Sprucing Up Simple Dishes

Sometimes we crave simplicity. Humble foods that are quick, easy and inexpensive have as much culinary power as complex, gourmet dishes. They're what we eat when we need to focus our energy elsewhere or when finances are too tight for more nuanced fare. These two-note dishes can be satisfying in their own right, but it doesn't take long to grow bored with them. This creates something of a dilemma. How do you make basic meals more interesting without sacrificing the simplicity that defines them? Here are a few ways to make those easy foods more lively while keeping them honest.

Macaroni and Cheese is a staple of childhood. It's fast, filling, fun and it pleases the undeveloped palates of growing kids. And hey, the sneaky serving of vital calcium doesn't hurt, either. For adults, mac and cheese gets relegated to the status of a sidedish, which never felt quite right to me. Equally unfitting is the way consummate foodies tend to turn this quintessentially humble dish into something expensive and pretentious. I can never bring myself to order, let alone cook, some baked combination of obscure cheeses, whole wheat macaroni, truffles and counter-intuitive spices. For a more homey mac and cheese upgrade, take a page out of Depression-era cuisine. Peas go surprisingly well with the dish, adding some extra body, texture and nutrition to the mix. Add some basic herbs like basil and some simple spice like black pepper for some additional flavor.

Cheese is a frequent fixture in simple food. Take the classic Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Now, I'm not suggesting that this beauty of an invention is anything less than perfect on its own, just that it deserves to be dressed up every now and then. It's easy enough to put a slice of bacon in the middle, but as much as I adore that most indulgent of meats, I think there's something a bit lazy about that. The grilled cheese sandwich has had a long-time companion in tomato soup, so why not employ the tomato elsewhere? A slice of a meaty hothouse can liven up the sandwich, or a light salsa could give it a southwestern kick. Other veggies, like roasted red pepper and zucchini, can also lend more flavor and substance to the sandwich. Don't go overboard, though. We're not trying to make a panini here.

One place where it is a good idea to go overboard is in a bowl of ramen noodles. The marketing people at Manchurian and Top Ramen would have us believe that all one needs for a complete ramen meal is some hot water and their flavor packets. To eat ramen as it was intended (and as the Japanese have been serving it for centuries), don't be bashful about treating it like goulash. Any spice, vegetable, egg or other random scraps could find their way into your pot of ramen noodles to make this dish into a full meal.

Don't be afraid to take humble favorite and turn them into something more substantial. With a little creativity and a sense of respect for the base dish, you can elevate even the most unassuming food to sublime cuisine.

I Declare Myself Master of the Bread Universe!

Okay, that may be a little premature.  I've only made five loaves without the help of my beloved bread maker, after all.  I guess it takes more than that before you can declare your mastery over a skill as cryptic and arcane (and squamous, if you want to get Lovecraftian about it) as making bread by hand.

Nevertheless, I did things a little bit differently with the last loaf, and the results were OUTSTANDING.  Luckily, I was taking notes.  I can't recommend this highly enough for new bread makers, by the way.  Always take notes, even if it's just a few scrawled jots on a scrap of paper.  You always think "Oh I'll remember what I did," but then you never ever do.  So take notes.

This was another "barely kneaded" loaf.  I don't go strictly with the "no knead" method, I go in a few times and do some folding.  This is a gentle method of kneading where you pick up one end of the dough and let the dough hang to stretch out, then lay this end on top of the dough.  Then you pick up the next side, and do the same thing.  I have heard this called an "envelope fold."

One thing I am learning is that you can leave the dough to rise for a really long time, if your house is as cool as mine.  My house will get down into the 50s overnight, and is only in the low 70s for a few hours every day.  I understand that 72 is considered "room temperature" but my room is hardly ever that temperature!

(If I'm in a hurry, or it's unusually cold, or both, I have learned that I can let the dough rise in the oven with the oven light on.  I have a 40 watt bulb in there (I just replaced it, so I noticed).  If you do this, put a thermometer in the oven first and see how warm it gets!  I found that with the door closed and the light on, the oven got up into the 90s.  That's actually a little too long for letting dough rise.  After experimenting for a bit, I learned that leaving the oven door open just a crack (with a spatula holding it open) keeps the oven between 70 and 75 degrees.)

Because of one thing or another, this loaf actually ended up rising for about 16 hours.  I set it out to rise overnight, folded it in the morning, then came back in the afternoon.  For the final fold, I did something a little different: I decanted the dough into a bowl which I had greased with a bit of cooking oil.  

I have seen a lot of recipes that tell you to do your last knead in a bowl greased with cooking oil, but they never say why.  Now I'm convinced that it's because the oil gives your baked bread a wonderful crackly coating!  

The final change I made was to bake my bread in a loaf pan.  I had been working from recipes that called for it to be baked in a dutch oven with the lid on for half the baking time.  I really like the loaf pan results a lot better!  For one thing, it has made the final loaf a LOT easier to handle and slice.

The Microwave is Getting a Makeover

When I was in Jr. High, I went to a Micro-wave cooking class with my mom- I am not kidding. It was sponsored by whatever company she had purchased our very first microwave from.  We attended for the sole purpose of gaining ourselves the necessary cooking cooking skills for our new favorite appliance. As you might guess, the class failed to teach us anything beyond how to press the new-fangled buttons on the futuristic-looking machine.

Everyone was buying microwaves at that time, but I have to agree with my Grandmother’s assessment of the microwave- she called it the most expensive bun-warmer that she has ever had.

I didn’t have a microwave for years, but now have one for defrosting meat when I forget to take it out of the freezer on time. I am aware that I may suffer from terrible radiation effects from using the microwave, but am willing to take my chances.

I am not willing, however, to purchase one of the $1,000.00 microwaves that will soon be coming out on the market. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, microwaves are still hot ticket items; in fact consumers purchased 9.5% more microwaves in the past year alone. More than likely as a result in the increase in demand for microwaves, companies like Sharp are in the mood to give the now old-fashioned appliance a make-over.

Some of the modifications for new microwaves are very elaborate. The innovations include using steam “with a water-reservoir attached to the oven”, heat sensors, and thermal optic cameras so that the elite microwave chefs will be able to tell if their food is done or not.

As a fair portion of microwave cooking also involves “cooking frozen foods”, a new company has created a microwave which enables the users to input the bar code into your microwave so that your food will automatically be cooked for the right time, and presumably at the right temperature. I am not sure whether that is for the lazy Americans among us, or for those who due to learning disabilities actually have trouble reading the directions on the package, but it seems like a strange modification.

Regardless of the new additions coming for microwaves, the actual effects of how harmful microwaves are still being debated.

Cookin' Pork Chops with Parsnips and Pears

After my limited success a few weeks ago with my “infamous” dishwasher chicken recipe, I decided that I needed to learn a few more kitchen tricks. More than a few, actually.

Since then,  I have re-created a couple of simple recipes, but was reminded just how inferior my cooking was when compared to “real cooks” after being invited to dinner at a friend’s house last weekend.

Apparently, the ability to cook chicken in a dishwasher is not a highly regarded skill among those who consider cooking an art-form. I decided to try something more conventional, but also more unique.

Despite the multitude of reasons to be a vegetarian, I am still a meat-eater, but try to purchase healthy free range meats. Yesterday, I dug some pork chops out of my freezer and prepared a marinade that I found on Cooks.com with a combination of herbs, lemon zest, lemon juice, minced garlic, and olive oil.

I put the pork chops into the mixture and mixed them around a little and left the marinade in a tupperware container in the refrigerator to sit overnight. A few hours later, I went to bed and woke up with a terrible thought-did I mess up the marinade?  I couldn’t decide- should I get out of bed and tread over to my fridge to check the marinade? Was it worth a look at the recipe in the middle of the night?

I opted to forget about the marinade, but jotted myself a note on my bed-side table so that I wouldn’t forget to freak out about it at some point the next day. I nervously checked the marinade in the morning and it looked all right, but since there wasn’t a picture, I had no way of verifying whether or not I was on the right track.

Later in the day, I set out for a neighborhood shopping expedition: I purchased parsnips for my very first time, pears, red potatoes and some wine to drink as a special treat with the meal. The cashier asked me what I was going to do with the parsnips- I had to admit that this was my first attempt at a “very secret recipe”.  He went on to recommend pureeing carrots with the parsnips to take away the bitterness. As I attempted to respond intelligently to his suggestion,  I thought I saw a woman peeking around the corner to snoop into the contents of my basket.

I got home and read the recipe, but needed to call in the reinforcements. Was the recipe right? Did I really have to separate the lemon zest, garlic, and herbs from the pork chops to put them on the veggies or was the recipe written by an incompetent person trying to fool novices like me into thinking that they knew what they were talking about?

With help, I transferred the pork chops into a more suitable pan, and put some of the marinade on the veggie mix. I chose to broil the pork chops and roasted the parsnips, potatoes, and pears with the “sauce” on.

Despite a little smoke coming out of the oven and my lack of a decent oven mitt, the meal turned out much better than I  had anticipated.

Julie and Julia

Even though the film Julie and Julia came out in 2009,

I've only just now seen it. Written and directed by Nora Ephron, and based in part on the blog Julie Powell started in 2002 at Salon. I liked Julie and Juliavery much. Meryl Streep is fabulous, (as usual), so much so that now I have to double-check to make sure I'm looking at images and video of the real Julia. Stanley Tucci is wonderful as Child's spouse Paul Child. I wish there had been less of Julie the cooking-blogger (though she is well-played by Amy Adams) and more of Meryl Streep as Julia Child. As much as I admire Nora Ephron's work, I think a film about Julia Child would have been even better. Ephron's decision to intertwine Julia Child's life with the story in Julie Powell's book Julie/Julia, based on Julie Powell's blog The Julie/Julia Project was perhaps unfortunate. The Project was a blog about Powell's efforts to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year.

As a blog, The Julie/Julia Project is less than inspired.

Powell's blog is the kind of thing that early bloggers (most of whom were male) would sneer at while they made jokes about "journal bloggers." Part of that was Internet misogyny, but I have the impression, having slogged through what's still available of the blog, that Powell was a) unhappy, b) completely self absorbed, and c) not a cooking blogger in the sense we use the phrase today, nor was she serious about cooking. If you read the blog, you'll see Powell screwing with recipes before she's even tried them. I say Powell is not a cooking blogger knowing that in 2002 when Powell started, we have bloggers like The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and, just a few months later, Elise Bauer began Simply Recipes. Both of these cooks, in terms of their methods, their approaches to recipes, have been profoundly influenced (though probably quite indirectly) by Julia Child, who very much regularized cooking for American audiences through her cookbooks (eleven of 'em!) and her WGBH PBS television series. Child did three very different things from other cookbook authors; she tested all the recipes, repeatedly, and approached the procedures and methods as serious writing (I was told as a technical writer to use Julia Child as a model), writing that needed to be both precise and clear. Finally, she used the concept of master recipes that could be endlessly varied, and combined to create new dishes.

I think the smartest thing I've seen about the film is a piece by Kurt Loder for mtv.com:

"Julie & Julia" is one-half of a great biopic. In portraying Julia Child—the effervescent author and chef whose four decades of TV cooking shows made her an intimate presence in millions of American homes—Meryl Streep gives a performance that's virtually an act of reincarnation.

The smartest thing I've seen about Julia Child in the context of the Julie and Julia film is "Our Lady of the Kitchen" piece by Laura Jacobs in Vanity Fair.

Great Meals in Unexpected Places

Many foods are rightly associated with geography. It's nothing to expect excellent tomato sauce in an authentic restaurant in Tuscany or top-notch sushi in a trendy Shibuya bistro. Real culinary adventures happen in odd corners of the world. When a memorable meal happens in an unassuming place, the sheer surprise and novelty can make the experience that much better. It's often downright surreal to find an amazing flavor in some middle American gas station or behind some forgotten door in a foreign country where it has no earthly business. Here are three stories of my own weird food finds around the globe.

It's not exactly contentious to claim that the best chicken-fried steak in the world comes from Texas, but where exactly in Texas I found my own favorite iteration of the dish was a bit surprising. It wasn't in a home kitchen or a famous family eatery. I was on a cross-country road trip with my brother during the dog days of summer 2007. We found ourselves in a particularly desolate patch of the south-central segment of the state, the region where it's literally a hundred miles of desert between fragments of civilization. We found a motel at a truck stop that consisted of nothing else but an abandoned silo, some gas pumps and a restaurant called "Restaurant". It was the kind of greasy, deserted place that somehow manages to make even the fountain soda taste grimy. From the look of my brother's burger, I'd say that nothing on the menu qualified as food in most places, but damned if my chicken-fried steak wasn't the Platonic ideal of what the dish should be. Fork tender, thin but structurally sound and perfectly seasoned, that CFS remains one of the best meals I've ever eaten.

Speaking of thin, fried things, I once ate a pancake that transported me to a lower realm of paradise. Where did I find it? A little-known lounge called Jan's in New City, Jerusalem. Given all the religious and political tension of the region, Jerusalem isn't really famous for being a great food town, which is a crying shame. All told, I didn't have one bad meal during my entire ten-day stay in the City on the Hill, but Jan's was far and away the best among them. Even without the amazing atmosphere of sitting on piles of pillows in an intimate international setting, that special dessert pancake would have still been incredible. Golden brown, complex in its sweetness and paired with a stern cup of Turkish coffee, it was a little slice of heaven.

In Columbus, Ohio where I grew up there were a surprising number of great restaurants in the 1990's. Expansion, corporate chains and a down economy put a lot of them out of business by the early 00's, but they were nice while the lasted. One such restaurant was a warm, friendly tavern called Christopher's. It wasn't a particularly fancy place, just beer and regular American fare. Not exactly the place one would expect to find a stunning variation on sesame chicken wings. This classically Chinese dish just happened to come alive at Christopher's. The homemade sauce was zesty and not too sweet, the wings themselves cooked to perfection.

Cinnamon Rolls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have previously acknowledged my undying love of doughnuts. I'm here to tell you now, that next to doughnuts, I am obsessed with cinnamon buns, or cinnamon rolls or honey buns. I blame my mother; when I was very small and we lived in Indiana, on special occasions, she would buy frozen Morton's Honey Buns. Now, you should know my mom was and is a great make-it-from-scratch cook. So if she was feeding us frozen store-bought honey buns, they were pretty darn good. As I said they, were frozen, and came two to a package. You heated them up in the oven, and served them warm and slightly drippy from the glaze. They were a sweet yeast dough, with lots of cinnamon, and a basic glaze. Later I started to sample cinnamon rolls, etc. at various bakeries, and no, Cinnabon does not count; they are the Hostess Doughnuts of cinnamon rolls. Polly's Pastries, a California chain makes magnificent Cinnamon Rolls, but alas, they are miles and miles away from me. I long for "Cinnamon rolls as big as your head," like those baked by the eponymous heroine of Robin McKinley's Sunshine. Alas, McKinley did not see fit to include a recipe; consequently, I have turned to Ree Drummond, of the fabulous Pioneer Woman Website, and author of the cookbook The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Ree Drummond has a step-by-step recipe for Cinnamon Rolls 101.

You can watch Ree Drummond make her Cinnamon Rolls her, in a video of her appearance on the Fox network.

Image credit: © Ree Drummond. Used with permission.

Asparagus Time!

Even though we have gone to a culture of year-round produce, thanks largely to growers in South America, asparagus is one of the few seasonal hold-outs.  I have seen asparagus for sale out of season, but it always looks absolutely wretched, and costs a fortune.

These delicate spears say "springtime" better than anything else in the produce aisle.  The Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board calls asparagus "one of nature's most perfect foods," and while admittedly that may be a biased opinion on the part of the MAAB, I have to agree.  

The asparagus is a member of the lily family, and it grows from a crown that lives underground, sending out shoots once a year in springtime.  Gardeners who want to cultivate asparagus have a long wait, because a newly planted asparagus crown can take three years before it begins producing asparagus.  After that point, it will produce spears for about 15 years before it finally gives up the ghost.

Some people prefer larger diameter asparagus, under the "bigger is better" principle.  I disagree, since the larger spears tend to be woody.  The smaller the spear, the more tender the flesh.  You can test an asparagus spear by holding one end in each hand and flexing it gently.  A young spear will easily flex into a U shape.  An older, woodier spear will want to snap at some point along its length.  

Nutritionally, asparagus is a wonder.  It delivers a wonderful taste and creamy texture, without having any fat.  It also contains a wide variety of nutrients and micronutrients which are important for BLAH BLAH BLAH WHO CARES IT'S DELICIOUS!  We all know the truth!  No one picks up a bundle of asparagus thinking, "Oh, how nutritious!"

But the nutritional qualities of asparagus are an excellent topic to reflect upon, as you drench the tender spears in butter, or your cream sauce of choice.  

Asparagus pairs particularly nicely with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce at breakfast.  I have yet to master the art of hollandaise sauce, but I have discovered that you can cheat by using a light drizzle of the right honey mustard salad dressing.  Look for a dressing that's creamy and just a little bit tangy.  It's a surprisingly convincing substitute!

Another favorite preparation technique is to give them a good dry searing.  Heat a pan over medium heat.  Once it has gotten up to temperature, add a pat of butter and your asparagus spears.  Toss them with a bit of salt and pepper, then let them rest and get a good browning.  

Asparagus is done when you say it's done.  Once it's turned warm, everything else is up to your preference.  Although I caution you against overcooking it, because it can easily turn stringy and gross.  (My mother's penchant for boiling the bejeezus out of every vegetable was the source of much asparagus drama in my childhood.)

Tonight I'll be trying out this asparagus and risotto recipe the New York Times published a while back.  Asparagus goes well with just about everything!

Speaking of asparagus, the perennial topic is asparagus pee.  The distinctive odor is produced by the breakdown of a chemical called mercaptan.  Not everyone has the stomach enzyme which breaks down mercaptan, which is why some people give you a blank look when the topic comes up in conversation!

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Muffet

NYT Decries "Index Finger Cooks"

The New York Times has a delightfully elitist article about the latest in kitchen gizmos and baking technology.  For example, much is made of the "pizza bump," a semi-circular appendix on the side of microwaves and toaster ovens so that you can bake a frozen pizza in there.

As intrigued as I am by the "perfect turkey" button on a stove, I think most of us can agree that these extra buttons and doo-dads are mostly useless.  With very few exceptions, I doubt that most people use 85% of the options on their microwaves or ovens.  

The problem of course is that every oven has to improve over last year's model, and it has to stand out from the competition.  Having a "perfect turkey" button is a great way to flag down shoppers, and it gives them an excuse to buy.  ("But I need a "perfect turkey" button," the shopper says with a straight face.)

The first fallacy this article has to overcome is that there is any correlation between "the extra gadgets and functions we stick on our stoves" and "things consumers actually want."  I mean, heck, I know for a fact that my microwave has a dozen buttons, but I can only name three of them.  (I just went to check.  It has a "muffin/roll" button, for one thing.  What could that possibly be for?  Who puts a muffin in the microwave?)

Nevertheless, that doesn't keep the reporter from working up the advances being proclaimed at this trade show into an entire movement in the field of home cooking.  Call it the opposite of Michael Pollan.  "Index finger cooks" is the term coined by the article, which is clever enough, I grant you.

Naturally though, real life is rarely so tidy.  I cook 80% of my meals from scratch by hand.  10% of my meals I buy at restaurants, and the other 10% are "one button meals."  Microwave popcorn, for the most part.  And you'd better believe I use the "popcorn" button!  In fact, I dare say the "popcorn" button is the best thing ever to happen to microwave ovens.

Clearly, not everyone cooks delicious homemade from-scratch food for every single meal.  Even the best of us sometimes just want to stick a pile of pizza rolls in the oven and call it a day!  But another market that the author overlooks is children.  You can teach a child to stick a pizza in the toaster oven and click the "pizza" button.  It's harder to explain that "you need to preheat it to X, and then cook it for Y minutes, and be sure to turn it off when you're done."  

Of course, some of us managed to microwave our own meals just fine when we were kids.  But I have to tell you, if my childhood microwave had had a "frozen dinner" button, it would have saved me a lot of scorched and/or frozen Lean Cuisines!  

If you cook a preponderance of meals simply by pushing a single button on your microwave, then it may be time to reassess your eating habits.  But I don't agree that this proliferation of single-purpose buttons is going to lead to the Downfall of Society.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user agsaran

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