Irish cheddar cheese and gave her butter to add, and she declared the concoction to be quite edible:

Another of Robin’s favorite foods—a hold-over from when she was a kid—is what she calls “mushy peas,” i.e., canned peas. So I decided to see if pea soup might be something she could eat. I dumped a can of peas into a pot, added chicken stock, and simmered it for about a half and hour:

Next I put the soup through a sieve to separate out the skins, which I knew she wouldn’t be able to eat. (I saved the skins and ate them myself, doused with hot Thai chili sauce and S&P—quite good!) I didn’t add any seasoning to the soup, as Robin’s supposed to limit her salt intake, and things like black pepper, garlic, and other spices hurt her mouth.

That same day she suggested that I try making fish, which gave me quite a shock as she’s never been a fan of cooked fish (sushi she adores, but that’s a big no-no right now). I had made a batch of chicken stock the day before, so I tried poaching some pangasius—a mild, almost tasteless (to my mind) fish that our friend Nancy H. had left in the freezer—in some of the stock, and served this with the pea soup:

The pea soup hurt a tiny bit, but I gather not too terribly much. Amazingly, however, Robin said the fish was “not bad; we could do this again.” Wow. So I did. A few nights later, after poaching the fish in more stock, I removed it with a slotted spoon and then mixed some peanut butter and coconut milk into the poaching liquid, and served this over the fish, with a side of soupy mashed potatoes:

Robin declared that to be even better. Mine I had with more of the Thai hot sauce:

Another soups I tried was bean (made with refries) with chicken stock, topped with yogurt:

This did not hurt Robin’s mouth. (I poured mine over baby spinach and added grated cheese and hot sauce.)

Butternut squash soup with brown butter, with yogurt stirred in at the last minute, hurt a little, but was “doable,” Robin declared. (I’ve since nixed vegetable soups altogether, as they tend to hurt more than others. Interesting.)

And miso soup with chunks of silken tofu, as long as it’s pretty diluted, seems to work okay so far, so this has become one of her staples:

During the day, Robin keeps hydrated with a variety of beverages: lots and lots of water; the fruit and vegetable juice I make for her; prune juice mixed with Gatorade; and here she is with a strawberry milkshake doctored with protein powder:

“But what about cocktail hour?” you may well ask. I admit to still indulging in a glass or two of Jim Beam most evenings, but although she’s off alcohol these days, Robin does try to join me with her current favorite drink: a watermelon, papaya and coconut milk smoothie. Served in a Martini glass, naturally!

the hat and scarf are to keep the sun off the areas being radiated

And lest you think she’s become a complete invalid, banish the thought. Here’s Robin during her daily training session with Ziggy (this is “crawl”):

Fear Is The Mind-Killer

2011-05-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

eat.ride. Besides the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia is probably the most famous bicycle race around. And, by some accounts at least, the best and most grueling—a class above its increasingly-commercialized big brother to the north, Le Tour.

The Giro is now in its second of three weeks, and since I’m spending a lot of time around the house these day—looking after the puppy and making juice for Robin—I decided to pay the fifteen bucks to get to see it on line (you can watch it later in the day on demand, which is a good thing, given the time-difference between Italy and California).

So there I am last Monday, watching the riders rocket down from Reggio Emilia to the coast at Rappalo during stage three, when the camera switches to several team cars stopped along the route. Cyclists are having to come to an almost complete stop to get around them, and a group of people are clustered around something on the road. There’s been a crash.

Crashes are a regular part of professional bike racing, but I always get a sick feeling in my stomach when the rider doesn’t get up right away.

This one didn’t.

There was a rock wall right at the edge of the road, and I knew right away that it couldn’t be good news; not if he hit that wall going 50 miles an hour downhill. The camera pointed at his face and I had to turn away.

We all later learned that the cyclist was Wouter Weylandt, a 26-year-old Belgian who rode for the Leopard-Trek team (the team of Andy Scheck, who’s riding the Tour of California right now, and who will be making a bid for his first Tour de France win this July). He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Wouter Weylandt at the 2008 Vuelta a España
web photo (source)

Although crashes are common in bike races, deaths are not. According to this website, there have been only three deaths in the entire history of the Tour de France (which started in 1903) and four (counting this one) in the Giro (which started in 1909).

The next day’s Giro stage was “neutralized,” i.e., there was no competition, and the cyclists rode it as a tribute to Wouter Weylandt. At the finish, the Leopard Trek team came to the front in a row and joined arms. Among them was Tyler Farrar, an American rider with the Garmin-Cervélo team, who was Wouter’s close friend and training partner:

web photo (source)

I had never heard of Wouter Weylandt before stage 3 of the Giro, but the tears came as I watched the peloton ride in, the crowd silent in respect for the fallen rider.

Over the next few days, I found myself thinking a lot about death. How this young man had been on top of the world and at the height of his career (ironically, he had been the winner of stage 3 of last year’s Giro) at the start of the day. He no doubt had a moment’s fear as he started to crash, but by all accounts he was killed instantly upon impact and had no idea his life was about to end.

So really, if you’re going to die a “premature” death, this is as good a way to go as possible. After all, once you’re actually dead, it’s not a bad thing for you; you simply don’t exist any more, so you’re not even aware that you’re dead. It’s your family and friends who will suffer—those left behind.

As my thoughts continued in this vein, I started to think about how it’s the knowledge, the fear of death that is the worst thing. That’s why people react so strongly when they learn of Robin’s diagnosis: They equate cancer with death, and get that fear—even though hers is only stage 2, and has an exceedingly high cure rate.

And this brings us to the “eat” portion of my post: Animals have no conception of death, at least not in the same way humans do. Sure, they experience fear, and have the same self-preservation instincts that we do. But when they’re sick, or in danger, they’re not thinking, “Omygod, this is it: my life is at an end; I’m going to die!”

Which is why I don’t think it’s wrong for us to raise animals and then kill them for meat. All beings die. And if we treat the animals humanely, give them a pleasant life, and make sure that they don’t experience fear, stress, or undue pain when killed, then we’ve given them as good—or likely better—an existence as they would have had “in the wild” (though there would be no such thing as the “wild” for them, since beef cattle, pigs, eating chickens, and other animals raised for meat wouldn’t even exist if we didn’t eat them).

This led me to think about Temple Grandin, the now-professor of animal science at Colorado State University who—based on her own experiences as an autistic person—came up with a method and designed equipment for the handling and killing of cattle in a humane and stress-free manner.

there’s a great film about Temple Grandin

starring the always adorable Claire Danes
web photo (source)

Her idea was simple, but ground-breaking: ensure that the animals are free of fear when handled, transported, and led to the slaughter, and they will be happier and easier to handle, and the meat will taste better. (For information about the method she conceived, click here.)

So as with us humans, death isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s the fear that’s bad.

I’ll close with a famous quote from the Dune books by Frank Herbert: the Bene Gesserit litany against fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Juiced

2011-05-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

eat. Yes, it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything. Robin and I have had a rather hectic month, what with her throat cancer diagnosis (see Robin’s blog about it all, here; our unexpected and hurried move back to California; the puppy; my dad’s heart surgery (he’s doing fine); and a variety of related things.

Numerous people have told us that Robin should start drinking a mixture of fruit and vegetable juice. This is for two reasons: because of its antioxidant effects, and also because in a week or so the radiation is going to burn her throat so much that she’s going to end up on a liquid diet (yes, I’ll be making lots of soup, too).

I researched juicers on line, and learned that what I wanted was a single-auger, masticating juicer—one that could process leafy greens like kale and wheatgrass, as well as things like carrots and apples. This type of juicer runs at a slower, more deliberate speed, thereby keeping the temperature from rising and cooking out the beneficial antioxidants from the produce. The Cadillac of them all—according to the reviews I read—is the Omega 8006, which comes in at a hefty $300.

We decided that Robin was worth the money, and ordered one. Here it is:

check out that shiny chrome—almost like a real Cadillac

Our friend Nancy—a tree farmer who’s lived in Belize for the last 20 years and who knows way more than me about raw food and juicing—gave me a list of fruits and vegetables that she thought would benefit Robin the most. There was kale, beet greens, basil, parsley, and cilantro:

as well as carrots, cucumber, beet, bell pepper, grapefruit (and not pictured, apple, garlic, and ginger):

Because Robin has started her chemotherapy—which could lower her white blood cell count to dangerous levels, making her especially susceptible to bacterial infection—she has to be very careful about eating raw foods. (No sushi for her, alas, for several months.) I was therefore concerned about juicing the raw produce—especially the greens. But then I realized that quickly blanching it all would kill any bacteria on the surface. (And if her white blood cell count does get really low, we’ll lay off the juice entirely until it goes back up.)

Here I am blanching the carrots:

And here is all the blanched produce, ready for juicing:

I started with some carrots, just to get a feel for the process:

the juice comes out on the left and the pulp on the right

Here you can see I’ve added some beet, and am inserting a piece of yellow bell pepper:

In this photo you can see how much pulp is generated in comparison to juice. No wonder the stuff is so expensive in stores.

And here is the finished product (there was a lot more juice from the produce you saw at the beginning of this post, than is pictured here):

In case you’re wondering about the glass the juice is in, Houston Flournoy was the Republican candidate for California governor in 1974, and was narrowly defeated by Jerry Brown. My parents were for some reason invited to a fund-raiser dinner for him (they sat at a table full of other democrats, my Mom told me last week when I asked about him), which they decided to attend on a whim. When no one else at the table wanted the glasses, they took them home as a lark.

Robin discovered the box of glasses at my folks’ house right before we left for Hawai‘i last December, and we asked if we could have them. They’ve sat in my sister’s garage since then, and are coming in very handy these days, since we’re living in a friend’s unfurnished house for the next six weeks, as our Santa Cruz house is rented to a Norwegian family until mid-June.

As for all that pulp. Well, being the daughter of a depression baby, I couldn’t bear to just throw it out (and we don’t even have a compost pile here where we’re staying). So I decided to make it into something... What would that be? A curry-ish dish, I decided.

So I cooked the carrot, beet, kale, apple, cucumber, etc. pulp until it was soft, added cumin, garlic, black pepper, a little chili powder, salt, a bit of sugar, and a few other spices (my supply is limited right now), and some chopped up baked potato that I had in the fridge:

It was pretty good, actually. Today’s pulp I threw out, since we still have curry-pulp left-overs. But next time I’m going to make it into a Mexican-flavored glop, perhaps with some bits of pork for extra flavor. (Robin’s a good sport about eating all the weird things I make.) And then maybe I can try making Thai glop, with coconut milk... and then perhaps Cajun... and Chinese....

Ziggy’s First Plane Ride

2011-04-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

fly. As many of you already know, Robin and I are both back in California now—two months earlier than we had planned. The reason for this change in plans is that a growth in Robin’s throat has been diagnosed as stage 2 cancer, and she will be commencing treatment (concurrent radiation and chemotherapy, for 6-8 weeks) here in California in a week or two. She has started a blog about it all (so very Robin, no?), which you can follow h ere.

After spending a week finishing up various projects on the Hilo house that Robin had started, but had to abandon mid-stream to return to California, I followed her home—little Ziggy in tow.

an illegal un-zip in the Hilo airport waiting room

Now, the primary reason we decided to get a small dog was so she could ride in the cabin with us on airplane trips. But we hadn’t expected to take her at such a young age, nor had we planned on me having to do it alone. I’ve never traveled with a dog on a plane before, and I was more than a little worried: Ziggy, like all Jack Russell Terriers, can be quite the terror. What if she yelped or cried the whole time, or peed in her kennel? What if the crate didn’t fit under the seat?

I had ordered a soft kennel on line, which Ziggy quickly become accustomed to—and liked a lot—and had also taken the precaution of getting some doggie downers from our vet in Hilo, just in case. And I also brought with me Ziggy’s Kong, and some peanut butter and cubes of cheese to go in it (in my quart baggie, along with two mini-bottles of Jim Beam—sustenance for the both of us), in case she needed something to occupy her during the flight. Dogs don’t have crossword puzzles and in-flight movies like we do, after all.

I boarded the Hilo to Honolulu flight, found my seat, and took a deep breath: That space under the seat in front of me looked awful small. Being careful not to jostle little Ziggy too much, I shoved the crate down, and pushed it back as far as it would go. It was tight—and stuck out a fair amount—but it did fit. Whew!

As we took off into the Hilo rain we experienced some rather heavy turbulence, and Ziggy let out a soft cry of fear—but just once. The plane quickly emerged above the clouds, and there were Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea in all their volcanic glory.

As we sped north towards Oahu, I peered down to check on the pup. She was curled up, eyes closed, sleeping. What a good dog!

We had a two-hour layover in Honolulu. I love this airport, as there is a lovely garden to hang out in, and you don’t have to go out past the security check-point area to get to it. Here’s a view from the garden, up towards the area where folks are walking to their gates:

I knew, of course, that dogs wouldn’t be allowed outside of their crates in this garden, but I really wanted Ziggy to have some unconfined time before our 5-hour flight to San Francisco. And—more important—I really wanted her to pee. So I broke the law (no!), and let her wander around the grassy area, with her leash attached to the crate:

My fellow travelers—as well as the various flight crew members who came by—were unanimously charmed by the sight of a small puppy chasing leaves and playing with her stuffed honu (turtle) in the garden. In particular, two-year-old Evan became infatuated with Ziggy, who I am proud to say was unfazed by the fact that it was a small child petting her rather than an adult. Evan kept come back over to where we were sitting (his patient and friendly mom following him), bearing leaves and sticks to give to the appreciative Ziggy:

And then a marvelous thing happened: she went pee!

I sighed in relief. That was one less thing to worry about.

After about an hour, however, I spied a man with “Security” emblazoned on his vest emerge from the door near where we were sitting. Sure enough, he shouted out in a gruff voice, “put that dog back in its kennel!” After all, a 13-week-old puppy is indeed quite the security risk, eh?

back in confinement

As soon has he was gone, however, I unzipped the top of the kennel. He didn’t say she couldn’t have the sun-roof down, after all.

A few minutes later it was time to head for our gate. I decided to take her into the bathroom to see if I could get her to pee one last time. I’d brought with me a wad of paper towels which I’d used to clean up her “accidents” during the preceding week (safely stored in two zip-lock bags), in the hopes that the familiar smell would encourage her.

But no such luck; she just looked up at me: “What are we doing in this little room, Mom?”

So I put her back in her kennel and we boarded the plane. Thankfully, this one had more room under the seats, and the crate fit easily. She fell asleep almost immediately, and was quiet for about three hours. When she woke up, since the lights were out in the cabin so folks could watch the movie, I took a chance and snuck her into my lap, covered by the Hawaiian Airlines blanket. The young man with the Bob Dylan haircut next to me just smiled, patted her on the head, and went back to reading Henry IV, part two.

Ziggy was a little squirmy for a couple of minutes, but then went back to sleep.

By the time she awoke, it was only a half hour till landing. I put her back in her crate, and she did not protest. What a good dog again! No need for those doggie downers after all.

We were greeted at the airport by Robin and my sister Laura. Robin barely acknowledged me, instead grabbing the kennel and rushing into the nearest bathroom so she could take Ziggy—whom she hadn’t seen for two weeks—out for a kiss-fest:

(After this, Robin did give me a kiss, too.)

The three of us are now living with my sister Laura and her husband Doug in San Jose, as our Santa Cruz house is rented out until mid-June. Ziggy is adjusting well to being in California, though she is finding it rather chilly here, compared to Hawai‘i. In anticipation of this, I had bought her a doggie coat in Hilo before our trip. All they had were hot pink coats:

We have dubbed Ziggy “Count Pinkula” when she wears it (which she does frequently, as she tends to shiver in the mornings and evenings in this cool clime), because of its high vampire-cape style collar (a shout-out to Laura for coming up with the moniker).

Sushi Envy

2011-04-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

eat. I thought I’d make you all jealous with some photos of the sushi my sister Laura and I enjoyed the other night here in Hilo.

glistening maguro tuna caught that morning in Hilo Bay

Nihon restaurant sits atop stilts in a building overlooking the Hilo bay. This part of town is now off-limits to most construction, due to its vulnerability to tsunamis. (The Japanese community of Waiakea village used to stand on the waterfront, but was wiped out by the 1960 tsunami, which killed 61 of its residents.)

There is an exception to the building ban, however, for “cultural” enterprises, so the owners of Nihon decided to get around the rules by deeming their establishment a “Cultural Center,” which also happens to have a restaurant. When one enters the building, one is therefore greeted by a display case with a dozen or so cultural artifacts: a samurai sword, a kimono, a few pieces of pottery. But it’s for the food that everyone comes.

I had suggested that we go on a Wednesday night, as this is when Lito Arkangel—a sort of Hawai‘ian John Denver—performs. Robin and I had heard him before, and liked him a lot. Here he is, with a birthday party seated to the right, and some coconut palms silhouetted by the early evening sky in the background:

Once seated at the sushi bar, Laura and I promptly ordered a large Asahi each. This dry beer is my favorite Japanese brew:

I always have Chef Roy Kaneko—who apprenticed as a sushi chef in Tokyo—serve up a selection of whatever he thinks is best that evening. He started us out with the tuna (pictured above, with Roy in the background), and we then moved on to some incredibly buttery hamachi (yellowtail):

Next up was a spider roll, made with deep-fried soft-shell crab, cucumber, and tobiko (flying fish roe):

Then came one of my favorites: marinated mackerel (marinated by Roy), wrapped in a shiso leaf.

Shiso, which I first tasted on a trip to Japan ten years ago, tastes a bit like cumin, and made for a perfect compliment to the vinegary marinade and fatty fish. (I grew a shiso plant quite successfully last year in Santa Cruz, in case any of you Californians want to try doing so.)

For our fifth course, Roy served up his version of Jewish sushi: fresh, clean and sweet-tasting salmon, garnished with a slice of onion. Gotta love it.

And finally, a precursor to dessert, a filled roll of sliced scallop and tobiko, tossed in mayonnaise. Ahhh..... sublime:

We were really too full for dessert, but I love the shave ice that Nihon serves, drizzled with sweetened condensed milk. Laura and I decided to share a melon one:

As we savored our shave ice, we watched Roy pack up for the evening. It was seven-thirty, and Hilo pretty much rolls up its sidewalks at eight. Just look at all that luscious fish:

If you’re ever in Hilo, do try Nihon’s sushi. But call first to make sure Roy is working that night!

And here’s the weekly Ziggy photo for y’all. This is the pen Robin made for her in the back yard. It was hot and sunny the other day, so I hung out with her for a while:

(photo: Laura Karst)

Turmeric Stir Fry

2011-03-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

eat. During the week following the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan, I received dozens of emails discussing the dangers of radiation exposure that could result if the Japanese reactors suffered meltdowns, and what precautions we could take. One of the foods mentioned was turmeric, which health experts claim to possess all sorts of healthful benefits (see here).

It just so happens that I had purchased some fresh turmeric at the Pahoa farmers’ market a week earlier. I’d seen this bright orange rhizome—which looks a lot like fresh ginger—for sale before, but on this occasion I stopped at the stand and chatted with the vendor and some of her customers about how best to prepare and use it.

I was told that one should treat fresh turmeric like ginger root, peeling it and cutting it into small pieces, and that it makes for a delicious addition to a stir-fry. So I bought a bag. Good timing, eh?

After peeling the root, the little fingers looked like tiny carrots. But beware: they stain the dickens out of whatever you cut them up on. I used a dinner plate rather than having my cutting board become a permanent yellow:

I didn’t wear gloves, however, so my hands turned bright yellow (my camera still has traces of yellow on it from this photo session):

The raw turmeric tasted earthy—a bit like a cross between a turnip and a carrot—but the flavor was milder than I had expected.

I fried up a bunch of veggies (green beans, onions, broccoli and bok choy—the latter two added after the photo was taken) along with the turmeric:

When they were almost done, I added garlic, cumin, and a little Tandoori seasoning to the veggies:

Once done (but still crispy), I set the veggies aside and fried up some tofu I’d seasoned the same as the vegetables:

I love the trippy color of the electric element in this shot

I then dumped the veggies back in, and mixed it all together. We ate it over steamed rice.

My feeling about the turmeric is that it didn’t really add all that much to the dish. Maybe I should have used more. But the flavor it did add—subtle as it was—was a pleasant, earthy one. And it did give the dish a nice yellow color; I can see why dried turmeric is such and important element of curry powder.

It looks like the Japanese reactors aren’t going to blow after all, thank goodness. But I suppose it can’t hurt to have a little turmeric in your diet. And yellow is my favorite color.

I would be remiss if I didn’t include a photo of Ziggy, who celebrates her 11-week birthday today. (And happy birthday to my mom as well, who turns 82 today!) Here is an aerial view of little Ziggy in her toy box:

Pineapple Upside-down Cake

2011-03-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

eat. Yes, we did have a tsunami here last night, but I’ve already written about one, and the event we had early this morning was not much larger than last February’s—at least in Hilo (where the wave was a little over four feet). I gather its effects were worse in Santa Cruz than in Hilo. Weird.

So I’m going to write about pineapples instead—pineapple upside-down cake, to be exact.

It’s one of Robin’s favorite desserts, and you can readily get fresh pineapples here, so why not? This was my first go, and although it is rather labor-intensive, the cake came out quite well, thank-you-very-much.

You start with the bottom—which, this being an upside-down cake—will end up as the top.

Here follows a short lesson on how to get nice slices from a fresh pineapple: Cut off the bottom of the fruit, as well as the “crown” on top (if you live in the tropics, you can stick the crown into the dirt, and it will grow into a happy pineapple plant). Then stand it on a cutting board and slice off the skin:

Next comes the tedious part—taking out all those pesky little “eyes.” Use a paring knife, and don’t worry too much about getting every single one:

Then slice it into ½ inch sections, and cut out the centers, which are tough and fibrous:

Set aside your pineapple slices, and turn on the oven to 350°F.

For the caramel topping (bottom): Dump your brown sugar (I used Sucanat, ’cause I had some on hand that a friend had given me, and it worked fine) and butter into a saucepan (quantities below*),

and stir over a medium heat until the butter has melted and the brown sugar dissolves. Cook a few more minutes, stirring occasionally, to allow the sugar to caramelize.

Pour the caramel into an oiled 9” cake pan.

Then arrange the pineapple slices on top of the caramel:

For the batter: Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt, and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, and then add the vanilla extract. Continue beating, adding the egg yolks, one at a time.

Mix the flour mixture (in three parts) into the batter, alternatively with the milk (in two parts), ending with the dry ingredients.

In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until they hold a firm peak,

and fold gently with a rubber spatula into the batter (in two or three parts):

Pour the batter into the cake pan on top of the pineapple and caramel, and smooth the top:

(You might just feel the urge to lick the batter bowl clean, as this was the tastiest cake batter I have ever had!)

Bake until the top of the cake has browned and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan (50-60 minutes). A toothpick inserted into the cake (not the pineapple) should come out clean:

Remove from oven and let cool for about 10-15 minutes. Run a sharp knife around the edge of the pan, place a serving plate on top of the pan,

and invert the cake onto the plate. (See photo at top.)

The cake can be made the morning before service and reheated in the oven at 400°F. If it’s not brown enough for your taste, you can put it under the broiler.

I served mine with vanilla ice cream:

Topping:
4 T (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
pineapple, sliced ½ inch thick (fresh or canned)

Batter:
1 ½ cups flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs, separated
½ cup milk

* Note that although the quantities listed are for one cake, I doubled the recipe and made two cakes, since my pineapple was so big. If you want to do this and freeze the second cake, place it on a plate in the freezer uncovered. When it’s frozen solid, then wrap it well. Take off the wrapping before you defrost it.

Two New Babies in One Week

2011-03-01T14:24:00.000-08:00

ride. and more. Several weeks ago I wrote a post about being invited on some friends’ Sunday ride, and how the wife of one of the cyclists—Diana—was generous enough to loan me her bike for the occasion.

It was a very nice Trek 2.1 road bike: in great shape (Diana hadn’t ridden it much); fit me perfectly (she being short like me); had rockin’ colors (red and white); and was equipped with a third (aka “weenie”) ring—very useful in these parts where everywhere you ride is a hill.

Last Sunday we went for a ride again, and I asked Leonard about what he’d said the previous time: that Diana might be interested in selling me the bike. Yes, he informed me, she would sell it to me. And for a very nice price.

Done!

Here’s my new baby; ain’t she gorgeous?

I took her for her first solo ride last Thursday morning, heading uphill from our house, around a residential neighborhood, and then up Puainako St. (i.e., the Saddle Road) to the five mile marker, and back home. Sweet! (And yes, I do appreciate that weenie ring; it sure would make my UCSC ride back in Santa Cruz a lot easier.)

Little did I know that I was about to acquire a second—and even more precious—baby within just three days.

When I got back from my ride Thursday morning, I looked in the Hilo Tribune Herald classifieds—as I’ve been doing every day for the past month—for puppies. There was a new ad that day, for a litter of 7-week-old Jack Russell Terriers.

Now, some of you already know that Robin and I have been in the market for a puppy. We lost our beloved Rosie a year ago December, and have both been pining for a new pooch. We had decided we wanted another smart dog (Rosie was half Border Collie), but a small one this time—one we could take as carry-on luggage on an airplane.

A toy poodle (or poodle mix) was what we were mostly looking for, but there seems to be a dearth of them here in the Islands. But we’d also talked about a JRT, a super smart breed. (That’s why you see them so often on TV and in the movies.)

Eddie (aka Moose)
web photo (source)

But they are also quite a handful. Think about what they’ve been bred for: searching out rats and foxes in their holes. Not the kind of activity for the weak of heart. JRTs are willful, strong-headed, and persistent.

So we were just a little hesitant when we drove down to Hawai‘ian Paradise Park (locally known as HPP) to look at the litter. We wanted a female, and there was only one in the bunch, so it would have to be her or none at all.

The mom and dad came running out to meet our car, and I thought the dad (Tim) was going to jump right into my arms, he was so friendly.

Tim with one of the male puppies and Robin

The female was the runt of the litter—just like Rosie had been—and was being picked on by her bigger brothers—also just like Rose. But unlike Rosie, she showed affection to us almost right away, kissing us and trying to crawl into our laps. Also, I think that with a JRT, having the wimpiest pup of the litter would be a very good thing.

the female is on the far right
(they’re all a little longer, with shorter legs, than the famous Eddie)
(photo: Becky Stubbs)

Robin and I looked at each other. Well, what d’ya think, our eyes asked. We both nodded. And it was done.

We asked if we could come back on Sunday to pick her up. That would give us time to acquire a dog kennel (we’re going to crate train her, something we never did with Rosie), and to get emotionally ready for a puppy around the house.

It would also give us time to do some things together that were going to become difficult to do for a month or so after we got a puppy. Saturday we went to a fancy lunch together (at the Hilo Bay Cafe—it was scrumptious!), and Sunday morning we went down to see the lava:

Here I am in a vehicle that got caught in the flow about a month ago:

(photo: Robin McDuff)

And then it was time to pick her up, my second baby of the week. Ain’t she adorable?

We’ve decided to name her Sieglinde (from Wagner’s Die Walküre); but she’ll be Ziggy for short.

she already loves her moms

We believe we are up to the task of training a JRT. It will require firmness and love, and perhaps most important of all, consistency and follow-through.

I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. There’s a third baby I really should mention: our friends John and Jessica just welcomed their first child to the world this week: Ella J Walsh. Congrats and love to you all!

Green Bean Salad with Feta and Tomatoes

2011-02-25T14:17:00.000-08:00

eat. This salad is quick and easy to make, can be done in advance, has attractive colors, and is truly delicious. As a result, it makes for a great first course for a dinner party.

The green beans grown here on the Big Island are the wide and flat variety, sometimes referred to as Romano, or Italian beans.

But of course any kind of green beans could be used. Or asparagus too, for that matter.

Make the topping first, so it can sit for a few hours and the flavors can blend. You’ll need a chunk of feta cheese and some tomatoes (preferably cherry or grape, as they are sweeter, and their slices make for better presentation):

Cut the cheese into small chunks (or crumble it, if you prefer):

Slice the tomatoes:

Then mix them together in a bowl, drizzle them liberally with extra virgin olive oil (remember, this is going to be the dressing), and add salt and pepper. Go easy on the salt, depending on how salty your cheese is:

Set the dressing aside on the counter, and stir it every half hour or so. After a few hours it will be well-incorporated, and you can refrigerate it until time for service.

Next you need to blanch the beans. If they have strings, de-string them. Keep them whole. Get a large pot of salted water boiling, and drop in the beans:

Let them cook for just a few minutes (2-5, depending on how many beans there are). You want them to still have a bit of bite to them.

While they’re blanching, get ready a colander and a bowl of ice. Pour the pot of cooked beans into the colander, and then dump the drained beans into the bowl of ice, and add cold water. Stir them around with your hands to cool them off as quickly as possible (but be gentle, so you don’t break them). By stopping the cooking right away like this, the beans will retain the their bright green hue.

Once cool, put them back in the colander to drain (or you could put them on a dish towel, instead):

When the beans are dry, toss them with olive oil and S&P, and put them in the fridge until time for service:

To serve the salad, lay the beans artistically on plates,

and then top them with the dressing (give it a quick last stir, first):

Voilà! Yummy!

Going Native

2011-02-16T11:57:00.000-08:00

eat. (But you have to wait till the end for the food.) The Hawai‘ian archipelago is one of the most isolated land masses on Earth. (The prize for the most remote island apparently goes to Tristan da Cunha, located in the South Atlantic.) Not surprisingly, then, given how far they would have had to travel—across thousands of miles of open ocean—the number of native plants and animals in Hawai‘i is small. And as in other isolated places in the world, those few individuals that did manage to find their way here—be it floating on a coconut, or swept up in a hurricane—eventually evolved into unique species, not to be found anywhere else.

the Hawai‘ian nene, which has been brought back
from near extinction to some 800 geese

These plants and animals evolved in an environment with few natural predators: Until the arrival of humans in the early centuries of the Christian Era, there were no hooved grazers on the Hawai‘ian Islands, and the only land mammal was the hoary bat (‘ope‘ape‘a). As a result, they evolved with few natural defenses: the berries had no stickers, the mint no scent, and many of the birds lacked the ability to fly.

So guess what happened when humans started clear-cutting koa for lumber; when cattle began grazing the forest lands and pigs rooting up saplings; when mongooses—which love nothing better than tasty bird’s eggs for breakfast—were introduced in the hopes they would kill the rats (alas, rats are nocturnal, and mongooses diurnal); and when the mosquito arrived along with sailing ships from Mexico?

Well, the koa was virtually decimated; ‘ohi‘a seedlings were eaten and trampled; the moho (Hawai‘ian rail) couldn’t protect its eggs from predators; and all the ‘i‘iwi in low altitudes were killed off by virus-carrying mosquitos.

Luckily, there are still areas of old-growth forest in Hawai’i, several of them on the Big Island. In 1985, some 38,000 acres on the slopes of Mauna Kea were set aside as the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, with the purpose of protecting native birds and their rainforest habitat. In addition to safeguarding existing habitat, the Hakalau Forest NWR has also been restoring to their original state lands that have been grazed by cattle and overrun with alien plants.

sunrise on Mauna Kea
(view from our cabin at Hakalau)

The Reserve is normally closed to the public, but I had the good fortune to spend last weekend there as a volunteer worker bee. I was invited by my pal Casey Leigh, the Associate Dean of the UH Manoa law school, who was accompanying a group of current environmental law students and recent grads (as well as a visiting professor from Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley) on the trip.

yes, some actually studied (with beer) during the weekend

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early after a chilly night (the Reserve is at 6,500 feet) and convened outside our cabin for a briefing with Hakalau horticulturist Baron Horiuchi:

The first order of the day would be the planting of seedlings under the previously-planted and now-established koa trees, whose canopy protects and directs rain water onto the vulnerable keiki.

Here are some very young ‘ohi‘a lehua, which Baron propagates from seed:

And here’s what an ‘ohi‘a looks like when it’s some 800 years old:

that’s Ha‘a, the tree-hugging environmental law student, at its base

We assembled in the greenhouse and filled baskets with 4” pots of ‘ohi‘a, pilo, ‘akala (the native raspberry), and kolea.

Casey in the foreground, with Baron and several law grads behind

Next we loaded the baskets into the trucks,

David, with an armload of ‘ohi‘a

bumped down the dirt track to the lower part of the Reserve, and set to work planting. We were a bit disorganized at first, but before long we had it down to a process Henry Ford would have been proud of: several folks with augers digging the holes, followed by someone dropping fertilizer into the holes, and then people pulling up the rear planting the plants.

In all, we planted 540 seedlings in one morning. Impressive!

After lunch (grilled cheese sandwiches and fruit prepared by the old folks—Casey, Holly and me; the kids made both dinners and both breakfasts), it was time for some greenhouse work: transplanting and taking cuttings of extinct mint.

No, that’s not a typo. Phyllostegia brevidens, the Hawai‘ian scentless mint, was thought to be extinct until 1990, when the plant was discovered on the Refuge. A cutting was taken from the mint, and Baron has propagated and planted hundreds (thousands?) of them since that time. Nevertheless, the plant is still classified in the regulatory scheme as “extinct,” even though biologically it of course is not. (It has yet to reseed itself in the wild, however.) All of us legal types that weekend found this to be quite amusing—that the law could be so absurd as to call something we were transplanting by the hundreds “extinct”—and chose “the Extinct Mints” for our group name.

Here is a cutting from a mature mint, ready for starting in a flat of vermiculite:

And here’s what the mints look like after they have rooted, and are ready for transplanting into pots:

It was a hard day’s work, and we were ready for the hearty Southern dinner prepared by Jamila: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

I asked about her method (of course). She told me she would have used buttermilk had there been any at the market, but settled for dipping the chicken pieces in beaten egg and then flour, and then fried them in canola oil (there was a lot of oil in the pan, almost like deep-frying). Then she finished them in the oven. The meal was really, really good. And I discovered a new love: Hawai‘ian Hot Sauce, which is like a thick Tabasco, but sweeter:

The next day we were rewarded for the previous day’s labors with a morning of birding, led by Baron and Casey. I’m no bird-photographer, so I have no photos, but we saw all sorts of native birds, including the ‘i‘iwi, ‘apapane, ‘elepaio, and ‘amakihi. (You can see photos and read about them here.) Afterwards, we posed for a group shot:

Mahalo to Casey for inviting me, and to Baron for being our mentor and guide!

If you would like to volunteer at Hakalau, become a member of the Friends of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, or simply donate some money, click here.

Perky Fruit

2011-02-10T13:54:00.000-08:00

eat. I stopped by the Sally Shop (yes, that’s the official name of Hilo’s Salvation Army thrift store) the other day, as I try to do every week or so. I’m a born “nester,” someone who just loves to set up and arrange things around the house. (Back in the days when I used to back-pack, my favorite part was always setting up camp: “Okay, let’s have the kitchen area here. I can put the camp stove on this rock, and the pots and pans there...”)

So for me, one of best aspects of buying a second home in Hilo has been going to garage sales and thrift shops, seeking out the perfect items with which to furnish it.

I found some true gems at the Sally Shop the other day: two plaster-of-Paris fruits ($1.00 each), with hooks on the back so they can be hung on the wall:

These objets d’art were no doubt created by some craft-loving person using a mold, and then carefully painted after they dried. Judging from their appearance, I would guess this occurred some time in the 1950s or ’60s.

It was love at first sight. I know they’re totally goofy, but every time I see them they make me smile. (I must say, I think in particular of you—Laura, Lynn and Nora—when I gaze at them.) I’ve hung them in the kitchen (natch), on the window frame above the sink, next to the stove:

Here’s a close-up, in which you can see that they are smiling gleefully at the vintage vegetable crinkle-cutter (say that fast five times) which we dipped in hot lava:

Cycle Hawai‘i

2011-02-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

ride. It’s so much more pleasant riding with the fresh air on your face and watching the world go by, than it is turning the pedals over and over like a rat on a treadmill, staring at the cement walls of the basement on a stationary bike.

Last week our friends Nancy and Steve stopped by our house after their weekly Sunday morning ride. Steve is a hard-core cyclist. (Case in point: He’s ridden several times from Hilo up to the Visitor’s Center of the Mauna Kea observatories—that’s a trek from sea level to 9,000 feet in 34 miles, with gradients as high as 17%!) Nancy is not as crazy as Steve, but is also a serious cyclist. They take their tandem all over the world, and have even ridden it up the lung-bursting Alp d’Huez, a climb included nearly every year in the Tour de France.

I’ve talked bicycles with Steve on numerous occasions, and he and Nancy have asked me to join them on their rides, but I don’t have a bike here in Hilo. At a party last week, however, I met a woman (Diana) who has a road bike that she doesn’t use much. As we sized each other up—literally—she said “You could borrow my bike some time; we’re about the same height.”

Diana’s Trek being held by Steve,
with D’s husband Leonard on the right

So when Steve and Nancy stopped by last Sunday, they told me “You’re coming with us next week. Diana’s gonna loan you her bike.”

“Okay,” I said, just a little nervous about the prospect. This would be my first real ride in Hawai‘i; what if I couldn’t cut it? I mean, when you live on the slopes of a shield volcano, it’s pretty much always either a steep uphill or a mind-blowing downward dash.

At six-thirty this morning I climbed out of bed and blew my nose. I had come down with a head cold two days earlier, so I now had the additional worry that I would be too weak to keep up with the big boys and girls. But, hey—they say it’s good to sweat out a cold.

Steve and Nancy swung by—Diana’s Trek and their tandem on the car’s bike rack—at 7:15 to pick me up. We drove to Newton’s house, where the Sunday morning group was gathering for the ride. Gerry—who owns a local bike shop, Mid Pacific Wheels—and his wife Holly were already there,

cycling in paradise
(Gerry and Holly getting ready for the ride)

and Leonard (Diana’s husband) drove up a couple of minutes later.

Steve adjusted the seat post on Diana’s bike for me, and I took it for a test run down the driveway and back. Good. After some quick instructions on the difference between the Trek’s Shimano shift levers and the Campagnolos that I’m used to on my Bianchi, we were off. Steve and Nancy led the way on their tandem.

Nancy and Steve with their world-traveling tandem,
and Newton on the far right

The rest of us followed—Holly on a touring bike, Gerry on a mountain bike, and Newton, Leonard and me on road bikes.

We started with a couple laps around several long blocks, as a warm-up. And good thing we did this, because I realized as soon as we hit the first change in gradient that I didn’t really understand the Shimano shifting system at all. Gerry heard my chain making strange noises as I madly tried to shift onto the smaller ring, and dropped back to help out. “How do these things work, again?” I asked.

He patiently explained that the left hand operates the front chainrings, and the right hand operates the rear cassette—completely different from the Campy system I’m used to. I practiced changing gears, and after a while I kind of had it down. Then we started the real ride.

We turned mauka (up the mountain—Mauna Loa), and I downshifted. A tandem weighs a lot more than a regular bike, and even though two are pedaling it’s a lot harder to ride uphill. (Now think again about that Alp d’Huez ascent on the tandem.) Both Gerry and Holly were on bikes with bigger tires, so before long, it was Leonard, Newton and I taking the lead.

I must admit that I was trying to prove myself—attempting to show that I wasn’t a complete novice. But it’s also true that I actually didn’t find the climb to be all that hard. It was hot, but that doesn’t bother me. I much prefer cycling in this climate to the 40° winter mornings in Santa Cruz when I go out to ride.

My legs felt good, but I was feeling somewhat winded. I attributed this to the combination of my head cold, and the fact that it’s hard to get a good aerobic work-out on a stationary bike. You’ve got to concentrate on doing “intervals” every so often, rather than just zoning out at the same pace all the time.

We got to the top of our ride for the day, and free-wheeled back down the hill. During the descent, Steve and Nancy had the advantage on the tandem, and whizzed past the rest of us. I was far behind the others, as I’m light—but also because I’m a wimp; I get scared going fast. I know this may sound odd, but I prefer climbing to descending.

But also, I’m used to a steel frame bike, and the Trek is aluminum. Steel cushions the bumps in a way that aluminum doesn’t, and I swear I felt every single one going down that hill; it felt like the frame was going to explode under me. So I found myself putting on the brakes more than I might have on my Bianchi. Steve told me later that you can’t really have a steel bike in this humid climate; it would start rusting almost immediately. So folks use either aluminum, or if they are willing to spend a lot more, carbon fiber or titanium.

Here we are back at Newton’s house, post ride. Holly had brought lime bars she’d made from the limes on her tree, as well as apple bananas—also from her garden—for us to nosh on. You can see the bananas in our hands:

l-r: Gerry, Holly, Steve, moi, Nancy, Leonard
(Newton’s taking the picture—note the license plate on his car)

I’d like to send out a massive mahalo to Diana, for loaning me her bike (as well has her shoes). And also to Steve and Nancy for arranging it all (and for the loan of a jersey and gloves), and to Gerry, Holly, Newton, and Leonard for letting me join their Sunday morning club. A bunch of swell folks!

I guess I’m gonna have to buy me a Hawai‘i bike.

Martini Chicken

2011-01-28T16:38:00.000-08:00

eat. My parents used to talk about a trio of gay men—then in their late 70s—that they knew on the Big Island who called themselves “the Martini Brothers.” They sounded like good fun, so Robin and I arranged a meeting with them, and soon became friends, often getting together to drink—you guessed it:

one on the rocks (as my dad likes them)
on our front porch in Hilo

One of the trio came for dinner recently, and as I was perusing a cookbook—Food and Wine magazine’s Best of the Best Cookbook Recipes—for ideas, I came across an entry entitled Chicken with Olives and Pine Nuts. It called for Italian olives and white wine. Why not substitute Martini olives and dry vermouth, and call it Martini Chicken, in honor of our guest?

I set to work. You start by heating olive oil and butter in a heavy skillet:

Coarsely chop a few cloves of garlic,

and lay your chicken pieces in the pan, skin side down, scattering the garlic and several bay leaves around the chicken:

Cover the pan (I used foil since I didn’t have a lid that fit my skillet), and let the chicken brown over a moderate heat for about ten minutes:

Turn the chicken,

and then continue cooking, still covered, for another ten or fifteen minutes—until the chicken is cooked through.

Spoon off any excess fat,

and then scatter Martini (i.e. Spanish) olives (I used four or five per person) around the chicken, and pour in a half cup of dry vermouth:

Raise the heat so that the liquid is boiling, and cook uncovered, deglazing the pan as it simmers, until most of liquid has evaporated:

I served the chicken over tri-colored rotini pasta, garnished with the remaining liquid in the pan and chopped parsley (throw out the bay leaves):

I recommend the dish. The meat was tender with a crispy skin, and the salty olives went swimmingly with the tart vermouth.

Great Gyres of Garbage

2011-01-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

eat. That styrofoam under the chicken breasts you just bought; those green plastic chairs out on your deck; the clear plastic bottle of Coke in your hand—or, even more so, its red plastic cap. Sooner or later, much of these plastics are going to find their way into one of the five major oceanic gyres: be it the north Pacific, the south Pacific, the north Atlantic, the south Atlantic, or the Indian Ocean.

If you live in the western United States, the Grea t Pacific Garbage Patch (aka the Pacific Trash Vortex) is where your trash is likely to end up (though much of the garbage is also made up of debris jettisoned from ships). Estimates of the size of this gyre vary greatly—ranging from the size of Texas to twice the size of the Continental United States—since any estimate will depend on the degree of plastic concentration used to define the affected area.

web image [source]

Whatever the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, however, we can all agree that it is scary. Really scary. Especially for creatures living in and around the Hawai‘ian Islands, since most debris that manages to escape from the gyre eventually makes its way down here. The coast along the Ka‘ū desert near the southern tip of the Big Island (the southern-most point in the United States), in particular, seems to be a magnet for this marine litter.

Our marine biologist friend Bill Gilmartin is the co-founder of the Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund, a non-profit organization “dedicated to the conservation of Hawaii’s native wildlife through research and education,” comprised of “educators, conservationists, researchers, naturalists, communities, volunteers and donors devoted to the conservation of Hawaii’s fragile marine ecosystem and its inhabitants.” The HWF conducts beach clean-ups every few months along the Ka‘ū coastline, and when Bill invited me to participate in one such clean-up last week, I gladly accepted.

I spent the night before the event at Bill’s home in Volcano (he cooked some delicious spicy meatballs and angel-hair pasta for our dinner, washed down by several bourbons and ginger ale), and at six-thirty the next morning we drove down the mountain to the sea. There had been a tremendous rain storm during the night, and we were greeted by the sight of a snow-covered Mauna Loa lit up by a bright pink sunrise:

Thirty-seven volunteers met at a parking lot near Naʻālehu, and our fearless leader Megan Lamson filled us in on where we’d be picking up debris, and the logistics of the day’s activities:

Next, everyone piled into the various four-wheel-drive vehicles that folks had brought with them, and we bumped and bounced our way down a dirt track through cattle-grazing country to the coastline.

Out came the garbage bags, and we set to work. My group started at Ka‘alela and headed south, and another group started at Pa‘akea and worked their way north. The plan was to meet in the middle at Kamilo Point for lunch, and to discuss cleanup finds and load the pickups with the debris we had collected.

There wasn’t a whole lot of trash to begin with. My very first find was rather odd: a collection of some half-dozen different-colored pencil erasers, their hues greatly diminished by the salt water. Here we are picking our way over the lava rocks, filling our black bags with trash:

After about a half an hour, however, we came across a stretch of beach absolutely covered with debris:

There were gigantic shards of broken and unidentifiable plastic items (mostly blue and white, I noted); hundreds of small, black, conical, plastic fish-traps; and enormous hunks of fish net and rope:

yours truly, with the debris in the background

This stretch of litter-infested beach went on for about a quarter of a mile, and we all quickly filled our bags to over-flowing. The problem was that the road—where we were to leave the full bags for later pick-up—was a good walk from the beach, so we had to schlepp our finds over the rocks and ankle-catching shrubs. Not an easy task.

Finally it was lunch time. We convened at the mid-way point, where the other group had collected together a varied assortment of interesting items, including some Japanese boundary stakes; a small glass float; several computer circuit boards; a few brown speckled (bird?) eggs; a scuba cylinder; a motorcycle helmet; a cigarette lighter from Hong Kong; some liquor bottles made in Japan and Scotland; a very old tube television set; and various car tires.

a sampling of our finds

In addition, we filled the back of Bill’s truck with fish net and rope:

adding the day’s catch of rope and net
to the previously-collected pile at the landfill
(that’s Bill in the cap)

In all, we collected in the three hours we worked on the beach 1,500 pounds of derelict fish net and rope, and 2,410 pounds of non-net/rope marine debris (including 66 XL full trash bags). Tired but content, we sat around eating our lunches, and discussed the morning’s work:

As I sat munching my cheese and homemade kimchee sandwich, I noticed that the sand at my feet was not the usual color. As I focused my eyes on it more clearly, I realized that the reason for this was that it was not just sand. It was, in fact, mostly tiny pieces of broken plastic, mixed with the sand and black lava rock:

Bill explained to me that the plastic in the ocean continually breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces, but it never disintegrates entirely. It just turns into this “plastic sand,” which continues to float in the water, and is ingested by sea birds and other aquatic creatures.

Here’s a photo of the half pound of plastic that was found in the dead body of a fledgling Laysan albatross:

web photo [source]

And here’s another close-up view of the tropical Hawai‘ian beach where we had our lunch:

And then it hit me. This wasn’t just about picking up litter along the coastline. We would never be able to completely clean it up, no matter how many people we were and how often we went, since tons of new debris were continually washing ashore.

No. My horror at the tiny bits of plastic scattered everywhere about my feet made me realize: This was about education. People like me need to actually see it to really get it. Only then will we have a chance of stopping the plastic madness that has become our modern world.

If you want to donate to the Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund, or volunteer, or otherwise get involved, click here. Mahalo!

The Lava at the End of the Road

2011-01-07T15:26:00.000-08:00

eat. Sort of. Well, we did eat some bananas. But more about that later.

I’m now back in Hilo with my parents (Robin will arrive on the 17th). My mom and dad are lava junkies. The first time they visited the Big Island—back in 1983—they had the wondrous fortune to arrive in Hilo when Pu‘u ‘O‘o was fountaining. Upon being informed of this fact, they dropped their bags on the hotel floor, rushed to the airport to hire a private plane, flew up and circled the fountain for about a half an hour gawking in amazement at the fiery plume, and that was that. My folks were addicted. They returned to the Big Island time-after-time (on a few occasions for several months, when my dad was on sabbatical), and would think nothing of hiking 20 miles to see hot flowing lava. Mom and Dad passed this addiction on to Robin and me, which is one of the reasons we now spend so much time here.

Well, the sad fact is that my parents are now in their early-80s, and not as strong or agile as they once were. They can no longer hike for hours over sharp, uneven lava fields to get to the active flow. As a result, they hadn’t seen any hot lava for a couple of years.

So you can imagine our glee when our neighbor Don told us the other day that the flow was crossing Highway 130! (See map here.) Once again, there was a drive-in lava flow! The next morning we jumped in the car and dashed down to Kalapana. And there it was—literally at the end of the road:

As it crossed the highway, the lava ignited in dancing flames, due to the high oil-content of the asphalt. A bit like a scene from Dante’s Inferno.

The usual zanies were on the spot, of course. The crazy guy who has to prove how cool he is sitting inches from 2000°F lava:

(He didn’t stay there long, I can assure you.) Here’s the same guy (who lives nearby), with his donkey, Heidi:

This fellow tried to get his dog to sit for a photo, but the dog (Pohaku—a real sweetie) was not too keen on the idea:

This was a pahoehoe (pronounced pah-hoi-hoi) flow, a basaltic form of lava that forms ropey shapes as if flows and cools. Here’s what it looked like in the areas not covered by oily asphalt:

And here’s a view closer up:

I love how the lava has broken through the cooled crust and is oozing out in this shot:

And voilà a small molten pool. The yellow bits are the hottest:

In this shot you can see a wedge that has just popped up, a bit like an iceberg (except the opposite).

After about 45 minutes standing around staring in awe at the flow I remembered that we had the two chairs we had just bought two days earlier in the trunk. I fetched them, and Mom and Dad relaxed and continued to enjoy the view. A perfect way to christen the new chairs, eh?

This is where the aforementioned bananas come into the story. You can see one in my Mom’s left hand. I had one as well, and after we consumed them, I threw the peels onto the flow. It took about 30 seconds, but they did ignite:

A perfect Hawai‘ian morning.

Aloha from the Big Island!

My Dinner With Ruth

2011-01-01T13:42:00.000-08:00

eat. The year 2011 is being rung in with a bit of a bang for me, as an essay I penned, entitled “Justice Is Served,” has been published in the January issue of California Lawyer magazine.

Some of you already know that several years back I hosted a small dinner party for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and that I’ve been working on a book about the experience called Cooking For Ruth. Well, I submitted a short, adapted excerpt of the memoir to California Lawyer a couple of months ago, and lo and behold, they accepted it. It’s my first published piece of writing, so as you can imagine, I’m quite pleased. (You can read it here.)

the photo I didn’t submit to go with the essay
(my mom looks on with amusement at Ruth’s and my silliness)

For all you foodies out there, I will provide a few more details about the dinner itself, which were by necessity omitted from the article. (The lawyer-types at the magazine were, alas, primarily interested in the legal details.)

We started out the evening with a couple rounds of Veuve Clicquot Champagne (the non-vintage, yellow-label, which I think is as good as, if not better than, the much pricier Grande Dame). I was happy to get down immediately to the drinking portion of the evening, as I—along with Robin and my parents—was a bit nervous to be hosting such luminaries. (The presence of five U.S. Marshals in my folks’ den throughout the evening did not serve to lessen this feeling of nervousness.)

I set out bowls of salted cashews, Japanese rice crackers, and wasabi peas to go with the bubbly, but I don’t think anyone had any. We all knew there was a multi-course meal to come, and didn’t want to spoil our appetites.

For the appetizer, I served a single plump seared sea-scallop, set on a pool of ginger-lime cream sauce, and garnished with lime zest:

Next up was a bowl of roasted butternut-squash soup finished with brown butter, and then drizzled with crème fraîche and toasted walnut oil, and topped with chopped walnuts:

As a palate-cleanser before the main course, we crunched on a baby-spinach salad with slices of blood orange (from my garden) and red onion, dried cranberries, pine nuts, Gorgonzola cheese, and a Dijon vinaigrette. Ruth did not partake of her onions, I observed when I cleared the plates. (Sorry, but I don’t have a photo of the salad, but the one I took was way too blurry for publication.)

These first three courses were accompanied by the 2004 Storrs Christie Chardonnay—a dry, citrusy (and thankfully non-oaky) wine. I highly recommend the Storrs Winery, which produces a wide variety of excellent, reasonably-priced Santa Cruz Mountains wines.

Ruth doesn’t eat red meat, so for the main course I decided on blackened ahi steaks coated in a dry-rub of spices and black sesame seeds, served with wasabi mashed potatoes and snow peas sautéed in sesame oil. Here are Robin and Marty during the main course:

Sadly, Martin Ginsburg—renowned tax law professor and practitioner, as well as bon vivant and lively raconteur—passed away last summer. He was a warm and witty man, and will be sorely missed by all who knew him. (Click here for his obituary.)

After much discussion and numerous wine tastings, Robin and I had settled on the 2001 Bonny Doon Vineyard Le Cigare Volant to go with the ahi. Here you can see Ruth—a great wine aficionado—posing with the bottle for a shot I took to give to the Bonny Doon winemaker, Santa Cruz resident Randall Grahm:

And here are Ruth and my dad deep in conversation about recent constitutional law issues (Marty and I were discussing cooking at the time, I believe):

Dessert was a selection of tart and pie slices from Amandine Patisserie in West Los Angeles, accompanied by Steve’s Smooth French Roast from the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company. (I bet you didn’t know that Ruth drinks fourteen cups of coffee a day—according to what Marty told us at the dinner.) Ruth opted for the chocolate mousse and praline tart. Here I am serving my dad his slice of chocolate ganache pie.

If I ever publish the book, I’ll be sure to include all the recipes.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Cleaning Out the Fridge

2010-12-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

eat. We’re about to wing our way once more to our lovely Hilo home on the Big Island of Hawai’i. My parents and I are leaving this coming Tuesday, and Robin will join us a few weeks later. Robin and I will be gone this time until mid-June, and are therefore renting our Santa Cruz house to a visiting professor from Norway (though he’s originally from Northern California) and his family.

Last week therefore found me cleaning out the refrigerator for our tenants, and trying to figure out how to use up the odds and ends that were sitting on the shelves.

Noting the near-full head of celery, I decided to make a casserole, using that as the focal point. I’d braise the celery and parsley in some butter and the half-bottle of white wine, and then add eggs and Romano cheese.

I coarsely chopped the parsley, cut the celery into large chunks, put them into a beautiful casserole that my mom's friend Garnet Hopkins made, and poured in the wine.

Next I added some chunks of butter, drizzled in a couple tablespoons of truffle oil, covered the casserole, and put it in a 350° oven to braise.

That done, I started opening cupboards, seeing what else was on hand that needed eating up. Spying some spuds, I decided to add them to the mix. Robin’s not crazy about celery, but she adores potatoes. So I sliced a few up,

and blanched them in a large pot of boiling water.

As soon as the potato slices started to get a little soft (poke ’em with a fork to see), I poured them into a colander and ran cold water over them to stop the cooking process.

Next I beat up the five eggs that were left in the fridge, and added grated Romano cheese and salt and pepper to them.

When the celery was soft (which took almost an hour—that’s one tough plant!), I mixed in the potatoes, and then poured the egg/cheese mixture over it all.

I baked this—uncovered this time, but still at 350°—until the eggs were set (about a half an hour).

I took the casserole out of the oven and let it sit on the counter while Robin and I enjoyed cocktail hour together. Then, about fifteen minutes before we wanted to eat, I sprinkled more grated Romano cheese and some panko crumbs on top,

and set it under the broiler to brown.

It wasn’t bad—sort of like a frittata, but heavier on the veg and potatoes and with less egg than its Italian cousin.

Since I preferred the celery, and Robin the taters, we swapped them from our plates at the table. You know, Jack Sprat, and all that. It makes for a healthy relationship sometimes.

Four and Twenty Blackbirds

2010-12-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

eat. Other people’s dreams are generally pretty boring stuff, so I won’t go into detail about the one I had last night. Suffice it to say that it concerned my need to come up with an interesting dessert for a party, and I hit upon the idea of baking a pie—one containing live birds, which would fly out upon the top crust being cut open.

web image [source]

The origin of this dream is not terribly obscure. First of all, I am indeed going to be making a variety of desserts for a holiday singing party that my parents are hosting next week, and have therefore been ruminating about what to prepare for the last few days.

Second, for some years I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making a true mince pie, i.e., one with minced meat and suet, in addition to the fruit and nuts which tend to be the sole filler in modern-day mince pies. (In Britain, what we Yanks call “ground beef” or “hamburger,” is referred to as “mince.”)

meat pies are hugely popular in the UK

Finally, my dream surely derives in great part from the English nursery rhyme, “Four and Twenty Black Birds,” the memory of which must have been for some reason dislodged as I slept, floating into my subconscious in the form of a dream.

I quote you from a “History of Pie” that I found on line:

Animated pies or pyes were [once a] popular banquet entertainment. The nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence [pocket full of rye,] four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,” refers to such a pie. According to the rhyme, “When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing. Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the King.” In all likelihood, those birds not only sang, but flew briskly out at the assembled guests. Rabbits, frogs, turtles, other small animals, and even small people (dwarfs) were also set into pies, either alone or with birds, to be released when the crust was cut. The dwarf would emerge and walk down the length of the table, reciting poetry, sketching the guests, or doing tricks.

You can see a reenactment of a such a pie served at a banquet attended by the young King Henry VIII, here.

The funny thing about dreams is that when you first wake up, they seem perfectly reasonable—at least for a while. So as I slowly gained consciousness this morning, I lay in bed thinking, “Maybe I should try to make such a pie. I could bake it, and then carefully cut off the top crust, and put live birds in it right before service. What a show that would be!” I remember even thinking I could put a layer of wax paper between the birds and the mince-meat filling, so that the pie could actually be eaten after the birds had flown their nest.

web image [source]

But then later, as I sat sipping my coffee, I realized that it was a silly, unrealistic idea. Where would I get the birds? And wouldn’t it be cruel? And who would want to release a bunch of birds indoors, anyway?

Too bad, though, ’cause it would have been really cool.

For those of you who want to attempt the silly and unrealistic, here is a 1598 recipe for a pie with live birds (hat tip):

To make Pies that the Birds may be alive in them, and flie out when it is cut up.

Make the coffin [i.e., crust] of a great pie or pastry, in the bottome thereof make a hole as big as your fist, or bigger if you will, let the sides of the coffin bee somewhat higher then ordinary pies, which done put it full of flower and bake it, and being baked, open the hole in the bottome, and take out the flower. Then having a pie of the bigness of the hole in the bottome of the coffin aforesaid, you shal put it into the coffin, withall put into the said coffin round about the aforesaid pie as many small live birds as the empty coffin will hold, besides the pie aforesaid. And this is to be done at such time as you send the pie to the table, and set before the guests: where uncovering or cutting up the lid of the great pie, all the birds will flie out, which is to delight and pleasure shew to the company. And because they shall not bee altogether mocked, you shall cut open the small pie, and in this sort you may make many others, the like you may do with a tart.

(From Epulario, 1598)

Have Your Steak and Eat It

2010-12-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

eat. The New York Times Diner’s Journal had a link yesterday to this map of the factory-farming of animals in the United States. It’s fascinating to look at, as you can click county-by-county to see what animals (beef cattle, dairy cows, hogs, layers, broilers) are raised, the average number of animals per site, and the change in density between 1997, 2002 and 2010. (I note that Santa Cruz County has no factory-farms, whereas Tulare County is host to some four-and-a-quarter million broiling chickens.)

pastured laying hens at the now-defunct TLC Ranch

The map made me think back to a paper I wrote several years ago for a class I took through Cabrillo College’s culinary arts program. The essay was about my quest for a locally-raised, dry-aged, grassfed rib-eye steak for my 50th birthday celebration.

local and grassfed, but not dry-aged, steaks

I’ll quote you a bit from the section of the paper on the grassfed aspect:

And I wanted the steak to be grass-finished. Not just “free-range” or “pastured,” mind you. (“Grassfed” now seems to be the most common name used for pasture-finished beef—though there are no government regulations controlling the use of such terms.) Most cattle, even in this country, are still raised for the majority of their life in pastures. But as anyone who’s up on current food-trend issues knows, something like 99.9% of the beef consumed in this country is “finished” on grain—good ol’ American corn. This fattens the critters up quick, and gives them that marbling so prized by fans of eateries like Morton’s Steak House.

But, alas, feeding corn to cattle—which are ruminants, and thus unable to digest the stuff—gives them gas, and makes the sick. So they are pumped up with lots of antibiotics as a short-term fix.

Moreover, the reason beef is now so cheap (just check out all those “dollar menu” hamburgers at your local fast food joint) is because cattle are treated in our culture as commodities, and—like corn and car chassis—are mass-produced. For the last four to six months of their lives, the steers are jam-packed into what have become known as “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” (CAFOs), where thousands of animals are penned up and finished on a diet of mostly corn. Here’s a frighteningly descriptive passage from Michael Pollan’s The Ominvore’s Dilemma (at p. 66):

“And then it’s upon you: Poky Feeders, population, thirty-seven thousand. A sloping subdivision of cattle pens stretches to the horizon, each one home to a hundred or so animals standing dully or lying around in a grayish mud that, it eventually dawns on you, isn’t mud at all.”

It was after I read Pollan’s exposé of the beef industry in the New York Times Sunday magazine back in 2002 (which piece—entitled “Power Steer”—he reworked and incorporated into The Omnivore’s Dilemma) that I decided I couldn’t buy CAFO meat anymore. Not for my sake, but for the sake of the animals.

hogs at TLC Ranch

I had, of course, already been aware of factory farming. But like so many of my compatriots, I passively followed the ostrich-in-the-sand, “I don’t want to know about it” philosophy. Once I did know, however, it just broke my heart. I looked Rosie—my border collie mix—in the eyes, and imagined her in one of those pens. I decided then and there: If a cow or chicken is going to give its life so I can enjoy a juicy rib roast or a succulent dish of coq au vin, the least I can do is make sure it’s had a happy and comfortable existence up until its demise.

Well, the good news is that it’s become pretty darn easy to find grassfed beef in most places in the country (though not so easy, unfortunately, to find pastured pork or chickens).

two youngsters eye each other at TLC Ranch

Click here for a state-by-state directory of farms producing pastured meat.

Chickens, Warthogs, and a Reluctant King

2010-11-30T13:05:00.000-08:00

sing. Tonight marks the beginning of my week of rehearsals and performances for the Cabrillo Chorus’ annual holiday concert series, Music for the Feast of Christmas. Each year we sing a variety of short pieces, along with one longer work. That work this year is the Poulenc Gloria.

Poulenc looks like a nice guy, non?
[web photo: source]

The French composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) first came to fame as part of “Les Six,” a group of six young French composers inspired by Erik Satie. As described on this “Classical Notes” website, the group

specialized in brief piano pieces whose sweet and wistful lyricism belied such bizarre titles as “Things Seen From Right to Left Without Glasses,” “Limp Preludes for a Dog” and “Bureaucratic Sonata.” Les Six rejected wispy French impressionism along with both of the alternative trends of their time—the sobriety of composers who clung to the serious and comfortable forms of the past as well as modernists who crusaded for grating dissonance and intellectual structures that audiences couldn’t understand or enjoy. Instead, their goal was light, rhythmic and functional music, grounded in popular forms and leavened with wit.

My knowledge of Poulenc prior to singing the Gloria was fairly limited. I of course knew who he was, and I think I may have even performed some of his short works back when I was still playing the clarinet. Also, I know Robin is keen to see his opera, Dialogues of the Carmelites, the chilling ending of which we have watched several times on the Arts Channel.

Poulenc was a largely self-taught musician, and this shows in his works, which reflect a wide range of influences. The first time my chorus sang through the Gloria, I was impressed by how at one moment, the piece could sound all modern and edgy in a Stravinsky kind of way, and then twenty bars later we’d be swimming in a pool of Tchaikovsky lushness and romance.

I was also taken by Poulenc’s playfulness in the work. I mean, here is this mass, after all—usually a pretty darn serious thing—and his second movement (the “Laudamus te”) sounds like the soundtrack to a movie scene with kids playing tag in a school-yard at recess. (You can hear movement II here.)

Our director, Cheryl Anderson, is fond of employing colorful images when urging us to communicate the emotions of any given piece we’re working on. For this second movement, she told us: “Imagine you’re under the chicken coop, playing sand-castles with your cousins.” Pause. And then: “Not that I ever did that...”

Cheryl conducting us at a rehearsal for last year’s concert

My favorite movement of the Gloria is number 5, the “Dominus Deus, Agnus Dei.” It starts out with these jazzy, Gershwin-style chords, but quickly morphs into a Russian-sounding, Prokofiev-esque thing. And then the soprano solo voice rises up above the orchestra, and it just slays you. So ethereal and floating, but with completely unexpected notes and intervals. (Listen to movement V here—though I’m not crazy about the soprano in this version.)

The chorus enters a few bars later, intoning “Rex coelestis, Deus...” Cheryl cuts us off. “You’ve got to push him onto the throne,” she says. “He’s a very reluctant king.”

Later on in the movement we have two quarter notes followed by two eight notes, and then another quarter note and eight note (dah-dah-dada-dah-da). We’re being way too wimpy: “Imagine you’re trying to push a warthog through a hole,” Cheryl tells us.

She’s not finished with the animal imagery. In the sixth and last movement (“Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris”; listen here), there’s an achingly beautiful, lilting passage sung in turn by all four parts (“Tu solus, altisimus”).

“It has to be like a line of ants keeping time, marching across the world,” Cheryl instructs us, “but also sound like smoke, that’s never heard a beat in its life.”

Wow. No wonder we get so inspired when we sing.

Poulenc sharing a quiet moment with a friend
[web photo: source]

Our concerts are this coming weekend: Dec. 3-5, at Holy Cross Church in Santa Cruz. Click here for information about tickets and times.

Humiliated by a Snail

2010-11-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

eat. There was a story in the paper last week entitled: “Exploding escargot lands restaurant in small claims court.” With a headline like that, I couldn’t help but read it.

a Giant African snail we found in Hilo, Hawai‘i

According to the story, two gentlemen were in a restaurant in Marin County (it had to be Marin, of course) for a birthday celebration which was “marred” when the escargots they had ordered “exploded” after cocktail forks were applied to the gastropods. They have now brought a lawsuit for damages for the injuries they received, to wit: the spray of hot garlic butter on their faces and polo shirts. Chadwick St.-OHarra claims the butter got into one of his tear-ducts, causing temporary vision impairment; Steve Righetti alleges the side of his nose was squirted.

good thing it wasn’t this big,
or the damages could have been even worse

“I was humiliated,” says Righetti. “I thought, do I need this on my birthday?” St.-OHarra states that the incident caused “a sense of genuine outrage.” They did not seek immediate medical attention, however. Rather, they finished their meal: the filet and lobster combo for St.-OHarra, and the seafood medley for Righetti.

My question is, didn’t they see Pretty Woman? Remember the scene where Julia Roberts is attempting to eat snails in that fancy restaurant, and one shoots out from her and is adroitly caught by the waiter? “Slippery little suckers,” she says. “It happens all the time,” he responds. (Watch it here, at 2:10.)

In other words, they’re dangerous, those escargots.

the Giant African Snail is one of the most damaging pests in Hawai‘i,
as it carries disease and is a voracious plant eater

Oh yeah; one last thing: OHarra is a former law student. One wonders why he didn’t finish.

An Indian-Canadian Feast

2010-11-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

eat. There was a piece in the New York Times Sunday magazine a few weeks ago about an Indian (dot, not feather, as my recently-passed-away friend Sharon used to say) restaurant in Vancouver. The photos were mouth-droolingly enticing, and the recipes appeared doable, so I decided to make the three of them for an upcoming dinner party. (Yes, I served my green tomato chutney with the meal.)

The three dishes were chickpeas in star anise and date masala, grilled coconut kale, and simple grilled lamb chops. Here is my finished product:

I also included a cucumber raita,
made with yogurt, cumin and garlic

Chickpeas in Star Anise and Date Masala

For the chickpeas (recipe here), you start by prepping your spices and other flavoring agents.

Crack cardamom pods with the flat of a knife,

and then grind (a coffee grinder works) the black seeds inside, along with some anise seed (I used regular anise—which is similar, but not related botanically, to star anise—as that was all I could find on short notice):

Next, chop up garlic, onion, and dates:

Sauté the onion in oil until it starts to brown, and then add the garlic and let it cook for another minute or so. Next goes in the tomato paste,

and then the dates, and all the spices (cardamon, anise, cumin, cayenne, black pepper, and salt):

Sauté for another couple of minutes, and then stir in the chickpeas (drained, if using the canned variety—which I did):

Add enough water (or liquid from the canned chickpeas) to make the dish “less than dry,” cook a few more minutes, and it’s done. This dish is best made a few hours before the meal, to allow the flavors to blend:

Grilled Coconut Kale

Next I started on the kale (recipe here). Note that it has to marinate at least 4 hours, so do this the morning of your meal. Wash the leaves (I used “dinosaur,” rather than curly kale), and cut off the stalks. If the leaves are broad, cut them into strips a couple of inches wide.

Next, heat coconut milk until thoroughly mixed and just warm.

Stir into the coconut milk cayenne, paprika, lemon juice, and salt:

Put the kale in a large bowl and pour the coconut milk marinade over it, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours:

You can cook the kale either over a BBQ grill or in a cast-iron skillet. I opted for the latter (using two pans). Heat the skillet until really hot, and then fry the leaves (in a single layer) quickly—about 30 seconds per side worked for me—and then lay them in an oven-proof bowl:

looks kinda like a NASA photo of the Arabian peninsula

This skillet-method did work, but I must warn you that it generated a lot of smoke. And Robin detests smoke in the house, so we ended up with all the windows and doors open:

a lot of that is actually steam, due to the marinade
[photo: Robin McDuff]

You may therefore want to do yours outside on the barbeque. The final product was absolutely delicious, however, so it was worth the bother of the last-minute fry-fest.

two bunches of kale made one medium bowl’s worth of veg

Once the kale was all done, I put it in a low oven to keep warm while I pan-fried the lamb chops (recipe here). I had just read another NYT cooking piece entitled “A Different Way to Cook Meat,” which had advised using he “human rotisserie” method, i.e., turning steaks or chops every 45 seconds until they are cooked to your liking (rather than grilling one side till it’s done, and then turning only once).

So I tried this with my chops. And you know what? They were amazing: tender and juicy (see photo at top of post). I used this method again the other night with some pan-fried tri-tip steaks, and they too were incredibly moist when done. I’m convinced; I shall henceforth be a human rotisserie when I fry or grill meat.

Green Tomato Chutney

2010-11-11T15:41:00.000-08:00

eat. I pulled up my straggly tomato plants yesterday. I’d been hoping that the last few fruits on them would ripen for me, but what with two rain storms in the past week it was not to be. So I picked the tomatoes still green, and threw the plants into the yard-waste bin.

the last of the season

Since I’m cooking Indian tomorrow night, I decided to make a chutney out of them. Your basic sweet/sour chutney is simple to make: You just toss coarsely-chopped fruit (or in this case, green tomatoes) into a saucepan along with sugar and vinegar, and anything else you care to add for further flavor. You then simmer the lot for 15-30 minutes until it cooks down and thickens. That’s it. Easy, no? (Click here for a recipe for papaya chutney.)

The main ingredients for my chutney were going to be the green tomatoes, chopped onion, and raisins.

To this I added brown sugar, finely chopped ginger, chili powder,

minced garlic, and salt.

I mixed this all up in a medium-sized saucepan, and poured in some white vinegar.

After about ten minutes of simmering (stir it often, as the sugar can burn), it looked like this:

I tasted the chutney, and decided it needed more sugar and more salt. After cooking it for another ten minutes, I turned off the fire and let it cool. Here’s a little in a serving dish:

It ended up making two jar’s worth:

I’ll be writing about the dishes for the Indian dinner in forthcoming posts.

Ingredient List

3 cups coarsely-chopped green tomatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
½ cup raisins
¾ cup brown sugar
2 T finely-chopped ginger
2 t chili powder
2 T minced garlic
2 t salt
½ cup white vinegar

Just put them all together in a sauce pan and simmer 20-30 minutes (stirring often), until it cooks down and thickens.

Sautéed Pumpkin With Garlic and Mint

2010-11-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

eat. It’s been a big week for the color orange, what with Hallowe’en and the Giants’ World Series win. I can’t remember when I’ve seen so many orange shirts, hats, shoes, banners, and yes—pumpkins.

You may recall that I blogged last year about our friend Craig’s annual pumpkin-carving extravaganza (you can read about it and see lots of photos he re and h ere). Robin and I attended again this year, along with my sister Laura, and in honor of the Giants’ participation in the World Series, the three of us carved some Giants jack-o’lanterns.

here I am with my offering
(photo: Laura Karst)

On Hallowe’en night, since Craig doesn’t have cable TV, we listened to game 4 of the Series on Laura’s transistor radio. It was great getting to hear Kuiper and K r ukow instead of those lousy Fox announcers, and it was also fun reliving how we used to listen to the World Series every year at school on our nine-volt radios during recess.

what a great sister to share her earphones with me!
(photo: Robin McDuff)

Yesterday, Robin and I and our friend Brian drove up to San Francisco to see the big victory parade for the Giants. We were not the only ones with this same idea:

on Market Street before the parade

We were a fair ways back from the street, and being short, I didn’t get to see as much of the parade as I would have liked, but I did get a peek at lots of the players as they rambled down the street in vintage cable cars.

Brian Wilson and his beard cheer along with the fans lining the street

But truly the best part of being there was getting to be a part of the Big Event, and seeing all the fans in their orange and black regalia, from hipsters with mohawks,

to young kids in Tim Lincecum wigs:

Brian and his wife Susan had come over to our house the week before to watch game one of the Series, and brought a pumpkin as a hostess gift:

Since I had already done my share of pumpkin-carving at Craig’s house last Saturday, I decided to cook something up with the squash. Remembering a yummy dish I’d had at a Slow Food event several years ago, I dug out this recipe for sautéed pumpkin with garlic and mint.

Cut the pumpkin in half, and scoop out what my family calls “pyuck” (i.e., the seeds and membrane). This recipe calls for two pounds of pumpkin, which was about half of the one I had.

Peel the pumpkin (I cut it like a melon, and used a knife),

and then chop it into ½ inch strips.

Next, peel and thinly slice five or six cloves of garlic:

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large, heavy skillet, and add the pumpkin to the hot oil.

Sauté it until tender and browned on both sides, and then remove it with a slotted spoon to a serving dish. (I had to do mine in three separate batches, so as not to crowd the pan.)

If there isn’t any oil left in the pan when you’re done, add another couple tablespoons to the pan and heat it. Then pour in ½ cup of white vinegar,

and ½ cup of white sugar,

the sliced garlic, and a pinch of cinnamon:

Boil this mixture for several minutes,

until it reduces and thickens:

While the sauce is reducing, coarsely chop about a ¼ cup of fresh mint.

Sprinkle the mint on the fried pumpkin, and then pour the reduced sauce on top:

Season it with salt and pepper, and garnish with sprigs of mint:

It was even better than I remembered, sort of Thai in flavor (must be that mint, vinegar and sugar). I think if you added some tofu or meat to the mix, this would make a great one-course meal.

Here is the ingredients list:

about ½ cup olive oil
½ pound sliced pumpkin
5-6 cloves garlic, thinly-sliced
¼ cup coarsely chopped fresh mint
½ cup white vinegar
½ cup white sugar
pinch ground cinnamon
S&P

Finally, I have to say it one more time:

Yay Giants! Way to Go!!!

A Sound of Music Reunion

2010-10-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

sing. Yes, I know it’s a completely Hollywood version of the true story. And of course I recognize that it does have its saccharine moments (I’ve heard that Christopher Plummer actually detested making the film). And yes, the Austrians despise the fact that most Yanks think “Edelweiss” is an old Austrian folks song (it was written for the musical).

[web photo: source]

But what can I say; I love the movie. It’s one of those films that I will always stop to watch if I pass it channel-surfing. It never fails to make me happy. Or to make me cry. And like The Wizard of Oz, I can quote most of the lines from it. Here are a few of my favorites:

“Darling, haven’t you ever heard of a delightful little thing called boarding school?” (the baroness to Max)

“Are father and Uncle Max going to push the car all the way to Switzerland?” (Gretl to Maria)

“There isn’t going to be any baroness.” (the Captain to Maria)

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I learned last month that Oprah was going to host a first-time-ever reunion of Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, and all seven of the kids who played the von Trapp children. I eagerly noted the date on my calendar, and notified various family and friends whom I knew shared my Sound of Music mania.

the cast at the time of filming
[web photo: source]

Today was the big day. So this morning I went on the Oprah website to see what time the show aired in Santa Cruz. There was an ad for the big event.

What? A Sound of Music reunion on October 28th? Wasn’t that yesterday? Oh, no! I’d missed it...

But wait. This is the internet age. Yes, someone had indeed posted the entire show on YouTube. Whew! Tragedy averted.

Well, I just finished watching it. How fun to see what grown-up Gretl looks like (pretty good); and to learn that Louisa went on to pose for Playboy soon after the film came out; and to hear Lisel (who was 21 at the time) talk about how Christopher Plummer—who came across on Oprah as a bit of a lush—taught her to drink. Anyone who’s a fan should definitely watch the reunion.

the cast today, on the Oprah show
[web photo: source]

Here are the links (in three 15-minute segments) for you: first, second, and third. (Robin says to tell y’all to watch them soon, as Oprah is likely to get them deleted post haste.)

A Three-Year-Old Conducts Beethoven

One more thing. I saw this on the web today, and it’s well worth checking out. Robin and I and a few of our friends have been known to pull out the ol’ baton and conduct to the stereo when a wee bit in our cups. Well, we’ve got nothin’ on Jonathan, this precocious three-year-old music lover. You can see him conduct the final movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony here.

I thought I’d get bored after a minute or two, but was compelled to watch the entire thing. Amazing how exuberant, but also truly in touch with the music, he is! You go Jonathan!

A Food Crush and Some Mustard

2010-10-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

eat. Today I just want to point y’all to a couple of on-line pieces I read over the weekend that I thought were interesting.

The first is an interview (here) with cookbook author and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman, which appeared on the Culinate website. I got to know Bittman a couple of years ago through his weekly NYT column called “The Minimalist,” and have been a fan ever since.

Mark Bittman in Florida recently
(who is that behind him?)
photo credit: Culinate website

Bittman’s “Minimalist” columns each week are accompanied by a short (usually about 3 minutes) video, where you get to see him in action (click here; you can scroll through a list of the videos on the right of your screen).

As you’ll see if you watch any of his videos, Bittman takes a simplistic but fun approach to cooking: just seeing what’s in the pantry or looks good at the store or farmers market, and then sort of throwing things together based on a sense of what seems right.

I think he’s adorable; in fact, I’d go so far as to say that I’ve developed a bit of a crush on the guy.

I’ll give you a tidbit from the Culinate website interview (though I recommend you read the whole thing, and also check out his “Mininalist” columns). Bittman was asked:

When you think of cooking, what sensory element first comes to mind? Smell, texture, taste, looks, sound?

He answered:

It’s visual. Taste is the payoff. I want it to taste good, but it starts visually, looking at stuff and thinking how it’s going to work. That’s basically how I cook—I make sure I have a ton of stuff in the house. Sometimes I plan, but often I don’t. It’s like having a palette. You think how you’re going to put it all together. I don’t pay much attention to presentation. Real food is naturally beautiful. I think food looks good.

The other piece is an article (here) about home-made mustard by Hank Shaw, from the Atlantic food page. I’m a great fan of mustard, and like the idea of making it yourself. It’s now on my list of must-try-that-sometime things.

(photo credit: Atlantic website)

Here is a tidbit from the mustard article (my link added):

Ancient Rome was quite the hotbed of mustard-making, and it is Rome that gives us our name for mustard: It is a contraction of mustum ardens, or “hot must,” since the Romans often added crushed mustard seeds to unfermented crushed grapes....

The famous Grey Poupon mustard—Dijon has been a center of mustard-making for nearly a millennium now—is traditionally made with stone-ground brown mustard and verjus, the tart juice of unripe grapes.

I also thought this was interesting:

[T]he wild mustard all over California is black mustard. You can thank Father Junipero Serra for that one: He used mustard, which grows like a weed, to mark his travels in Alta California 250 years ago.

Oh yeah, and one more thing: GO GIANTS!!

Pat Burrell is a local boy—from Felton, just outside Santa Cruz
(photo credit: SF Giants website)

Roasted Tomatillo and Bell Pepper Salsa

2010-10-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

eat. My friend Harriet brought some tomatillos from her garden into work last week, and set the big bag down next to the coffee station. As I poured myself a cup of joe to jump-start my legal research for the day, I eyed the bag. “Take some home,” Harriet called out from her desk behind me. “I’ve got a ton in my garden.” No further prodding necessary.

Harriet says one of the reason she loves growing them is
because of how they look like tiny Japanese lanterns
(photo: Harriet Parinello)

The tomatillo is a kissing cousin—maybe even a sister—of the tomato, and was supposedly first domesticated by the Aztecs. Unlike the tomato, however, it has a papery husk, and is eaten while still green. The tomatillo is probably best known by we gringos as the ingredient that gives chile verde its distinctive tart flavor. But it also makes a damn good salsa.

I’ll be honest with you: I’d never cooked tomatillos before this batch I got from Harriet, so I was eager to take some home and have a go. “How should I prepare them?” I asked. Harriet told me she just throws them whole (but without the husks) into a baking pan along with some whole jalapeños and garlic cloves, and tosses everything lightly with oil. She roasts them on high until they brown and start to blister, and then purées it all in a food processor.

Great. I love easy recipes like that.

I took my bag of tomatillos home, and the next day I poured them out onto the counter and examined them. Cute little suckers, aren’t they?

I peeled off the husks, noting that the fruit was sticky underneath. Better wash ’em. That done, I laid them on a dish towel to dry.

Okay, now for the other ingredients. I peeled a handful of garlic, and then remembered: Dang, I’d forgotten to buy jalapeños. Hmmm... Well, I had a bunch of bell peppers in my garden; I’d use them instead. Here are all the veg, tossed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, ready to roast:

After about 30 minutes (though I don’t rightly remember how long it was—this is a guess), at 400° F, they looked like this:

I transferred everything into my food processor,

and gave it a few pulses:

Next I deglazed the roasting pan with a little water, scraping up all that yummy caramelized and burnt matter on the bottom of the pan,

and added this to the purée in the food processor:

A few more whirls and it was done. All it needed was a little more salt to bring out the zing:

True, it’s not a traditional spicy salsa, but the roasted peppers add a delicious umami note to the tartness of the tomatillos. And all that garlic does give the salsa its own kind of heat. I’ve been eating it all week, on cottage cheese, in quesadillas, and even with some left-over barbequed spare ribs.

¡Mil de gracias, Harriet!

Beef Wellington

2010-10-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

eat. To thank our friend Alan who got us half-price hotels during our recent trip to Britain and Dublin, Cathy and I decided to cook him a fancy English dinner. Knowing his fondness for “gourmet” food, we decided to impress him with a home-cooked beef Wellington—a fillet of beef covered with pâté and duxelle mushrooms, and then wrapped in pastry and baked.

the finished product
(with roasted potatoes and haricots verts)

The dish is named for the famous Duke, though no one is exactly sure why—perhaps simply because he had a fondness for it. Beef Wellington became all the rage in the States in the 1960s, and has the reputation of being difficult to make. (I’ve had it twice in restaurants, and both times the meat was overcooked.) We found, however, that if you simply follow the recipe carefully, it’s not hard to make—but it is somewhat time-consuming. We used the recipe from Gourmet magazine (with certain changes).

The night before the dinner, I made the duxelles, which is basically a mushroom spread. Take a pound of mushrooms, several shallots, and a tablespoon of fresh thyme (stems removed), chop them coarsely, and then mince them all together in a food processor (don’t over-mix or it will turn completely to mush!)

Dump it all into a large skillet, add several tablespoons of butter, and cook the mixture over a medium heat. The mushrooms will first expel their moisture, and then the liquid will cook away.

When most of the liquid is gone, add about a half cup of cooking sherry, and continue to cook the mixture until this has mostly cooked off.

Add more butter to taste,

and then finish the duxelles with about two tablespoons of truffle oil (or finely chopped truffles), and S&P to taste.

Chill the duxelles until needed for the beef.

The trick to having a properly cooked beef Wellington is to roast it in two stages. The second baking is mostly just for the pastry; the meat will only cook a little more. The morning of the dinner, Cathy did the pre-baking of the fillet of beef. She covered the top of the fillet with thin slices of lard, and tied them on with string.

photo: Cathy Kriege
(you can see the block of lard in the background)

Let the larded fillet sit on the counter until it is at room temperature, and then roast it in the middle of a preheated 400° F oven for 25-30 minutes (it should register 120° or a little under on a meat thermometer).

Let the fillet cool completely. Reserve the meat juices for the sauce, and discard (or use for something else) the fat in the baking pan. Make sure you remove the string!

The next step is coating the fillet with the pâté and duxelles. Take ½ pound of room-temperature pâté (we used duck liver, but you could use any kind you like) and blend it with a quarter pound of softened butter.

Spread this pâté mixture over the top and sides of the fillet,

and then spread the duxelles on top of the pâté.

Now it’s time to wrap it in the pastry. We used store-bought frozen (and thawed) puff pastry. Roll it out so it’s big enough to cover the meat, reserving a little of the pastry for garnishes.

Flip the fillet carefully on its back onto the center of the pastry dough,

and then wrap it as you would with wrapping paper, brushing the parts that meet with lightly-beaten egg white.

Turn the wrapped fillet onto a shallow, greased baking pan, and brush the top and sides with an egg wash of lightly-beaten yolk and a little water.

Cut out some garnishes from the reserved dough (cookie cutters would work for this),

and place them on the top of the fillet and brush the garnishes with more egg wash.

Put the fillet in the fridge to let it chill until time to cook—for at least an hour. While it’s chilling, make the sauce.

In a saucepan, mix the reserved meat juices (we had hardly any) and ½ cup of Madeira until it has reduced by a fourth. Dissolve two teaspoons of arrowroot in one tablespoon of water, and whisk this into the mixture in the saucepan, along with a ½ cup of beef broth, and either 2 tablespoons chopped truffles or 2 T truffle oil. Let this cook for five minutes at under a boil, whisking occasionally, until it thickens, and then season with S&P.

The sauce can sit until time for service, when it should be reheated. (This is the reason to use arrowroot rather than cornstarch, as sauces thickened with cornstarch don’t reheat well.)

About an hour before you want to eat the beef Wellington, put the chilled fillet in the middle of a preheated 400° F oven, and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the pastry dough is golden brown, and the internal temperature reads between 120° (rare) and 130° (medium rare)—note that it will continue to cook a little after you take it out of the oven. After about 30 minutes, ours registered only 100°, and the pastry was still pale:

After about 40 minutes, it was done. Let it stand for 15 minutes, and then slice it and set it on a serving platter:

As you can see from the photo at the top of this post, the beef was perfectly cooked—nice and rare! Drizzle the sauce on the pieces after they have been plated up.

Here is a list of the ingredients, for shopping purposes:

a 3 ½ pound fillet of beet, tied with thin sheets of lard
1 pound mushrooms
several shallots
fresh thyme
1 cup cooking sherry or Madeira
4 T truffle oil or chopped truffles
about ½ pound unsalted butter
1 large egg, separated
1 pound puff pastry
2 t arrowroot
½ cup beef broth