Priscilla
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Posts posted by Priscilla
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What a range! This is great. Steve Klc's professional-cooking-at-home AND Tommy's (freshly-ground) hamburger and a lot in between. Great run of meals.
Yesterday I was making plum preserves from some Santa Rosas a friend gave me, and, since people were coming over later, roasted two chickens, with which the plum preserves were good. Big Romaine salad with mustardy vinaigrette, red potatoes-garlic-chives-sour cream, smashed. Homemade rolls. Ate outside. Some people even needed sweaters!
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Helena, why do you want to incorporate tofu into dishes from no-tofu cuisines?
Tofu, used traditionally, as Jinmyo outlined, is one of the world's great, great ingredients.
(A bugaboo for me, the shoehorning of tofu into places where it does not belong!)
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rustic arugula
huh?
Soba, rustic arugula is what Renee Shepherd calls it on her Renee's Garden seed packet. It's got long, skinny, jagged leaves, is a bit stronger in flavor than the rounder-leafed type, and seems a bit slower-growing. Yellow flowers, too, rather than white. Very useful plant.
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Bella, I had the same thought as Akiko about your ahi. I like the Pacific-ingredient layering idea, at least both macadamias and ahi would be Pacific for me!
Last night after a hot day appetites suppressed but somewhat evident, plus ingredients had to be on hand.
Another variation in an ongoing exploration of deconstructed BLTs, this time in the World of Pasta, bacon cut up and rendered (with a couple of later-removed whole garlic cloves), diced plum tomatoes added and not too cooked but not raw neither, rustic arugula stirred into the last few moments of the fat spaghetti's boiling, Parmigiano Reggiano added when everything was tossed in the bowl. No attempt to serve super hot.
Santa Rosa plum & orange sorbetto, which ended up representing that plums can be pretty good. Useful, because Santa Rosas seem like they're going to be abundant this year.
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what does one do with a half bottle of anything? baffling.
After you suck the original contents back in one fell draught, the bottle perfectly suits 8 oz. of peppercorns. Makes refilling peppermills very easy and neat.
Wow enjoying this Rhoney discussion looking forward to more.
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Yes, exactly, Wilfrid, in what you describe it is the layer of liver product that is the...is the...is what is appealing.
The concept of rich-upon-rich is a, an, um, rich one. And I'm not surprised, either, at the provenance, they know from rich-upon-rich down there in New Orleans. Wow sweetbreads that would be right up there. I am so adding this into my ongoing exploration of this concept.
(Yet another thing I like about the criminally undercredited Paul Prudhomme, his mind-blowing flavor layering--like all the best things, history and tradition refracted through a good mind.)
It's why Morimoto is my favorite Iron Chef--he's very very good at rich-upon-rich. AND the history, tradition, & etc. bit.
Is it possible to "be getting" avant-garde?
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OK, just as soon as the temp dips below 90 degrees outside I am SO preparing oxtails, I cannot tell you. Although I must say I am partial to shank, and I do NOT mean a rudely-fashioned sharpened weapon expressed in jailhouse jargon.
Whither shank?
The composed dishes you describe, Wilfrid, are EXACTLY what I'm after, the pate + way cooked oxtail + reduced sauce over, and the terrine, which, after it's bunged in the fridge the temp can range over 90 degrees all it wants and still there's something exciting to eat ready to go.
Very productive discussion!
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While excoriating ignorant Americans or others is fine sport (and oh my but couldn't I, were I of such a mind, conjure examples of distressing food-related behavior crossing multiple country-of-origin and socio-economic lines--and Adam, I know you have been careful to say multi-times COULD HAVE BEEN ANYONE), I think this has more to do with responsibility, rather than unearned or unconditional and at the least ill-understood "rights."
I see it as the cook's responsibility to make food that people want to eat, without compromising whatever idea of personal integrity said cook carries. The attendant responsibility of consumers, or travelers, or certainly guests in the home, for God's sake, is to use decent manners, although this responsibility is both less important and more nebulous than that of the cook.
Exercising this benign psycheout is one of the privileges of being a cook. But then, there are all sorts of cooks.
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I've tried to make onion kulcha, working from a recipe of an Indian chef from the Bombay Bar & Grill in Westport, CT, featured by Martha Stewart on her Food TV show.
Pretty good, using the baking stones in my oven, although nowhere near as delicious as the onion kulcha at my favorite Indian takeaway place, which I think are baked in the tandoor. (Whose conditions are not easily replicated at home, as pointed out about naan earlier on up there.)
I like how some Indian flatbread doughs are left to rise and others are ready to go after a short rest--such flexibility can mean the difference between having homemade bread or not, on a given day.
Is onion kulcha a good bread for the home kitchen? Of the Indian breads you mentioned, Suvir, which are best for a home cook?
Any pointers or recipes would be greatly appreciated!
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I love olives. The very best ones I've ever had were smallish, and green, and pointy, and were sold from a big barrel at a little open-front store in Avignon. A flavor, I suppose due to extreme freshness, not yet duplicated by any other olive anywhere else. There were darker ones, brownish, in another barrel, and they were good as well, but the greens!
Best. Olive. Ever.
We were rushing to catch a train, and had bought a loaf of bread and a VERY strong delicious cheese, goat's milk, I think, which was shaped to look like a pear, even down to a little stick for a stem, and, from the same shop as the olives, one of those roundish coarse pates wrapped in caul and loaded with herbs. Tangerines. What a meal.
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The a la Russeish influence on his classic California cuisine resulted in just astonishing food. (Helena: Do you like that about him.)
Priscilla,
i'm embarrassed to acknowledge my complete ignorance on this subject
Helena, just saw this. It was just that I thought your including his upcoming book on your list fit in so nicely with my none-so-zealous-as-a-recent-convert boosting of the aforementioned New American Classics! (In it he provides some biographical details, including the lasting influence of some Russian relatives with elevated tastes.)
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I have a recipe for an Andre Soltner potato tart called Treflai from a long-ago NYT Mag. Not Tarte Flambee, but the story was the same, a homely Alsatian potato tart made only for very good friends of the restaurant, etc.
Not puff pastry, no onion, no cheese, but does have the eggs in the middle and the creme fraiche Soba mentions, bacon and parsley, and is a two-crust affair.
So there were at least two Alsatian potato tarts made for Friends of Lutece.
Liza, who shows Julia Child's Cooking with Master Chefs? Now I've missed Jeremiah Tower AND Andre Soltner! Who will I miss next, I wonder?
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Tommy you oughta indulge more often in posts with more than the elsewhere-discussed five words.
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Priscilla, If I'm feeling ultra-ambitious (very rare), I make orechiette for the peas-ricotta-bacon dish; otherwise, I look for small shells.
Wow handmade orechiette. Ambitious, indeed! I can imagine the texture is perfection with the bacon, peas, ricotta. (My 10-year-old sometimes requests farfalle with this sauce, which is one of his favorites.)
A whole string of good-sounding meals, here, yet again.
Initially forgot: For Bastille Day's late evening supper, cheese souffle, salade, Frenchy French bread from the Vietnamese baker, and cold pink Cote de Ventoux.
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Andy: Very nice menu. Was each element of the salad fried. Which size capers.
Robert: Marcella's bacon, peas, ricotta is a staple! (Although the use of fresh peas elevates it beyond that damning-with-faint-praise level, doesn't it?) What pasta do you use for this I like penne rigate among others.
Saturday, a dinner for six (turned out to be seven), fulfillment of a contribution to a PTA-fundraiser auction: chicken saltimbocca (sage in my garden continues to loom large); risotto with arugula; fresh tiny green beans from the guy at the farmer's market sauteed in olive oil which had a half a garlic clove softened in there first; redleaf salad with grapefruit vinaigrette, grapefruit sections and a round of crispified goat cheese; caramelized peach tart with burnt-honey ice cream and peach sorbet with basil. Focaccia with embedded halved grape tomatoes and sage leaves and crunchy salt.
For way afters, offered a bottle of homemade arancello, icy cold. A chance to use cute tiny glassware.
Served outside. Even though the day had been hot and humid the evening weather was nice.
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Steamy hot yesterday. Appetites suppressed. Thin (#3) spaghetti with marinara, fresh paste tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, sage leaves, s & p, passed through the old food mill, as outlined in the Red Sauce discussion of some weeks back. Parmigiano Reggiano, Pecorino Romano finely finely grated in judicious amount; more at table for those (and there is at least one reliably present) liking a copious shower. Big cold redleaf lettuce salad, sourdough bread.
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B Edulis, revisiting your very good advice about NOT tiling a backsplash in place, but on pre-cut plywood. Check. The idea of the pre-cut, movable project-in-progress is certainly freeing, isn't it--opens up even more possibilities.
Also, since this discussion, serendipitously, I scored a dozen really large off-white plates, English supervitrified hotelware, and have been using them when they seem indicated. Don't think they'll be permanently elbowing out the disparate pinks and patterns anytime soon, though. But oh my don't people like 'em.
Also, Stellabella, I misrepresented. I do have a piece of Fiesta, in rose, one of those teeny pitcher reproduction creamers. A gift from my mother, who thought I was wrong to discriminate against Fiesta.
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And (even) I would never compare Picasso to the Ramones, in the sense implied here.
Interestingly, though, Picasso's work is a lightning rod for the "my kid could do that!" sort of comment. Part of the burden of being head Modernist, I suppose.
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I mentioned this once on another thread and I think it's worth repeating. Picasso, a Spaniard (and the head Modernist), who lived most of his life in France, said, near the end, "I've spent my whole life learning to draw like a child."
Robert, this Picasso quote is in my mind when assessing Modernism, comparing what is modern, what is Modernism.
And I've been thinking of it during this discussion, truly. Over time I have come to think, (and I speak from the MOST elementary level), more and more, not less, that true Modernism is maybe even a little reductionist, in the sense that one must judge (and have the courage to jettison) the unnecessary.
There is modern, i.e. contemporary, art and cuisine that is not simple and not seeking purity (and has every right to carry on so being, in my book). But, (and I always use the Ramones as an example, which may make you Robert gag but bear with me), to me, true Modernism is the removal of the extraneous.
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Saturday evening post-Fourth of July gathering, tri-tips on the grill, slowly cooked, cut into thin little slices to be used for tacos.
Lovely fresh corn tortillas. Two salsas, one what taquerias around here sometimes call salsa Mexicana, fresh and chunky, tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, cilantro; and Victoria's Green Sauce, a salsa verde, a staple. Also supplemental minced jalapenos, to be added discretionarily.
Homemade refried beans with cheese, and sweet corn cake, like a very moist cornbread, has whole kernels and cornmeal and masa flour. Corn flavor layering.
So personalized tacos, and cold things to drink, and then a little live music out on the flagstone, including a great poppy Bo Diddley-beatish "Sympathy for the Devil."
Burnt-honey ice cream, a Gale Gand recipe that was so good, made with the orange honey from the honey guy at the farmer's market. I usually buy sage honey, but there will be no sage this season, the honey guy says--due to the dire lack of rainfall the wild sage isn't blooming enough for the bees. But the orange honey worked very well, and in fact its tanginess was probably a plus in this application.
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Malawry, fascinating reading, your incredibly detailed report was. Looking forward to future installments.
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I watch Jaaayyymeee sometimes. I liked the one with the haplessly misguided Abba-dressing Mates O' Jamie's, and they asked him do you like Abba, and he said something like, "Yeah, but I never felt the need to DRESS like 'em." Don't remember what he cooked, though, hmmm.
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I will be very interested to see the new Jeremiah Tower book.
Scored his (1987, I think?) New American Classics at the Friends of the Library room a couple of months ago, and felt, well, re-inspired all over again about cooking, which is a good thing for a cookbook to do to a person. Surprised me! (Also very much liked the book's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" photos.)
The a la Russeish influence on his classic California cuisine resulted in just astonishing food. (Helena: Do you like that about him.)
Want to see what's transpired since 1987!
And the Babbo cookbook is just one gorgeous package.
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Hey I had Semillon Chardonnay, too. Columbia Crest.
Turned out to be just the Consort and me. The child was invited around the corner for banana split/chocolate shake/"Empire Strikes Back" dinner at the neighbor's.
So we had a cold array on the (recently power-washed by me) flagstone:
Soused scad, (actually round scad, but that'd ruin the alliteration, wouldn't it), and supergiant lima beans that had been cooked slowly with garlic, sage, and olive oil in the falling-heat method Jim Dixon has described, with additional fresh olive oil and Maldon salt added for service, summer squash fritters, made with grated yellow zucchini-type, Gold Bar, might be called, and Pecorino Romano in the mix, and skinny ficelle-type bread from the Vietnamese bakery.
(Round scad, a fish I'd never seen before, looked so nice the other day at the pan-Asian supermarket, immediately put me in mind of bistroish marinated herring/sardines/mackeral. The affable young man back there behind the ice floes was gracious about eviscerating, topping, tailing. At home, consulted Alan Davidson, saw indeed that they would suit my plan. Prepared according to soused mackeral directions from Craig Claiborne with a little input from T-L FotW Cooking of the British Isles. Employed malt vinegar, which is good, because we'd been trying brands and the one we thought too mild for table use was put to good use. Round scad is a very nice little fish, turns out.)
Priscilla
Diary: July 31, 2002
in Diary of a Cooking School Student
Posted
Rochelle, major congratulations. Plus thank you for additional exciting, detailed reports.