Eat at Joe's!

I Scream, You Scream

Would kinda like to try this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/dining/the-only-ice-cream-recipe-youll-ever-need.html

especially with some of these variations:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/01/dining/the-master-ice-cream-recipe.html

 

This Is A Real Thing: Fifty Shades of Chicken

I read a little bit of it today and it's... um... saucy.  :)  The recipes looked fine, but I didn't look closely.  

The link above is to Random House, but the book itself has its own WWW site: 

Fifty Shades of Chicken

"Fowler"?  Really?  :)  Also, how come this has been out for 10 months and I'm just now finding out?  

Salsa Assousa, or WWRE #3

When I started the "What We Really Eat" category, I intended it to chronicle things I really ate or thought people really ate, but was too ashamed to list as something I'd actually made.  Now I notice I've screwed that category all up.  Oh well.  

Anyway, I'm not much of a Mexican food person, and I sure as hell don't know how to cook it properly.  But I've eaten it a lot of this, er, "salsa" with bags of tortilla chips since my friend, Special Agent "Ass-O-USA," taught me how to do this.  My friend Maura says it's the only thing that makes jarred salsa tolerable.  It also makes me feel better about hauling a bag of tortilla chips to a party, and you can usually find some sort of cream cheese and salsa at whatever grocery store you stop at.  

So....  Salsa Assousa:

• 1 container salsa, pico de gallo, picante sauce, homemade salsa....  The possibilities are endless here
• 1 container cream cheese
• 1 bag tortilla chips

1. Find decent-sized clean bowl.
2. Put some or all of cream cheese into bottom of bowl.  If it's soft, that'll make it easier to grub it out amidst the salsa.  You can buy whatever kind of flavored cheese you want to try, or use some spuriously-generated fat free cheez, or screw this up however you like: you're eating a bunch of stuff out of bags and cans here, so I say go for whatever floats your boat.
3. Pour as much or as little tomato product over the cream cheese as you want.
4. Open bag of chips.
5. Dig in.

If you eat this, I'm wondering what you ran out of first — chips, salsa, or cheese?  Of course you can always make more....  :)

The Weirdest Recipe I've Ever Seen In My Life

Perhaps you've heard of syllabub?  I guess if you want to be all authentic and stuff, you're supposed to make it while milking a cow.  I mean, I can undestand a recipe using a cow, or a cow's products, but not actively involving a live cow in the production of the actual dish.  Have I made it clear now that they're actually milking a cow directly into the dessert?  :)  I hope so, because that's what's going on:

Soylent Green Is Politicians

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  I had two Thanksgivings, which was awesome.  Not sure if I have twice as much to be thankful for or what, but it certainly left me with no time to blog about either.  

If any of the rest of you need food ideas for Second Thanksgiving, Xmas, Festivus, or what have you, perhaps you should try the newest edition of the Ron Paul Family Cookbook:

Peach's Pie

My friend Peach from Canada recently shared a recipe for a chocolate pie of sorts.  I needed a quick dessert tonight, so why not:

Click to enlarge, of course.  The napkin is there because it seemed to fix the crappy white balance for the iPhone I used for the picture.  Sure would have been nice if I'd thought to take that picture before we started scarfing it.  :)

I made a 10" version of the recipe because I had a 10" vessel.  I also made a few other adjustments, but here's the basic recipe as I got it:

Chocolate Lovers’ Pie

Makes one 9” pie.

Servings:  Last time I made this, I cut it into 14 pieces and no one complained.  There were no leftovers, either.

This is an old recipe from Fry’s Cocoa.  For those not familiar, it’s basic grocery store cocoa.  I’ve made it only with Fry’s, but I lost the recipe for years and have since discovered the darker, richer and more decadent “dutch” cocoa, which I use exclusively now.  I just found this recipe again and I want to make it, but it is so rich when made with Fry’s that I’m concerned my beloved dutch cocoa would make it positively explosive.  Then again, I’m willing to throw myself on that grenade.  (Just in case I chicken out, I have some grocery store cocoa on hand.)

** Cocoa Nut Pie Shell -- makes one 9”/1 L pie shell

3/4 cup (175 mL) icing sugar
1/3 cup (75 mL) cocoa
1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
1/3 cup (75 mL) butter
1 cup (250 mL) finely chopped toasted nuts

1.    Sift together icing sugar, cocoa and salt.
2.    Melt butter in a saucepan.  Cook until bubbly.  Remove from heat.
3.    Blend in cocoa mixture.  Stir in nuts.
4.    Press into 9”/1 L pie plate.  Chill.

** Filling

1 envelope unflavoured gelatin
3 Tbsp (45 mL) cold water
2 Tbsp (30 mL) instant coffee granules
1/4 cup (50 mL) boiling water
1 cup (250 mL) sugar
1/2 cup (125 mL) cocoa
2 cups (500 mL) whipping cream
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla

1.    Sprinkle gelatin over cold water. Let stand 5 minutes to soften.
2.    Add coffee granules and boiling water to gelatin. Stir until dissolved. Cool.
3.    In another bowl, combine sugar and cocoa. Stir in cream and vanilla.
4.    Whip cream mixture until softly stiff.
5.    Slowly beat in gelatin mixture to whipped cream mixture.
6.    Spoon into Cocoa Nut Pie Shell. Chill.

Cut this pie into as many pieces as you can manage. Loosen belts a notch. Enjoy pie.

Creamed Spinach w/ Bacon and Garlic

Creamed spinach is awesome, and doesn't get nearly the press it deserves.  I've liked the stuff since I was 6 -- no kidding -- and it's not hard.  It's also a traditional and sadly disappearing accompaniment with steaks and chops.  

Unfortunately, my attempts lately at c. s. have been lackluster.  Also, I again made the stupid mistake of thinking that a 10-ounce bag of fresh spinach would, when cooked, be a reasonable amount of food.  So I decided to add two other things that usually seem to go with spinach: allium (I often seem to get garlic with sauteed spinach) and bacon (which usually seems to come in the dressing with spinach salads).  

It was not lackluster.  :)  Most measurements are left out, as that's the way I made it: here at EAJ!, we're all about accurate reporting.    

So:

Impromptu creamed spinach

(makes 1 moderate serving or 2 tiny ones)

 

1. Forget to go to the farmer's market earlier in the week to get spinach.
2. Buy a 10 oz. bag of "slummed" spinach at the grocery store.
3. Dice 3 strips of bacon.  Saute; drain; set aside.
4. Mince a clove of garlic; set aside.
5. Meanwhile, put a huge pot of water on to boil for blanching the spinach.  Put a lot of salt in the water.  Stem and wash the spinach (mine had remarkably little sand, but spinach is famous for being gritty).
6. Blanch the spinach for a minute or two. Cool off with cold water and drain thoroughly.  Press out as much water as you can without creating spinach puree.  Chop if you feel it's needed.
7. (I imagine most of you are going to skip [5] and [6].  If you feel like it and skip directly to [8] or [9], let me know how it goes.  Simply wilting the spinach in the pan will certainly speed things up.)
8. Mince half a small shallot; saute in clean pan with a tablespoon of butter.  (I forgot this.  The abandoned shallot, already peeled, was discovered after dinner on the counter.  D'oh.  I also elected to use a clean pan because I thought continuing the saute in some of the fat left from [2] would make things too bacon-y.   But I did save the bacon fat for later use.)
9. Saute the drained spinach in a clean pan with a tablespoon of butter (or in the shallot saute pan), adding more butter if you need it.  Try to get the spinach separated with most of the excess water evaporated, but don't cook the hell out of it, or you won't have any spinach left.
10. Add a tablespoon of butter if you need it (I believe this now puts us at somewhere between 1 and 4 Tb. of butter), and add a tablespoon or so of flour.  Stir and saute for a minute or two.  Hopefully you still have a reasonable amount of spinach at this point, and the spinach is still a pleasant green.
11. Dump in some heavy cream, and cook for 5-15 minutes, uncovered.  The cream will reduce and thicken; the roux you made with the flour and butter will get it pleasantly thick without reducing the cream to, er, butter.  :)  I use the "European" heavy cream the Harris Teeter has, because I'm like that, but please add whatever you have.  I think I used about 3/4 of a cup, but I didn't measure it.  Add more cream if you think it needed, but I'd start with a few tablespoons and add more along.  
12. Add the bacon somewhere in there.
13. Grate in a small amount of Parmigiano-Reggiano.  (I actually did this early in [11]. I think the dish suffered from its being added so early.  But suffering was not what went on later.  It was more like screams of deliciousness.)
14. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, and perhaps a bit of nutmeg.  Feel free to add these anywhere you see fit.  With the bacon, (perhaps) the salted blanching water, and any salt in your butter, you might be fine on saltiness.  The spices can get added where you think it best, but you really should taste the stuff as you go anyway, so you can develop your own sense of what's going on and what needs to be added when.  For instance, adding the bacon after everything is done might appeal to your desire for little crispy bits of bacon.
15. Perhaps you should add some more butter here, but for god's sake, get the stuff on the table before you eat it all with your constant tasting.
16. Serve forth your tiny amount of creamed spinach.  (I had mine with bratwurst.)
17. Enjoy it a lot.  Annoy others by saying how much you like your effort.  Vow next time to double or triple quantities.  

Chris Onstad Fries Testicles

The Portland Mercury was kind enough to report on author Chris Onstad's cooking experiments with yak and buffalo testicles: "Testicle... It's What's for Dinner."  

Aficionados of mountain oysters and the like might enjoy reading Offal Good, which I have listed in the sidebar.  

Wow, I really would love a quarter's worth of Spam squirted thru a little metal tube

http://gastromatic.net/

[Via Wine Authorities, after they clearly had too much to drink.  Dude.]

Squash and Kale Soup

So I had these cold-weather vegetables -- greens, squash -- and I was wondering what the heck I was going to do with them.  I'm really good at using up root vegetables, and I love when broccoli comes in.  But winter squash? Kale?  Not so much.

Of course cold weather is a good time to make soups.  And it's pretty easy to do soups on a "saute onion/add stock/add vegetable/cook/maybe puree or add cream" model.  But I guess I was kind of bored with that, and wanted something with a little more vegetable integrity. 

So....  I totally winged this.  It came out really freaking good.  I was very pleased.  But I still have leftovers.  I wish I could have shared more of it. 

I hope I remember this well enough.  :)

Ingredients:

• 1 onion
• bacon grease (or moral equivalent)
• 1 butternut squash
• ½ pound kale, more or less
• 4 cups or so stock, broth, vegetable cooking water, or just water
• ¾ cup or so white wine
• piece o' ham hock
• leftover ham, or sausage, or other already-cooked proteinaceous deliciousness, or other leftovers as you deem appropriate (I threw in maybe ¾ cup leftover yellow rice)
• salt, pepper, thyme, or other favorite spices

Procedure:

• Wash and stem kale, and roughly chop.  Peel and finely dice an onion.  Peel and seed a butternut squash; dice it into ½-inch dice. 
• Get a big heavy pot, maybe 3 or 4 quarts or more in volume.  Put a couple tablespoons of your fat or oil in, and heat it up.  
• Take the piece of ham hock (mine was an oval about an inch thick, 1½ to 2 inches wide, and 3 or 4 inches long), and lightly brown whatever sides you can easily do.  Remove and set aside.
• Saute the onion in the hot fat for a few minutes.
• Add the chopped kale to the onion and fat.  Add some spices.  I used 10 or 15  grinds of white pepper and maybe ¼ teaspoon of dried thyme; "Italian Seasoning" would also work here.  Also add a sprinkling of salt, but if you're using canned stock, be wary here.  Stir and mix the kale around until it's shrunk in volume by about half.  The salt will help it wilt.  I also threw in about 1/4 cup of white wine here and put the lid on the pot for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.  When the kale/onion/spice mixture is reduced to a manageable volume and is still a brighter, attractive green than when it went in, remove it from the pot and set it aside.  You can put it with the hock. 
• If the fat is all gone, add some more.  Add some of your diced squash.  If you can get it all into the pot in a single layer, go for it and add it all.  If not, do this in stages, taking partially cooked squash out, then cooking more until you've browned it all off a little.  Add fat along if you need to. 
• When all the squash cubes are partially cooked and maybe browned a little on some surfaces, add your stock/water/what have you.  Also add the rest of your wine -- maybe ½ cup or so at this point.  Add back all your cooked vegetables. Heat to a simmer. 
• Taste.  Re-season, adding more spices, pepper, or salt as you think necessary.  If you've used canned stock, you likely won't want more salt.  If you're using water, you probably will.  If you think you're going to want more fluid in the soup, add some.  If you want it more like a vegetable stew, don't.  
• Start checking your vegetables for consistency, seeing if they're cooked enough for you.  When they get close to done, add any chopped pieces of cooked meat you feel like adding.  I had a slice of leftover ham I chopped and put in.  I also added some leftover yellow rice because I liked the color; that also added some starch.  But you don't have to do that.  :)  In fact, you can do this whole dish in a vegetarian manner; just make sure you've got plenty of flavor from elsewhere. 
• Serve it forth.  I am almost incapable of eating anything soupy or stewy without crackers.  Cornbread would also be wonderful here, and awfully close to traditional as an accompaniment.

Notes:

• I'm tagging this as an experiment, because I made it up as I went along.  Caveat diner. 
• The squash cooked much more quickly than I thought it would.  In fact the whole thing went pretty quickly.  I think I went from raw veggies in fridge to eating it in less than an hour. But the squash flavor is not very pronounced. 
• I'm a fan of re-seasoning while I'm cooking.  I think it works well with the idea of building layers of flavor, and also helps you figure out how something is progressing.  But it helps to know what happens to your spices while they cook:  Something like basil is best added very late in the process, as its flavor will disappear quickly.  If black pepper is ground in late, the piney notes it adds will stay there, but the heat it adds will stay even if you add it at the beginning.  Something like dried thyme seems to work fine with long cooking.   Some spices seem to benefit from cooking, even if they lose in pungency.  For instance, I now fry my chili spices at the beginning of making chili.  They're less intense, but I like the flavor better, so I compensate by starting with more.

Cook's Illustrated and... Open Source?

I'm not sure how many of my Gentle Readers are followers generally of the food blogosphere and its rumblings.  But for the past few weeks, trouble has been rumbling between some of the Web's food blogger community and Cook's Illustrated.  The mess has been chronicled already by local food blogger/friend Maura, but the short of it is that Melissa at Alosha's Kitchen posted a set of recipes for a 4th of July menu, including her first attempt at making potato salad.  She got her recipes from elsewhere, and credited all her sources.  She also detailed modifications she'd made.  Ok so far, right?

The problem was she used a recipe from Cook's Illustrated (actually Cook's Country) as the base for her potato salad recipe.  And the folks at CI got a little upset.  I leave it to you to decide whether they're upset about their recipe being copied, modified, used, credited, a combination of the foregoing, or something else.  But they told her to take it down.  She did, but she's not particularly happy about it.  Neither are a lot of people, including Kate at Accidental Hedonist, who published, er, another potato salad recipe.  (In short, Kate thinks that a recipe cannot be copyrighted.)  There are also people this writer has spoken with personally who say they're dumping their Cook's Ill. subscription over CI's treatment of Melissa. 

The immediate answer to Melissa's dilemma seems to be not to quote their recipes exactly (which she didn't), and don't credit them with anything.  :)  But that seems an unsatisfying answer here, at least to me. 

So while I've been thinking about this event and its sequelae, I started feeling like I'd been here before.  I finally realized I was witnessing another fight between The Cathedral and The Bazaar (paper available here).  And I started thinking about this mess a little differently.

---

For those of you who aren't up to reading the above links right now:  Let's say you write software.  And let's say, for your own reasons, you want to give it away: you want anyone who can get their hands on it to use it, copy it, modify it, and basically do whatever they like with it, including continuing to pass it on.  So, other people do so with your work, maybe even making their own modifications, or embedding your software in theirs.  You're all good with that.  It's what you want. 

Then TIC -- Three Initial Corporation -- grabs your software and starts doing things with it, including embedding it in their own product.  You're good with that.  They go on to sell a product with your product in it, maybe do some work on it, and maybe even charge for support for your product.  You're good with all that too.  They're adding to the usefulness of your product, and making money at the same time.  Cool.  :)

Then TIC claims copyright or patent protections for "their" product, which includes your product.  They also modify your product so that their version is incompatible with yours.  Maybe they start suing people who make their own modifications, or refuting prior art claims by saying they'd done the same work in-house first.

Not cool.  You start to wish you'd never released your software. 

Don't say this won't happen.  There are entire companies making their living off nothing but litigating this kind of issue.  Sometimes they resolve the issue between themselves by agreeing not to sue each other over offsetting patent claims.  IBM even developed a product (that IIRC, it tried to get a business method patent for) that involved a system for leasing patents among disagreeing companies involved in this kind of litigation.  I.e., they automated a process for arbitrating this kind of situation, and wanted to sell that process.

So, what do you do when you want to release your software, but want to make sure someone else doesn't co-opt it? 

You release it under an open source license.  What that basically means is that anyone can do pretty much what they want with the software except restrict in any way its propagation.  They can even sell it, sell support for it, and maybe even incorporate it into their own product.

---

Whew, that was a long aside, wasn't it?  What the hell were we talking about?  Oh yeah, recipes.  Let's get back to that, shall we?  ;)

As some of you may remember, I have a love-hate relationship with Cook's Illustrated.  I love all the work they do on food, recipes, and equipment.  And I understand that, since they don't accept advertising, they have fewer options for making money than other publications.  But one of the things that bothers me is what CI does with recipes.  My thinking about Open Source is one of the things that helped crystallize my thoughts.

People have been roasting chicken, making bread, and yes, even making potato salad for as long as there've been chickens, wheat, and potatoes to eat.  They've been writing down recipes, publishing them, improving them, and sharing them for almost as long.  Occasionally they argue over where a recipe came from, or who started it.  Usually such an argument is bootless, as the origins of a recipe and its original recorder (if there can be said to be one) are lost in time's mists. 

Cook's Illustrated seems to be trying to change that.

Is anyone else annoyed by when CI publishes a recipe titled something like, say, "Ultimate Roast Turkey," but then three years later publish a new version of "Ultimate Roast Turkey"?  First off, aren't some things matters of taste?  Secondly, what happened to that first "Ultimate" recipe -- the one that I guess isn't so "Ultimate" any more?  And the big one: where did they get the idea to roast a turkey in the first place?  Did they invent that?  Did they invent the no-knead bread phenomenon, or beer-can chicken?  I don't think so. 

What Cook's Ill. is doing is taking the work of thousands of years of culinary efforts, making minor changes and testing -- pretty minor, IMO, if you consider the work that's gone before by millions of home and professional cooks, going back to the first person to spit a chicken over a fire -- and than claiming absolute right to that work. 

Their argument seems to be that since they mixed their labor into the recipe, it's theirs now. 

What do you think?

Edit: Another opinion at Tigers & Strawberries. 

"Everything in moderation, including moderation"

I luvs me some french toast.  I've made it out of a lot of things people don't normally make french toast with.  For instance: hamburger buns.  Even hot dog buns.  It's bread, right?  French toast, like bread pudding, is made largely of... bread.  Why not use different types of bread?  Especially if you're low on what you'd prefer to use, or just have a jones for french toast, or bread pudding, or whatever (I'm pretty sure I've even used english muffins and donuts in bread pudding, where my sins are more easily concealed). 

But, as far as I can remember, I've never made french toast out of donuts.  Genius.  [Thanks, Fritz, and sorry it took so long for me to post this.  BTW, are you this Fritz?]

Speaking of breakfast stuff, Fritz commented several months ago that they couldn't find a particular type of breakfast syrup.  I suggest making your own.  Buy an appropriate fruit jam.  Put some of the jam in a small pot, and melt it on the stove over low heat.  Strain out the fruit if you like.  If it needs to be thinned, add a little kirsch or other appropriately-flavored booze (don't set anything on fire though, which is easy to do when you're heating up booze).  I guess you could just add some water if you prefer.  If you think the flavor is too strong (which is actually a possibility here), or you want to thicken or stretch your syrup supply, add some light corn syrup.  After you get the stuff to your liking, go make your pancakes or whatever and pour your syrup on there.  Mmm-mmm. 

F$ckin' A

This is the kind of food blog I wish I wrote: thursday night smackdown. 

[via VarmintBites.]

Tester? I just met her!

Cook's Illustrated:  You've probably seen the magazines or the related TV show, America's Test Kitchen.  I've subscribed to the main magazine for years, even since my friend Claire Cusick turned me on to them when she worked as Food Editor for the Herald-Sun.  And like a lot of folks I've talked to about CI, I have a love/hate relationship with them that's worked its way up to a fine head of steam. 

But right now, I come to praise CI, not to bury it.  I've been on a mailing list of theirs for a while.  It has its pros and cons, just like the magazine.  But a few months ago, they had a short note in one of their posts asking for recipe testers.  Since I'm an idiot  Since I'm a food professional  Since I'm not a food professional  Since I have nothing better to do  For some reason, I decided to sign up. 

It's nice.  They send me a recipe every week or two.  They ask folks not to make the recipe if they don't want to, or if they think up front they won't like it.  Certainly if you don't have time, you can blow it off too; they make that clear in each recipe I get.  But if you do have time and desire, you have about a week to 10 days or so in which to make the recipe; once you've made it, you can fill out an online survey about your experience.  You'll answer questions like how long did it take, did you like it, did you make any changes, &c.  The survey only takes a few minutes.  They do specifically ask that you not post the recipes online, as some of them may or may not be ready for prime-time: you're testing them, remember? 

I've made about half of the recipes they sent me so far.  They've varied from ok to pretty darn good.  I've also been taking the food (sometimes) to a pot-luck organized by a friend, so I get additional feedback from those folks.  No one seems to mind being used as guinea pigs.  :)  So it's kind of fun in its own way.  And the dessert I made last night was yummy.  So if you're on their mailing list, and you see this opportunity float by, sign up: it's neat. 

An "Arnold Palmer"?

You know, I like iced tea.  I even named a blend after myself (look for the variation at bottom)  :)  Now it turns out that like almost all good things, someone has been there before:

An Arnold Palmer is a drink consisting of half iced tea (either sweetened or unsweetened) and half lemonade. It is named for golfing legend Arnold Palmer and is said to be his favorite beverage. [from Wikipedia]

Well, it's close.

Edit: BTW, that last post about the food court musical was apparently my 400th post.  Woo-hoo!  :)
 

Gjetost, and How to Make It

How to make gjetost, or geitost, or brunost, or mysost, or whatever the hell you're supposed to call it.  Gjetost is a Norwegian whey-based cheese sometimes made from goat's milk.  Wikipedia has an article on it. 

Scalloped Potatoes

Whether you call this gratin dauphinois, potatoes au gratin, or scalloped potatoes, it's yummy.  There are about a million different versions: some with half-and-half or cream instead of milk, different spicing, or various additions.  There are also subtractions: some people make this without the cheese, and add a little extra butter.  I'm not usually one of those people. 

What you need:

• 2 pounds of potatoes
  
  • Peel and slice these about 1/8 inch thick or thinner. 
    
    • I guess you could do this without peeling the potatoes, but I've never tried it that way.  If you do that, scrub the hell out of them and pare off anything nasty looking, and tell me how it comes out. 
    • If you slice them ahead of time, put them in a bowl and cover them with water.  When you get ready to cook them, drain and dry them.  If I do this, I use an absolutely clean towel, with no smell of bleach or soap to it.  Spread the clean towel out somewhere, dump the potatoes on it, and dry them. (This keeps the sliced potatoes from discoloring, which they can do if exposed to air for too long.)
      
    • I usually use Yukon Golds for this, but I wouldn't let having a different type of potato stop me. 
• 1/4 lb Swiss cheese 
  • Use other cheeses if you like. Grate the cheese on the big holes of a box grater, or buy that bagged stuff if you want to lower yourself to that.  :) 
  • I usually have a big chunk of Jarlsberg around to cook with; Gruyere, Emmenthaler, or other Swiss-type will work, of course.  I guess you could give cheddar a shot, but I might back off on the amount of cheese, particularly if it's very sharp.  Blue cheeses and rind cheeses like Brie seem right out, but small amounts might be ok.  If you use Velveeta or Cheez Whiz, I will laugh at you, but first I will taste it.  :)  One extra cheese I particularly recommend is
• parmesan cheese
  • Dust the top of the gratin with this before it goes in the oven.  Leave it off if you don't have it or don't like it. 
    
    • If you have to use that stuff that comes in a green can, knock yourself out, but I generally don't talk to people who use that stuff.  :)  Buy a chunk of real Parmigiano Reggiano, wrap it well, and keep it in the fridge with the rest of your cheese (I put all mine in a big plastic bag and seal it all up, so each piece of cheese is closed up at least twice).  Use it as often as you can afford, and soon your friends will start dancing like the folks on that commercial. 
• 1¼ cups milk
  • Enrich this if you like with cream or half-and-half.  Measure the milk into a microwaveable 2-cup measuring cup, and add
• 1 clove garlic
  • Minced or run through a press.  Some people just wipe the inside of their pan with a cut clove.  Do what you like. 
• salt
  • About a teaspoon.  Adjust to your tastes.  Some cheeses are saltier than others.  If you're using unsalted butter, you might want to use a little more. 
• pepper
  • Black, white -- it's all good, as they say.  Leave it out if you don't like pepper, but I suggest using it.  I grind directly into my gratin while I'm making it -- probably somewhere between an eighth and a quarter of a teaspoon, total.
    
    • 25 grinds of one of my pepper mills, with the grind set pretty fine, is ¼ teaspoon.  I know this because I once ground a tablespoon of black pepper with it, and it took about 300 grinds.  (I imagine your pepper mill is different, but this at least gives you a ballpark estimate.)
• nutmeg
  • Leave it out if you like.  But if you want, scatter a tiny pinch over the layers of potatoes you'll be making.  If you have a whole nutmeg and a Microplane, 2 or 3 passes with the nut against the tool over the first and second layers of potatoes will do.
• butter
  • You're going to use this to butter your cooking vessel, and to strew over the layers of potatoes.  If you skip the cheese, add an extra tablespoon or two of butter. 
• cooking vessel
  • You need something about two inches deep and about 10-11 inches square or 11-12 inches round.  Whatever you use needs to be able to go from the rangetop to the oven. 
    
    • Handles will help, but make sure you cover them with something immediately after you pull this out of the oven, or you're going to burn the hell out of yourself.  If you're cooking and serving in the same vessel (which I generally recommend) make sure your diners aren't going to burn themselves either.  I'm not kidding:  The handle is so easy to leave uncovered, so convenient to grab, and SO EFFING HOT when you burn yourself.  It stays hot, too.  So be careful. 
  • I used to use my largest cast iron skillet, which is about a foot across.  But it was hard on the seasoning, so now I use a large All-Clad saute pan.  All-Clad doesn't stamp their stuff with identifying marks, but it's about a foot in diameter, 2 inches deep, and has straight sides. 
  • The reason the shape is so important is that you want the potatoes to cook in the right amount of time.  If you pile all this up in a pan that's the wrong size, the potatoes will not cook properly.  The whole mess should wind up layered to a thickness that's between ¾ and 1 inch deep. 

Ok, got all your stuff?  Good.  Let's cook. 

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Measure milk into nuke-able cup.  Add minced, pressed, or otherwise pureed garlic clove.  Nuke until milk is steaming hot.  Don't boil it over or you'll make a mess. 
3. Butter pan with about 1 tablespoon of the butter. 
4. Arrange about half the potato slices in a layer.
5. Strew about half the Swiss cheese on the first layer.
6. Add about half the salt, pepper, and optional nutmeg.
7. Dot with about another tablespoon of butter.
8. Layer in the rest of the potatoes. 
9. Add the rest of the salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
10. Add the last of the Swiss cheese.
11. Grate on the optional embellishment of parmesan (using your Microplane or the tiny, pain-in-the-rear-to-clean size holes on a box grater), or wait until after step 12.
12. Get your milk. 
    
    • If you've forgotten to add any of the spices or salt, add them to the milk, and stir.
    • If it's cooled off, re-nuke it.
    • Pour gently over the potatoes. 
      
      • Don't mess up your cheese layer a lot. 
      • I guess you can pour the milk in and then add the last of the cheese if it's easier. 
    • It shouldn't cover the potatoes totally, but they should be about 3/4 awash or so in milk, with the very top of the potatoes and cheese above the level of the milk. 
13. Put the cooking vessel on the range and turn the heat underneath to high.
14. While the dish is heating up, dot the top with a tablespoon or two more butter.
    • If you're more comfortable putting the butter on and then putting the pan on the rangetop, you have my permission to do so.  :)
15. When the milk starts to boil, I shake the pan a little to make sure the milk is heating evenly.  The process from turning the burner on to the mess being ready for the oven is only 2 to 3 minutes or so, depending on how warm everything is.
16. Put pan in oven.  No lid.  Farther toward the top is better than too low down.  Just don't burn yourself on the oven. 
17. The gratin should take about 30 minutes to brown nicely on top, with all the potatoes cooked and the fluid essentially evaporated. 
18. Take the BE CAREFUL, IT'S HOT pan out of the oven.  Leave an oven mitt or potholder or the like on any handle to remind you that IT'S HOT!
19. Serve it forth.  If you have guests, remind them that THE PAN IS HOT!  If you're by yourself, you'll probably have burned yourself by now, and remembered that the pan is hot.  Eat about half the potatoes and fall into a deep sleep. 

Variations:

• If you use meat stock instead of milk and leave off the cheese, you will instead have a gratin savoyard.  Add an extra tablespoon of butter somewhere in the process if you use this variation.
• You can layer in other things. 
  • Other root vegetables will work well; most will cook in about the same amount of time if you slice them similarly. 
  • I've also layered in cooked meat, like ham or smoked sausage.  Use a little wider pan or cut back on the potatoes a bit so that the layer of the food in the dish is about the same thickness, but don't obsess over it.
  • If you're floating in cash, I imagine slices of truffle would be really nice in here.  If you do that, invite me over, because I've never done it.  :)
  • If it's a little thicker, it'll take a little longer to cook, and may want to brown more on the top, or have needed more fluid to start with.   Adjust something else accordingly.

JLMBBC Oatmeal Bread

I'm going to a party later today, and I asked if I could bring anything; the host requested bread if I had any.  Since I needed to make some, and I'd never tried any JLMBBC oatmeal before, I thought I'd give it a shot. 

I made one batch of three loaves using my more-or-less standard JLMBBC technique.  The loaves come out to about 1½ pounds apiece.  The pans were my favorite these days: they're oval enameled cast-iron roasting pans.  I luvs me some footboules.  :) 

Oven, pans, and lids preheated for 30 minutes at 450°F. 

Recipe (flours + oatmeal at 100%):

 durum flour            525 g	  39%
 KA bread flour 	525 g	  39%
 rye flour		100 g	   7%
 oatmeal		200 g	  15%

 water		       1050 g	  78%

 Morton kosher salt       2 Tb.
 yeast		     	  ¾ tsp.	


 butter			  2 Tb.
 oatmeal for topping	  6 Tb.

Sorry about the mixed units, but it's just what I do these days.  :)

I used the butter by cutting it into bits and dropping it around the perimeter of the dough after it's been dumped in the pot.  I then took about 2 tablespoons of oatmeal and strewed it on top of the dough.  I then put the lids on and put the pans in the oven for 30 minutes.  Then I carefully took the lids off and cooked the bread for another 30 minutes.  I carefully took the pots out and turned the bread out on racks to cool.  I then ate about a half a loaf for breakfast.  :)

I had a little less rise in the bowl than I expected, and a slightly smaller loaf.  The dough also seemed drier: I guess the oatmeal soaked up more water than an equivalent weight of flour would.  The crumb is also much more even than I expected, which supports the idea that the dough was essentially drier than I was thinking it would be.  But that's actually good here, because the bread is to be sliced for sandwiches.  About half the oatmeal I dropped on top fell off, but that's fine. 

The bread tastes nice, with a slightly sweet flavor I usually don't get.  There's also a mild sense of sweet spice, like cinnamon or something.  I have no idea where that came from.  The crumb, as mentioned before, is good for sandwich bread.  I think adding some wheat germ would have worked well here.

(Images are thumbnails.  Click for larger image in pop-up window.)   

Egg in the Hole

I just recently discovered egg-in-the-hole:

It goes by a number of other names, including "egg in the basket."  I don't know how this escaped my attention for so long.  I love fried eggs, and like the yolk left runny so I can dip my toast in it.  But often I break the yolk while handling the egg.  Egg-in-the-hole makes it easier to handle the egg without breaking it.  Also I thought that if I did break the egg, the surrounding bread would constrain the runaway yolk.

A basic model for the dish at left is here.  What I specifically did was saute about 2 ounces of Neese's regular sausage in a saute pan, then added about a half a small sliced onion.  I de-stemmed and rinsed a huge handful of spinach, added it to the not-quite-done sausage mixture, and covered the pan until the spinach wilted. 

Meanwhile I sliced a couple of pieces of my "corn bread" from a few days ago, and cut a large hole in one piece. (I ate the cut-out.)  I put the second piece in the toaster, and buttered the holed piece.  I also broke an egg into a cup, and seasoned it. 

I seasoned the spinach/sausage/onion mixture, drove off some water by taking the lid off, and put the mixture down as a bed on a warmed plate.  I put the holed piece of bread down in the same skillet and browned/toasted one side.  Then I turned it over, added some butter to the pan inside the hole, and poured the egg into the hole.  After I thought the egg and bread could stand flipping, I flipped it again to get the top part of the egg done.  I then carefully removed the bread with its nestled egg, and plated it atop my spinach.  I decorated the whole with a few strips of nasty American cheese -- god knows we wouldn't want this to be too fancy -- and put the pan lid over the plate briefly to help the cheese melt.

This was better than I thought it was going to be, and tasted more like something I'd expect to find in a restaurant than at home.  That might be because I almost never have fresh spinach around the house, lest it fall prey to Single Person Vegetable Syndrome (I'll put up a definition for that later).  At least it made me feel better about having eggs, sausage, and toast for breakfast, because I got some fresh vegetables along with it.  :)  Anyway, voilà: now you have a model for a cute, quick brunch dish. 

Hot JLMBBC Breadmaking Video

Maybe this NYT video will give Jim Lahey the attention he deserves: 

One might notice that my technique has diverged significantly from Lahey's by now.  It looks like Lahey gets better rise than I do too.  There are some other differences, like he's using 500 degrees instead of 450.  In my mind, some of these differences speak not to any errors, but to how robust the recipe is. 

So, if you haven't done this yet, or have any fear of screwing up, perhaps this short video clip will ease your mind and get you baking. 

The Cure for the Common Kitchen

Several months ago I posted to this blog about my fear of food.   (Yes, I know that doesn't make any sense, but there you have it.)  Some of that post concerned food/health issues and poor information about them, but something I mostly left out was how I just wasn't cooking much at home.  (See previous parenthetical statement.)  I go out to eat a lot, which is great for busy people, lazy people, and sensation seekers.  Unfortunately, it's not good for most people's waistlines or pocketbooks, nor does it save so much time as we want it to.  But what's really bad about it is when it isolates us even further from food. 

People who eat out all the time have no idea what goes into their food, or how to prepare it.  Food is important:  We all have to eat.  Eating is a foundation of health.  Food can be a great source of pleasure.  Dining can be a linchpin of our family and social lives.  And, when you put a piece of food in your mouth, it's an act of trust: is this food going to nourish me, or make me sick?  Clearly food is is important.  Is it good for us not to know anything about it?  Where do I buy it?  How do I prepare it safely?  How can I give nourishment and pleasure with it?  How can I make a pleasant meal with others?  Now, I have to admit that being in a position where one can debate the relative merits of dining out versus cooking at home is not such a bad problem to have.  However, I bet it's one that most readers of this blog consider daily. 

So, even though I both like to cook and go out to eat, I was glad several months ago to find something that got me cooking more at home. 

These books have changed the way I cook in the kitchen:  What I cook, when I cook, how often I cook (more often, if that's not obvious) how I feel about what I've cooked....  I'm not sure I know where to stop.  But like I said, I'm cooking more at home, which is what I wanted. 

My first exposure to Mark Bittman was through his TV show.  And, honestly, while I liked it, Bittman got on my nerves a little bit.  To make some unfair generalizations, he seemed like another slightly rude, know-it-all New Yorker.  But even though Bittman sometimes got on my nerves, I watched the show.  And I stupidly never made any connection between the show and the books.  I'd seen the books, especially How to Cook Everything, everywhere.  I was a little disturbed by their commonality.  And so I never picked one up.  But one day, I was petsitting for someone, and picked up The Best Recipes in the World because it was the only book within sight.  Within a few minutes, I not only decided I liked the book, but also made the connection to the TV show.  I also realized that Bittman comes across in print as someone who is really trying to help his readers -- really trying to give them what he thinks are the important parts about cooking.

I bought both of the above books within a few days.  They're very meaty: a thousand recipes or more in each of them.  Despite their size, they're concise: he doesn't waste a lot of time or column-inches on anything not important to his mission (no big glossy photos or boatloads of whitespace -- sorry).  They're good: I've made several recipes out of both, and had very few misses.  The recipes are generally easy: Bittman's whole philosophy is that he doesn't want to waste a lot of time on complicated technique, hard-to-find ingredients, or expensive equipment.  And the books are encyclopedic:  The first one is a damn good introduction to American cuisine: what we eat and how to cook it, simply.  The second one runs all over the globe, picking up Bittman's favorites from everywhere.  The recipes in the second are not arranged by area or cuisine, but by food and cooking method.  This way of constructing a cookbook is hard to pull off, but Bittman does a really good job.  HTCE was supposedly dubbed a more hip Joy of Cooking by someone at the Washington Post, and it really is.  By the way, Joy never really did flip my switch, but with these two books, Bittman has, in a way no one has done since Julia Child. 

Since I started using these books, they may have become the most important day-to-day books in my kitchen.  If I want to make something, but have no idea where to start, I'll start looking in them.  I've repeatedly recommended them to others, and even bought a few copies for friends.  Everyone seems to like them.  If they don't flip your switch like they did mine -- well, everyone is different.  But if you're in the market for a cookbook for yourself or for a friend, take a look at these.  I bet you'll be pleased. 

Jim Lahey/Mark Bittman Bread Club

(For related posts, please see the JLMBBC section.)

I'm sure you're all dying to know what I've been doing in the copious free time I've had since being laid off from the abattoir and wrecking my truck.  Answer: I've been baking bread.  A lot of bread.  Maybe a half-dozen loaves in the past week.  And it's good bread: boule-like objects that come out crusty-hot, with an audibly shattering crust that flies off when cut with a knife.  Do I have some fancy, steam-injected oven to get that crust?  Or perhaps I'm throwing ice cubes in a pre-heated cast iron skillet in the bottom of the oven? 

Nope.  I'm just dumping the dough in a big pot.  And I'm not kneading either.  In fact, I'm not going to much work per loaf at all.  And I'm not the only one making this good, low-work bread.  Boatloads of people across the country are cooking this bread, and busily tweaking the recipe to get the bread they want out of simple ingredients and equipment they probably already have. 

Can you do this?  Well, yes.  Is it hard?  No.  Do I have the stuff I need?  Probably.  Do you have flour, water, yeast, salt, a big bowl, and (this is key) a big pot with a lid that will go in the oven?  If you don't already have that big pot, I bet you can get one cheaply.  I saw something appropriate a few days ago in a discount grocery store for about $18, or you can use that monstrously expensive heavy Le Creuset dutch oven too.  Just make sure the handle won't melt in the oven. 

For those who want to get to the source, here's Bittman's original article at the NYT, the recipe he adapted from Jim Lahey's recipe, and a follow-up article with additional tips and tweaks.  Go read. 

Don't want to go read?  Ok, but before you start, be aware that the rise time for this bread is between 12 and 18 hours, so you're looking at an overnight project.  Don't be discouraged.  Just start cooking. 

Ready? 

1. Put 3 cups bread or all-purpose flour in a big bowl.  Add about 2 teaspoons salt and 1/4 tsp. (yes, that's only one-quarter teaspoon) of yeast.  Stir.  Add 1 5/8 cups of water.  Stir.  Cover with a towel or plastic wrap.  Set aside. 
2. Come back in 12-18 hours or so.  Do you have a good doubling or tripling of the volume of dough?  Good. Poke dough with finger, making indentation.  Does it stay indented?  Excellent.  Shape the somewhat wet dough into a ball in the bowl.  Re-cover. 
3. Come back in 15 minutes or so.  Reshape into ball.  Cover. 
4. Come back in 2 hours or so.  Put your coverable, oven-safe pot in the oven, and turn oven on to 450 degrees. 
5. Come back in 30 minutes or so.  (This part is tricky, so pay attention and don't do this while you're drunk or distracted or the like, or you'll burn the f$ck out of yourself.)  Very carefully, remove the pot from the oven and sit it on something oven-safe.  Put a pot-holder or the like on the pot handle, else you'll forget and burn yourself in about 2 seconds.  I'm not kidding.  Dump the ball of dough into the hot pot.  Carefully put the oven-safe lid on and put the pot back in the oven.
6. Take some butter out of the refrigerator if necessary for face-feeding when bread comes out.
7. Come back in 30 minutes.  Very carefully, using a pot-holder or the like, remove the scorching-hot lid from the pot.  A pair of tongs may work well here, depending on the lid.  Leave a pot-holder or something on the pot lid so you don't accidentally pick it up and burn yourself before it cools. Leave the pot itself in the oven.  Close oven. 
8. Come back in 15-30 minutes.  (I can't give you an exact time on this, because, among other things, it depends on the shape of the pot you're using.)  Is the loaf nice and brown?  Good.  Very carefully, and using a couple pot-holders or the like, remove the pot from the oven and dump the bread out on the rack.  Set the pot down on something oven-safe, and leave a pot-holder or something on the pot so you don't accidentally pick it up and burn yourself again.  The bread is hot also, but you probably knew that.  :)  Set it upright on the rack, uncovered, so it can cool while staying crusty.  If you cover it up, it takes longer to cool and doesn't stay crusty. 
9. This is where a true professional would tell you to let the loaf cool for an hour or so before cutting it.  If you agree and want the loaf to cool, by all means do so.  But if you're like me, you can wait about three seconds before you've taken the bread off the rack, whacked off a slice with a serrated knife, smeared as much butter as you possibly can on the slice, and shoved it in your pie-hole, because damn, it's good.  If you put the bread back on the rack after you've fed your face, it'll cool more nicely.  But again, you're probably like me, and you came back 2 or 3 more times for more hot bread, and one of those times you left it on the cutting board.  I promise I won't tell anyone. 
10. Make some more bread, tweaking the recipe to your own taste and predilections (the careful observer will see that this very recipe is tweaked from the instructions on the above-linked pages). 

There.  Wasn't that fun?  If you want tweaking guidelines, I'd suggest reading Bittman's second article above, entitled "No Kneading, but Some Fine-Tuning."  If I were a true professional, I'd give you my own guidelines for tweaking and the like.  But I'm gonna go eat some bread instead.  ;)

Turkey Stuff/Dressing

My post-Thanksgiving post:  I've made this stuffing at every opportunity I could for the past 20 years, and I still like it.  It's never reached the stellar height it did the first time I made it, but it's still damn good, often better than the turkey.  I've made it when there was no fowl to be seen at the meal: hey, no harm no fowl, right?  :)  I even leave the liver and anchovies out most times.  And the best thing: I don't have to type it up this time.  :)  I just stumbled on it already typed up.  Cook it, love it, make it your dressing.  I used homemade sausage this year, which made it seem even more special.  Enjoy. 

Onion Confit

Something to do:  Buy a 3-pound bag of onions.  Peel, then slice them all thinly (I wouldn't blame you for using a food processor here). Slick the bottom of a big, heavy fry or saute pan with a generous amount of oil (I use olive). Add all the onions and a little salt, maybe a teaspoon or so (read salt warning below first).  If you can't get them all in, that's fine: cook them down a bit, then add the rest.  Cook the onions down slowly, uncovered, stirring occasionally.  You can cover them at the beginning to get things going faster, but uncover them once they start rendering out their water. 

As the fluid evaporates, keep a closer eye on the onions.  Add more oil if you want or need to.  You're doing this over pretty low heat toward the end, because it's easy to burn this if the heat is too high.  You should have the heat low enough that you can walk away from this for say ten minutes without worrying.  This is almost effortless cooking if you do it slowly enough.  It takes a couple of hours or so, but it can be done while you're doing something else.  You can always slow it down more if you need to go do something else.  I've even covered them and put them in a low (250 degrees F.) oven when I needed to go out for a bit.  I've also stopped and restarted them. 

You can add some garlic if you want. 

To add even more flavor, you can add some white wine or stock after the onions are partially reduced.  1/2 cup of one or both is good.  Watch the salt if you're using stock, as some stock is pretty salty.  Add a little ground pepper if you want. 

When you think you can't possibly render any more water out, you're done.  You'll have less than 4 cups of onion glop, and possibly as little as 2.  Put in a bowl in the refrigerator, covered.  It'll keep for at least a couple weeks if you've rendered all the water out. 

Now comes the fun part.  When you're cooking something else, put some of this in.  It's pretty concentrated, so you don't need a lot.  On the other hand, it's good, so you might want to glop in a bunch.  Just remember this 3 cups of glop used to be 3 pounds of onions.  This stuff can save you time when you're cooking later, as long as you don't use the whole thing greedily at once. 

Star Fruit Sherbet

So after leaving the carambolas I bought in the refrigerator for a week to decay, I figured it was finally time to do something with them.  Sorbet is usually what I'm tempted to do with random interesting fruit, so I followed my standard sorbet procedure as outlined by Harold McGee in The Curious Cook. I washed them, trimmed them a bit, sliced them into half-inch stars, and removed the seeds.  I had 500 grams -- a little over a pound -- of trimmed, de-seeded fruit.  I tasted a piece: they had a wonderful floral scent, kind of like that of a really nice blood orange.  The texture was pulpier than citrus -- sort of like a cross between an orange and a pear or banana.  They also have a sharpness that doesn't present like citric acid or vinegar: it's less assertive, but tends to linger in the mouth.  I assume this is oxalic acid, which carambolas are supposed to have in spades, like rhubarb.

Usually when I make a sorbet, I use tables in Curious Cook to figure out how much sugar to use.  The ratio of sugar is important: too little and the sorbet will freeze hard as a brick; too much and it will never freeze.  There was no listing for carambola.  McGee says he aimed for sugar amounts in the range of 30 to 35% by weight.  But how much sugar were already in the carambolas?  I found that at the USDA National Nutrient Database.  Ripe carambolas are about 4% sugar by weight, so I apparently had about 20 grams of sugar and about 480 grams of other stuff (mostly water of course).  It seemed like I'd need about 220 additional grams of sugar.  I added about 180 grams of granulated sugar and about 40 grams of corn syrup (the syrup is less sweet, and gives frozen desserts a smoother texture than sugar alone).  I then dumped the whole mess in a blender and pureed it for a couple minutes.

Now a taste: still a little too much of that oxalic acid flavor.  Next time, I might try removing some of the ridges on the outside of the fruit (which according to OFAC is where the largest amounts of oxalic acid are).  I added a little more sugar, and also dumped in maybe 60 grams -- a generous quarter-cup -- of heavy cream.  (That's why I'm calling this sherbet, as it has some dairy in it, but not enough to warrant being called ice cream.)  I also added about 1 ml -- a scant quarter-teaspoon -- of orange flower water.  Why?  Because I had it.  :)  Also, the orange flower water seemed to share that floral note the fruit had by itself. I spun the whole mess in the blender a bit longer, then measured it.  I had about 3 cups -- maybe 725 ml.  I then added the puree to the ice cream freezer, and let it churn until I was bored (about 45 minutes).  I then put the nascent sherbet in another container. where it resides.  So I'll go have a taste....

Not bad.  It has a fruity flavor, yet one that is very clean.  It retains most of its floral character, which is a nice surprise.  It's a little soft, but it might freeze harder in a real freezer instead of the dinky freezer section of my household refrigerator.  It's plenty sweet, too, so maybe I should have added less than the cup or so I used.  The tart/bitter oxalic acid taste has retreated somewhat, but I no longer trust myself to evaluate that -- I'll let some friends try it. 

Deep-Fried, for Your Pleasure....

Buy a ham, take the bone out, and stuff the hollow with sausage. Tie the ham back up with strips of bacon around the whole thing. Batter and crumb it lightly, then deep fry the whole damn thing.

SausHamOn^™: Deep-Fried, for Your Pleasure....©

Thomas Keller interview at Powell's

While running around on the Web, I bumped into this interview with Thomas Keller, chef/owner of the French Laundry, which is arguably the best restaurant on the continent.  Powell's, an independent bookstore in Oregon, interviewed Keller about his restaurants, his training, and his French Laundry Cookbook, which you can of course purchase from Powell's.  :)

Experiments

I've added a new category named "Experiments": there are often things I do, and occasionally write up, that I'm not exactly comfortable labeling "Recipes."  Maybe I didn't know what the hell I was doing, or I'd never done it before, or it just seemed like an adventure.  I'd like a better description than "Experiments,"; lemme know if you think of one.  And be sure to look at Experiments when looking for recipes.  ;)

Eggplant Caviar

I've made this eggplant dip over and over again for parties, and it never fails to be a hit.  It's particularly pleasing to garlic lovers.  I sometimes call it "eggplant crap," but a nicer name is eggplant caviar, dip, or spread.  Julia's name for it is "La Tentation de Bramafam," which might be impenetrable even if one does speak French.  The secret: Bramafam was the estate of Simone Beck, one of Julia Child's co-authors for the Mastering the Art of French Cooking series.  Maybe one day a recipe will be named "Eat at Joe's Temptation."  Or maybe not. 

I've edited this quite a bit, and added glosses.  You can find the original recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume II, by Julia Child and Simone Beck. I have not asked permission before using the original recipe as a model for producing what's below. 

 

La Tentation de Bramafam

Stuff	Instructions	Glosses
About 2 lb. eggplant baking sheet	Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Cut off green cap(s), wash, and place eggplant(s) on baking sheet or equivalent.  Bake 30 to 35 minutes or more, or until soft to the touch.	It doesn't look like it, but this is the hardest part of the recipe.  First, you have to find eggplant that don't look like they've been used as soccer balls.  Then you have to cook them.  It's tougher than it looks: I've experienced wildly varying amounts of time until the eggplant is done, even accounting for shape and size.  Why?  Dunno; maybe the eggplant have varying amounts of water in them? Anyway, you want some browning, but you want some eggplant left too.  I stick holes in them with a fork to help the baking along.  I've cut them up too, but you lose a lot of the flesh that way to char.  But too much cooking is better than not enough.  If you don't cook them enough, the caviar is bland and yucky.  Do it right, and the eggplants come out naturally sweet and flavorful.
Food processor 2 cups (7-8 oz.) walnuts, or maybe pecans	Grind walnuts in food processor until they resemble coarse cornmeal.	The original recipe calls for walnuts.  I substituted some pecans once, and liked the taste: the pecans accentuated the natural sweetness of the eggplant.  I think next time the ideal would be a mixture of the two, as too much pecan didn't taste right.
¾ tsp. (or more) salt 1/8 tsp. pepper 1 to 4 (or more) cloves garlic, pureed 4 to 6 squirts hot sauce (like Tabasco or Texas Pete) ¼ tsp. ground allspice 1 tsp. fresh grated ginger, or ¼ tsp. powdered ginger	Add salt, pepper, garlic, hot sauce, allspice, and ginger to food processor.  Blend a bit. Scrape eggplant out of skins, and add the flesh to the food processor.  Mix until you like the consistency.	You'll probably need more salt, but start here and work your way up. And even if you're a garlic-head, it is possible to get too much garlic in.  Grate your fresh ginger on a Microplane (What?  You don't have a Microplane!  Well, go buy one; you'll thank me later).
Bowl ½ to 1 cup tasty extra-virgin olive oil	Remove mixture from food processor and add to bowl.  Add olive oil to eggplant in a thin stream, and mix into eggplant while pouring. Taste and correct seasoning, and serve it forth.	I'm not just busting your balls here: I think food-processing olive oil makes it taste bitter.  So put the mixture in a bowl, add the oil, and stir by hand.  How much oil?  Not so much that you have loose olive oil floating around, but enough that it tastes good.  I don't usually bother to measure; I just start pouring in olive oil, mixing, and occasionally tasting.  At some point I realize I've stopped tasting and started eating; that's when it's ready.  :)  I usually serve this with carbohydrates for dipping, my favorite being the "Mini" size of Stoned Wheat Thins.

Derby Tea, & Iced Tea Generally

Another Derby Day, and the weather is fine.  Just the time for a mint julep -- in fact, maybe the only time for a mint julep, ever.  What?  You don't drink alcohol?  Not even on Derby Day?  Ok, how about a nice glass of iced tea?  Actually, let's have a nicely Southern glass of "ice tea," and let's add some mint.  Besides, you'll want something cooling when you're standing out in the sun waiting for post time, and smelling a lot of drunks, horses, and their associated discharges. 

Plentiful iced tea is one of the wonderful things about the Southern U.S.  The South, pre-A.C., was (and still is) hot and humid.  Asking for "tea" in most Southern homes and restaurants will get you a glass of sweetened, iced tea.  Iced tea is famously refreshing: someone, either Calvin Trillin or John Egerton, described the invention of iced tea as something like a thunderclap across the Southern consciousness.   Mint is not typical in "ice tea," but it makes it taste even cooler and sweeter.  And if a little real Kentucky bourbon were to find its way into the preparation -- well, it's almost like being at Churchill Downs. :)

This iced tea is made using the concentrate method, which means less water to heat up, and probably a clearer tea.  Feel free to boil a whole gallon of water, or make sun tea, or just follow family or local custom.  A variation (Joe's Ice Tea) follows.

• Needed:
  1. 4 family size tea bags
  2. Mint
  3. 1 ½ cups sugar
  4. 6 cups water
  5. More water
  6. More water, frozen (also known as ice)
  7. A pot, 2 quart or larger
  8. Spoons, drinking vessels (perhaps chilled?), measuring cups, a stove -- the list is endless.  Maybe this is too tough, but if you can't stand the heat, go use someone else's kitchen.  Or, with a little luck, a lotta love, and some spunk, maybe you'll muddle through.  ;)
• Recipe:
  1. Bring the 6 cups water to a boil in the pot.
  2. Remove from heat. 
  3. Add tea bags.  The tea bags will be easier to take out if you leave the little tags hanging outside the pot.
  4. Rinse mint; add some to pot. 
  5. Let stand 10 minutes while tea steeps. 
  6. Remove tea bags.  Squeeze the bags out if you like, but don't burn yourself. 
  7. Add sugar.
  8. Stir until sugar is dissolved.  Let cool a bit.  Your tea concentrate is now ready.
  9. Find a large vessel, perhaps a nice gallon pitcher if you're lucky. 
  10. Put the tea concentrate from step 6 in the pitcher.  Did the pitcher melt or break?  You didn't cool the concentrate enough, or perhaps you dropped the pitcher.  D'oh.
  11. Add some water.  Do not run the pitcher over.  You may now refrigerate this if you like. 
• Serving:
  1. Find your (perhaps chilled) drinking vessel(s).  Add some ice, some mint if you want to look fancy, and some tea from your pitcher.  Do not run the drinking vessel(s) over.  In fact, don't run anything over at any time; if you do, clean it up before your mom gets home. 
  2. Hand drinking vessel to your friend.  You don't have a friend?  Learn to cook better; in the meantime, hold on to the drinking vessel, and add a little bourbon if you like, because you have no friends.
  3. Serve it forth, and enjoy.
• Problems?:
1. Tea is too strong: add a little bourbon. :)  Southern iced tea is usually pretty sweet and strong.  Add less tea, steep it for less time, don't squeeze the tea bags, add more water or ice, or drink less of it. If your tea has already over-steeped, try sweetening it with light brown sugar instead of plain white: light brown sugar seems to tame over-steeped tea a bit.  Dark brown sugar will probably tame it too much.
2. Tea is too sweet: add a little bourbon.  Use other Kentucky or Tennessee sour mash, or other sour mash whiskey, or blended Canadian; if you add Armagnac, people will look at you like you're a poofter.  If you add vodka, they will beat you up, and rightfully so, whether you're gay, straight, or bisexual.  If you add gin, they will have you committed. :)  Again, Southern iced tea is strong and sweet.  Add less sugar next time, or add more water or ice.  Back off on the mint: it makes the tea taste sweeter.  If you left the mint out altogether, add a bit of lemon to balance out the sweetness.
3. "I have no family size tea bags!":  Use about 16 regular tea bags.  The use of loose tea is recommended for advanced practitioners, and is beyond the scope of this recipe. 
4. "I have no mint!"  Grow some, but be careful, it grows like a weed.  Or ask your neighbors, who will probably be happy for you to take some of this pesky weed off their hands.  Or use 1 to 4 mint tea (more properly, mint tisane or infusion) bags in place of the fresh mint added before steeping. 
• Variation: Joe's Ice Tea -- This is a less sweet, less strong iced tea for general consumption. The use of decaffeinated tea makes for a better evening beverage.  The lemon flavor makes for a more refreshing drink and balances out the sweetness of the smaller amount of sugar.  Instructions have been simplified from the previous recipe, since you are now a tea expert.

  This is an example of tea brewed without any explicit heat source other than the sun.  The food police want you to be careful because they say that the tea is never sterilized by boiling water, and the tea (perhaps even the water you used) could contain deadly pathogens.  They even say throw it out if you haven't drunk it within something like three days.  But I drank this tea for many years, and never experienced anything worse than Bloodflower's Melancholia, Maturin's Cysted Whelk Fluke (spleen), Delusions of Universal Grandeur, and Third Eye Infection.  So drink up and enjoy! 

  1. Ask the nice man at your corner deli if he has an empty gallon glass jar.
  2. Take the jar and lid home and wash them.
  3. Add about one gallon water, 4 family-size decaf tea bags, and 4 bags of Celestial Seasonings Lemon Zinger. 
  4. Put the jar someplace sunny for a while.
  5. Take the tea bags out, and add ½ cup sugar. 
  6. Refrigerate, then serve it forth.  Add some ice, or else it's merely cold tea, not iced.  Do not add any alcohol, unless you want some.