When Dad Cooks

Thanksgiving: Turkey Stuffed with America

2010-11-23T14:09:00.000-06:00

A New York Times piece this week reconfirmed the enduring legacy of Thanksgiving, our national holiday. It is a meal that represents America – warts, stuffing and all. The particular gravy ladled on top of the turkey this time is the Left/Right politics over the proper narrative to impose on the original meal and just whose view of America it confirms.

This post will sidestep the particular politics of the moment (we know very little about that 16^th century meal, folks; argue away if it makes you feel more American) except to point out that Thanksgiving is a meal that symbolizes America in more ways than most might appreciate. To elaborate, When Dad Cooks presents a brief history of Thanksgiving. I will skip the sourcing so that this does not sound like some boring scholar droning on, but if you’re really interested I’ll send you some citations.

If you’re otherwise willing to trust me, then strap in for another exciting episode of “Much of What You’ve Been Told is Not True.” You might be surprised at how much of what you find in this category relates to food.

Thanksgiving as a national celebration has its roots in slavery, not a Puritan harvest festival. We were a testy bunch in the years immediately before the Civil War. A movement began in what was then the West to bring the country back together through a national day of feast. By the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln thought it a good idea and proclaimed Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

Unity is a tough thing, however. Despising anything associated with Lincoln, the newly-conquered southern states did not celebrate Thanksgiving during the Reconstruction Era. It was not until the nation as a whole tired of policing equality in the South – leading to the Jim Crow Era – that the South joined the party.

“Ahhh, but certainly the meal itself is unsullied by the ups and downs of American history,” Uncle Marvin shouts from in front of the TV in the living room.

Well, not if you’re a Puritan at heart, Marv. Puritans would see anything with flavor as having been sullied. All those wonderful spices and herbs in the stuffing, or the cinnamon in your pumpkin pie? Sorry. The Puritans would denounce you as spawn of Satan or worse – Catholic. The meal that we now look to celebrity chefs to spice up for us was a pretty bland affair until the big migration wave of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

It was the Italians and many others who brought those ideas about herbs, spices, sausage in the stuffing and such to the American feast. Many of those people were Catholic, whose ancestors would not have been welcome in the Plymouth Colony. Owing to the Puritan and WASP inheritance of the meal, these new Catholic Americans did not actually celebrate Thanksgiving at first, viewing it as a Protestant holiday. The embrace of herbs and such in the meal, in part, marked the arrival of these new cultures into the American mainstream (football had a lot to do with this, too, but this is a food blog; Hook ‘Em Horns).

Most tables this season will groan under the weight of the industrial turkey. This is a post World War II invention. The industrial turkey is enormous compared to its natural forebears, stuffed with so many hormones and injected water that its breasts could grace the cover of a men’s magazine (or women’s magazine at the checkout counter; but that, too, is a post for another blog). The industrial turkey is a symbol of the rise of American industry in the 20^th century. In so doing, it harkens back to the Puritan ethic of practicality over adornment (meaning it sacrifices flavor for size and profit).

“Well, maybe so, sugar,” Great Aunt Sadie says while pinching a bruise into your cheek. “But, American industry also gave us the plastic pop-up thingy that lets us know when our turkey is done.”

Sorry Sadie. That ridiculous plastic pop-up thingy inserted into that enormous breast has nothing to do with flavor and is only tangentially related to when the bird is done. It has everything to do with avoiding lawsuits over bacteria from turkeys raised in cages jam-packed with other turkeys. If you rely on it, you can be sure that the bacteria are long dead. They were destroyed along with all the moisture in the breast. No flavor. No lawsuits.

America’s litigious nature is also represented in the turkey.

In the 21^st century, America is attempting to recover some of its food heritage, picking and choosing among things that have been industrialized, things that are local, things they grow themselves and the restaurant open on Thanksgiving that promises all these things. So, it is only fitting that many other tables will boast an heirloom bird, or a non-industrialized range-fed organic bird, or a bird that was nurtured in a subdivision in violation of the homeowner association rules.

The American spirit of rebellion lives on in small ways today.

So, as the Times reported, it is only fitting that the current conflagration of socialism versus capitalism should have a seat at the Thanksgiving table. American history has always been condensed and stuffed into a turkey. Would you like some sweet potatoes with that?

It simply reminds us that this day endures as a truly American feast, something you've been told that is truer than you might have known.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A Fish, A Father and an Avocado Walk Into a Kitchen…

2010-11-10T21:42:00.000-06:00

Husbands know that guilt is a powerful motivator. Putting down toilet seats is simply not in our DNA. Those of us who do it…do it to avoid the guilt.

Likewise holding purses, not playing basketball with rolled up dirty socks, saying
“gosh darn it” when the quarterback fumbles, pretending to watch the movie “Terms of Endearment” (husbands call it “Terms of Endurance”), voluntarily vacuuming the carpet, and stating an unqualified preference for anything that seems important to our women as if it were equally important to us (see the above mention of “Terms of Endearment”).

For good or ill, guilt and food go together these days. How far did it travel to your plate? Is it on a list somewhere? Did it ever have a face or a mother? What was its quality of life while living? Did you use artificial fertilizer to grow it? Have you considered the starving children in (insert your favorite developing nation; and, yes, if it was good enough for my parents to ask me it’s good enough to harass my own kids about from time to time)?

I want to be clear that many of these questions are good questions. They can be a bit overwhelming at times, though. I respect anyone who goes further, but for my family we focus on a saying we heard from our favorite priest once upon a time: “Do the good that presents itself to be done.”

Which, of course, leads me to the subject of…fish.

A lot of food guilt is geared toward fish. And for good reasons. I wish, however, to side-step most of those issues (NOT that there’s anything wrong with that!). Tilapia is a fish generally considered to be part of the “good that presents itself to be done” for those of us inclined toward fish. It is a vegetarian fish that is a highly efficient protein factory, converting something like ¾ of a pound of its own caloric intake into a full pound of protein, though please do not quote those numbers (blast it, Jim, I’m a doctor not a marine biologist). As you can see in the above picture, store-bought fillets also tend to look like a first baseman’s mitt, but that’s not important right now.

We eat a lot of tilapia around this house. For those of you who know tilapia, however, you know that as a basic whitefish, it lacks an assertive flavor of its own. It offers nice texture, though, and with a little thought can be a canvas upon which we can paint a (relatively) guilt-free meal.

On this particular night (as with most nights), I looked around at what I had on hand to add some flavor to the tilapia. One avocado lurked in the fruit drawer. I don’t know about your house, but one is not enough to make guacamole around here (a future post, no doubt; making guacamole in my house is like walking into a pit bull convention with a necklace of red meat and poodles).

But, it is enough for a quick avocado dressing that can paint baked tilapia before serving. Since I know everyone loves avocado (see guacamole reference), I figured I had an answer.

There is no magic here. Bake the tilapia for about 15 minutes or so (I had thin pieces, so 15 minutes worked, but you probably do not want to go over 20 minutes regardless; test the thickest parts with a fork to check doneness, when it flakes it’s done). Before serving, spread it with the avocado dressing.

Avocado Dressing

Ingredients:

~1/2 a good-size pear-shaped ripe avocado

3 cloves of garlic

~ 2 tbsp of canola oil

~ ¼ cup of parsley leaves

Juice of half a lime (added in steps, you can always add more)

A splash of sherry vinegar

A few splashes of half & half, maybe 1/4 of a cup total

Whir it all up in a food processor. Paint or dob it on the baked tilapia and serve. Guilt free. Then go mow the lawn before “Terms of Endearment” goes into the machine.

End of an Era

2010-11-03T20:18:00.000-05:00

It has been a fiendishly long time since I have posted, for which I apologize. There have been good meals to be sure, but alas they have not made their way to the blog. I apologize for the absence and promise to do better as we approach the holidays.

Along the way, I want to welcome Patrick to the When Dad Cooks community. Please check out his blog, Duck Fat and Politics when you get a chance. It's great fun and those of you who lurk in Minnesota (and I know who you are) might see local fare you recognize.

Anyway, Halloween came and went. It is a vaguely food oriented holiday so a fitting topic here. Halloween has been a big deal in this house since the kids were old enough to play dress up. They have played many roles and I'll remember fondly so many of them. A Disney princess. Bob the Builder. A black cat. Spiderman. Padme from Star Wars. Inspector Clouseau.

And on and on.

My kids are teens or very nearly so now. Trick or treating is not quite what it used to be.

The high school girl was not interested and made that known early with a simple "No" to the question. She then went back to her homework.

Her younger brother tried to arrange something with a neighborhood buddy but it didn't work out. He said his Halloween would be spent giving out candy at the door. That would be sufficient.

Then, at about 7:30, after the first wave had come to the door, he came downstairs in an updated version of his Phantom of the Opera costume from a few years ago. The mask still fit because we had made it from a hockey mask at the time. The cape was nowhere near as long on him, but it worked.

"I just need some candy," he said.

Yes. Right. Nothing else besides that. It's a sweet tooth thing, Dad. Get over it.

"OK," BMW said, excited for the first time that evening. "Get me some chocolate. I don't care about the rest. Get me some chocolate or you're not going to college."

My wife can be subtle some times. This was not one of those times.

My son and I wandered the neighborhood for about a half hour. We talked about Halloweens past and how a couple of the houses seemed scarier in previous years. He had various theories about houses that would give good candy and conducted experiments against those hypotheses.

Eventually, he felt assured that his college education was secure and we returned home. BMW and my daughter were sitting on the front porch with a big bowl of candy and study guide sheets for a test in some subject or another.

The candy was easily divided and we settled in to watch a football game on TV.

Happy Halloween.

Conventional Wisdom

2010-07-15T06:53:00.000-05:00

Conventions can be noisy places full of overdressed people rushing from one meeting to another. But, that’s not what this post is about.

Conventions can also be the standard building blocks of specific activities in society. They are markers of often unspoken rules. Following those conventions ensures that we will be accepted within those social activities.

Writing is an activity with many conventions arising from its various genres. Genre-specific conventions are things like:

If you’re writing a mystery, you show the gun in the first few chapters and shoot someone by chapter seven.
If you’re writing a romance novel, you show the woman’s passion for a man that she should not want but cannot live without though he might be cruel at times but he’s dashing with his torn shirt and down deep she knows that they will be together unless the Dread Pirate Livingston finds them, anyway you show all this in the romance novel by following the convention of the breathlessly ridiculous run-on sentence.
And if you’re writing a Star Trek episode, the landing party needs a few red shirts who can die on the planet’s surface.

Conventions keep readers oriented, assuring them that they are on the right path. Food blogs, too, have conventions. Thankfully, they are not too limiting, providing plenty of room for play. “When Dad Cooks” follows many of these conventions, though there is one that this blog has yet to fully embrace.

Many food bloggers, I notice, refer to their spouses or significant others with an initial: “J”, “M” etc. You might imagine Wilma Flintstone’s food blog with a post that begins: “I made F’s favorite Brontosaurus ribs last night, but I decided to surprise him by adding a sophisticated twist that I found on this Cro-Magnon blog…”

If you thumb through the When Dad Cooks archive, you’ll see that my wife is a constant character in this blog. The problem I have in following the convention, however, is that my wife is difficult to reduce to a single letter for a host of reasons. Put another way: A fine wine cannot be understood by sampling a single grape.

So, I have avoided the convention altogether.

I am pleased to announce the solving of this issue through a minor massaging of the convention. My wife will be known in this blog as “BMW.” At first blush, you will note the parallel with a certain German engineering company that promotes its own “excellence in design,” a parallel I find highly appropriate if you know what I mean (and if you know what I mean, insert your own joke here).

It is also a convention that can be tailored to certain situations. For the vast majority of the time, BMW will stand for “Beautiful Marvelous Woman.” She loves to bake, so there will be posts where “Bread Making Woman” will describe her talents.

Now, like any household navigating the complexity of contemporary living, things can get a little out of hand around here. So, there will be times that BMW will stand for “Beware My Wife.”

No doubt there are moments in between that have yet to be conjugated.

The Mushroom: A Kindred Spirit

2010-06-13T16:53:00.000-05:00

I give you the mushroom. A delectable fungus, bursting with glutamate-powered flavor, it adds an earthy, muscular, comfort-food component to anything it touches.

As you probably know, the mushroom spends a great deal of time in the dark. For some strains, darkness is mandatory and the most expensive mushrooms in the world can only be found by specially-trained dogs and pigs who dig the mushrooms out of the earth they spend their lives buried within. Such mushrooms are clueless about the world at large, having never even glimpsed it in all its complexity. Yet, by virtue of their fungal nature, they nonetheless have a strange social connection to other living things.

Muscular, usually dirty, in the dark and clueless. Remind you of any members of our own species?

“Hey, when is that big show your daughter is in?”

“Um, I do not know. Ask the wife.”

I’m sure cavemen had perfectly good reasons for getting married. For the modern man, one of the primary reasons is social survival in a complicated world. The complexity of contemporary family life is simply not a thing that can be clubbed into submission, thus limiting the usefulness of the skills evolution provided us. In other words, husbands and fathers spend a lot of time in the dark despite apparent social connections. Not that there is anything wrong with that…

“Is your son signed up for the soccer season?”

“Um, I do not know. Ask the wife.”

Males can bring home the bacon, and the more enlightened of us can fry it up in a pan. But, knowing who needs to be where at what time wearing what shoes and carrying which equipment is beyond the number of moving parts the male evolved to handle. We are social mushrooms, naturally connected to other things yet, well, in the dark.

So, when a father is asked a factual question about the comings and goings of the family, the answer “I do not know” is a true answer if verity exists at all in this world. It is a statement of the knowledge that a fact exists in the space-time continuum while expressing true wonder at what form that fact might actually take at any given moment.

“What are you guys doing this weekend?”

“Um, I do not know. Ask the wife.”

This answer, when spoken by husbands and fathers, should not be interpreted as “Nothing, what did you have in mind?” A better, more accurate, far more useful interpretation is: “Talk to the wife. I’m just the husband and father.” It is not that the thing in question is not knowable. Just that someone else knows it.

Now, in fairness to all the ladies out there, I must admit my own wife’s suspicion that this ignorance is not evolutionary, but a willful strategy to dodge the responsibility of maintaining life in a crazy world.

“How can you know when the Texas Longhorns football season starts and be clueless about dance classes and piano lessons?”

“Um, I do not know. Ask the – Wait a minute. This is a trick, right? Opening day is September 4, but kickoff time is 2:30 Central.”

So, I wish to express an affinity between all the Chef Dads out there and the lowly mushroom. Organisms that are organically connected to other things, yet spend a great deal of time in the dark.

Creamy Mushroom Pasta

Ingredients:

A bit of butter

~ 1 pound white mushrooms

~ ½ pound shitake mushrooms, stemmed

½ a large onion, diced

A few cloves garlic, chopped

Fresh herbs (here I used rosemary, thyme, parsley, oregano)

3/4 cup or so chicken stock

½ cup or so half and half

~ ¾ pound bulky pasta (here I used farfalle)

Sautee the white mushrooms with a pinch of salt in the butter with just a splash of olive oil over it. I usually put all the mushrooms in the pan together, though some no doubt would scoff that they are likely to stew before they brown. True to one degree or another, but as long as you’re browning them afterward and you pay attention to them, I don’t worry about that.

When the mushrooms start taking on color, add the onions. Sautee everything until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic. Cook further until you get hit in the face with a good whiff of garlic from the pan.

Add the stock and stir. Let that cook down, reducing maybe in half. Add the shitakes somewhere in here. Putting the more flavorful mushrooms in at this later point allows them to give up their juices right into the sauce and flavor the whole dish.

Cook until your shitakes wilt, but you still want it all to be a bit loose and saucy, then add the herbs and adjust seasoning. Finish with the cream and allow that to reduce a bit until it is saucy. Don’t be afraid to add a little more half and half if you need to. BTW, once you put that half and half into your pot, watch it like a hawk so it does not boil over and dump all that fat onto the flame under the pan.

Toss with the pasta and serve with fresh grated parmesan.

And if you want to know how good it all was…ask the wife!

On Hillbillies and the Green Family

2010-05-10T18:44:00.000-05:00

Those of us of a certain age – and we know who we are – view TVLand not so much as a cable channel but more of a nostalgic place to go from time to time. Here, we can find old friends, feel safe that Marshall Dillon or Columbo is on the case, laugh at bygone hairstyles and generally marvel at how much has changed in so many subtle ways since we were too young to know better.

One of those changes is our attitude toward greens. Today, Giada de Laurentis (whose family is far more beautiful than yours) might actually cook with them on Food Network, allowing her manicured fingertips to fondle the leaves, anticipating the moment when something scrumptious made from the greens passes her red, red lips causing her to toss her luxurious, aristocratic, Italian locks about in pleasure.

Compare that contemporary TV cooking image with…Granny.

For those of us of that certain age, she is one of those one-named women. You know: Cher, Madonna…Granny. She was played by Irene Ryan on “The Beverly Hillbillies” in the 1960s. Granny was a loving, ornery old lady of the South, the matriarch of the Clampett family transported from Appalachia to Beverly Hills after they were afflicted with oil wealth. Her locks were not luxurious, but gray and pulled back into a bun so tight it raised the pitch of her voice.

One of the running gags on the show was Granny’s cooking, containing as it did the occasional opossum and, frequently, greens. Eating greens was then thought to be the sign of a lower class of American, a sign of southern poverty and just plain weird. In one episode, some uptight Californian suit understood Granny to be describing the brutal murder of the “Green” family – Mr. and Mrs. and the little Green kiddies – when she described cutting up and stewing “the greens.”

I wonder if Gen X and Y viewers of TVLand quite get the joke in the way it was intended at the time. Greens do not really have the lower-class distinction they once did and this joke is likely relegated to the category of anachronism. Credit Food Network and a new generation of chefs – many from the South mixing with the “eat local” ethos – with giving us a new grammar of cooking that does not categorize greens in the same way (not to say that we haven’t invented a new way of “classing” food, but that’s another blog post).

My family and I are approaching the last of a winter planting of chard, mustard greens and spinach in the garden. I am hardly the first food blogger to write that food plucked fresh from the garden needs very little done to it, but greens come to mind first when I think of the minimalist approach (with all apologies to Mark Bittman).

They need some washing, some onion and garlic and a bit of heat. On the night these pictures were taken, I added a cup of chicken stock to the onions and garlic and let that cook down till it was almost dry. I then piled the greens (just the leaves removed from the main stems; but, hey, you wanna leave the stems that’s fine by me). They cook down dramatically and I just kept adding them and turning the mixture over.

From there, you can get as fancy as you want. Often, I will just grate parmesan over them and serve. But, they will take to just about anything. I also like to dice up chorizo (the Spanish salami, not the Mexican sausage) into them. That, with a splash of balsamic vinegar and maybe some pasta and you have a meal.

Fresh from the garden, greens will keep in the fridge for several days. If you put them down in the root cellar, watch out for Granny. She might be sleeping off a purely medicinal dose of moonshine down there. If you wake her it will take the Tin Man and Barnaby Jones to save you (extra points if you get the connection…).

Of Cowboys and Cooks

2010-04-11T13:53:00.000-05:00

The ghost of John Wayne appeared in my kitchen. I was alone at the time cooking, the wife upstairs on her computer. I was thinking about Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef, and his TV crusade on obesity and healthy eating in a West Virginia town.

“I wanna talk about this food stuff, hombre,” John Wayne said, stabbing the air over my kitchen island with a beefy finger. “Want a beer?”

“Sure, Duke,” I replied with his nickname. As a kid, I remember adults using that nickname because everyone felt they actually knew him.

He shuffled over to the fridge and got both of us a Shiner Bock. When I picture John Wayne, I think of the John Wayne from the late 1950s and 60s. He stood tall next to the fridge in a rumpled off-white hat, gray shirt, beat-up leather vest and perpetually-askew bandana around his neck. Reaching out a strong lanky arm, he handed me a Shiner. It wasn’t the first time John Wayne had appeared while my mind wandered, though it was the first time in the kitchen.

“You wearing a dress?” he drawled.

“It’s an apron and I’m wearing shorts because it’s getting warm again in Texas,” I said, focusing on the greens I was chopping. “Didn’t you ever sweat making movies in Texas?”

“We made ‘em in California,” he said, washing the words down with a swig of beer. “But, what about this girly man of a limey, this Oliver fella?”

“Girly man?”

“He was crying on television.”

“It’s television, Duke. He was telling a whole town of people they were killing themselves and their children. Tough stuff. The star has to be a sympathetic character, so he cried on camera. What’s really eating ya?”

“That’s quite a pig sticker ya got there,” he said, eyeing my Chinese cleaver as I diced an onion. “You knick yourself with that and it’ll take your whole arm off.”

“Already did that posting a while ago. What about Jamie Oliver?”

Apparently, the timeless icon of masculinity had just come from the hallucinations of some poor father living in that West Virginia town.

“What business does he got telling people how to eat?”

“Well, you need to separate some issues, Duke. Jamie’s the hero. With his cockney accent, raucous energy and pub-cook background, he’s the everyman who stands up for what’s right.”

“So, he’s kinda the lone gunslinger against the town?”

“Yeah, but this is reality TV, so they have to work hard to create drama and conflict. That’s weird in this case because most of the usual forms of reality TV don’t work. They need a villain but they can’t really trot out the whole food industry and a few generations of society who were encouraged to eat junk. Also, the network probably wants to keep friendly relations with all its food industry advertisers.”

“But, he’s telling school cafeteria ladies and parents they’re killing their kids.”

“If you don’t like it, you have only yourself to blame.”

“Now, you’re bein’ rude to a figment of your own imagination.”

“They borrowed the plot of your movies: The War Wagon, Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo and lots of others. The bad guy is a wealthy rancher living outside the town that for the most part is not seen. But, his influence is everywhere. Everyone in town is under the control of the villain and can’t imagine changing things. The hero’s job is to swagger into town and make enough trouble to show the people things will change if they work together and stand up to the rancher. Substitute the food industry for the rancher and you have Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.”

“So, this is my fault?”

“No, actually you helped solve a problem. The last thing to consider is the message that a couple generations of people need to relearn how to cook and eat. It’s a good story and you supplied the way to tell it.”

“I never cried.”

“You never wore an apron either, but a lot of people thought you walked funny.”

“Hey, hey. I told you it’s a football injury.”

I went on dicing up some Spanish chorizo (actually a dry salami, not a sausage) and already-cooked chicken breast.

“What are you making?”

“Just some greens from the garden, about half a large onion, some garlic, a couple diced tomatoes along with the greens. I’ll saute all that and then add the chorizo and chicken at the end and toss it with some pasta.”

“Your tomatoes could be riper.”

“Best I could find. So, I’ll add some tomato paste and a splash of balsamic vinegar to the onions before I put the greens and tomatoes into the pan to boost the flavor.”

“Will the kids eat it?”

“You bet your six gun, pardner.”

We clinked our bottles in a manly toast.

“What’s going on down there?” It was my wife.

“Nothing dear.”

And the Duke was gone.

For Many Kids, The Undiscovered Vegetable

2010-03-18T19:20:00.000-05:00

In that half-awake/half-asleep limbo of the early morning, one of my nightmares involves my children facing a sinister tribunal. My sub-conscious must have taken the tableau from the Klingon court scene in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” (for those familiar with the odd number = bad, even number = good system of the original Star Trek movie series, number six was the really good one that came right after the really awful one that was written and directed by William Shatner). In this dark dream, my kids are on a raised platform in the center of an arena that is ringed with several tiers of seating, all of which looks like it is carved out of stone. A judge sits above it all, his face shrouded in shadow, only a single hand clearly visible, wielding a rock as a gavel to quiet the thundering hordes of rabble in the stands.

A prosecutor (still played by Christopher Plummer in full Klingon attire in my dream, go figure) stalks around them accusing them of a conspiracy of galactic proportions. The words are hard to make out in my dreamlike state (and, well, I don’t speak Klingon) but it appears they stand accused of…bringing Brussels sprouts into the world.

On closer inspection, then, the thundering hordes become children of all shapes and sizes, all shouting for blood over this crime. Christopher Plummer sums it all up at one point (translated from the Klingon): “Dudes! You’re making them look bad.”

Yes, my kids love Brussels sprouts and insisted we plant them in the garden. I don’t know when their affair with the little green cabbage started, but it is a passionate one. We recently harvested several stalks worth from the garden and all the while they were saying, “Oh, I can’t believe we’re going to have fresh Brussels sprouts.” They helped clean and trim them and argued that we could eat the entire pile at one sitting, rather than save some for another dinner.

Braising is the preferred method and it does not require a complex list of ingredients. Dice some onion, chop some garlic. Cut the sprouts in half width-wise so they get their braise on. Sautee it all in a skillet until a little color develops, then add a half cup or so of chicken stock and some salt and pepper. Cover and simmer until almost dry. Finish it with whatever fresh herb you happen to have.

Serve and get out of the way. Talk about thundering hordes…

That basic recipe can be dressed up with bacon or prosciutto and become a quick meal if you put it all over couscous or another grain. But, make sure the Brussels sprouts are front and center in the final dish. Or, you’ll find yourself in the bowels of the Klingon penal colony on the ice planet Rura Penthe fighting for your life. Your only hope for escape will be a shape shifter who prefers the form of 70-something, red-nosed, pudgy Bill Shatner to that of a supermodel.

Wake me up, Scotty.

Middle Eastern "BAM" and roasted butternut squash soup

2010-02-17T19:34:00.001-06:00

Let’s face it: butternut squash is funny looking. With the fat part down, it looks like the start of a cartoon character. With the fat part up, it’s hard to resist driving a nail into the wall with it.

But, it’s plentiful in the winter and offers that rustic, homey flavor a cold winter day cries out for. If a comfy old flannel shirt had a flavor it would taste like butternut squash.

I haven’t just posted a recipe in a while, so here is one of my favorite soups along with a spice mixture I developed after investigating Middle Eastern cooking a couple years back. I call the mixture “Middle Eastern BAM” after the popular invective Emeril utters when he tosses his “Essence” creole seasoning around. That doesn’t make this a Middle Eastern soup. Middle Eastern BAM (or “MEB” for short) comes in handy for numerous things where you want to add lots of subtle flavors. You might also try it to season the flour before you dredge mild-flavored whitefish varieties. You can also substitute other vegetables like carrots for the squash in this recipe.

MEB

1 tbsp of the following:

Sweet paprika

Dried thyme

Dried oregano

Ground coriander

2 tsp of the following:

Ground ginger

Ground cumin

1 tsp of the following:

Ground cinnamon

Ground cardamom

Shake it all together. I do not put salt and pepper in the MEB so I can control that in whatever I’m cooking. Also, almost anything I use this with already has some fresh onion and garlic in it. Otherwise, you would want to add some onion powder and garlic powder to the mix. If you like heat, you could add a touch of cayenne, but I actually don’t recommend it. The Middle Eastern cuisine that inspired the mixture is not geared toward heat but lots and lots of subtle nuances.

The Soup

Ingredients:

1 medium or 2 small butternut squash

1 medium onion, chopped

3 or 4 cloves garlic, chopped

~ 2 tbsp MEB

4-5 cups chicken stock

~ 1/3 cup half and half

Honey, optional and if needed to balance sweetness

Some fresh herbs to finish

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Peel, seed, and chop the butternut squash. This squash has a thick peel and if you have to work up a sweat to peel it, get thee a decent peeler anon! Put the squash on a cookie sheet and give it a minor toss with just a bit of olive oil. Into the oven with it until a fork slides into the chunks like a warm welcome at a friend’s house; if it becomes a tearful, mushy welcome at Aunt Maude’s family reunion then you cooked it a bit long but the soup will likely be fine.

Meanwhile, start sautéing your onion in a decent-sized stockpot/saucier or what have you. When soft, add the garlic and continue sautéing for a minute (the garlic should be quite fragrant). Add your MEB (you are not required to shout “BAM!” when you do so, but don’t knock it till you try it). Continue sautéing, stirring frequently for roughly two minutes. For those of us with grandparents of European descent, it might sound strange to toast the spices this way rather than add them after the liquid. In fact, we are the strange ones on the planet on this point.

Anyway, by this time your squash should be ready. Take it out of the oven and put it in with the onions. Give it a few stirs, enough to coat it a bit with the spice mixture, then add your stock and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer a bit, just long enough that all your ingredients can get on a first-name basis with each other. Then – and this is very important unless you were planning on getting plastic surgery anyway – turn off the heat. Check to make sure you’re not getting bubbles any longer. Now, take out your immersion blender and puree the soup (I like a little texture left in mine, but only a little).

A regular blender or even a potato masher will suffice if you have no immersion blender (add that to the list when you go to get a decent peeler). There is no specific worry about plastic surgery in this case, but keep your hand on the lid of the blender or you will be re-painting your ceiling (on the plus side, spinning and aerating hot liquids can be a great physics lesson for the kids if you have nothing else to do with your time and money).

Return it all to an ever so gentle simmer and add the half and half, a little at a time. Let that simmer a bit and then taste it. The soup should have rich flavors that kind of finish with just a shadow of sweetness. If the sweetness is missing, add a bit of honey but don’t go overboard. Sweet is just one of many flavors here.

To make a mid-week meal, I will often serve the soup alongside open-faced sandwiches made of whatever lunchmeat and cheese we have and then run them under the broiler to brown the cheese and crisp the bread. Together, it’s a tasty and filling combo.

BAM!

Garlic-a-Go-Go: The Dirty Harry Method

2010-01-13T19:36:00.001-06:00

My daughter’s gift is grace. She moves lightly, like an angel on a cloud. She dances ballet – en pointe no less {NOTE: That’s French for “on your toes” for all the Dads out there}. She is also a synchronized swimmer, the water gratefully accepting her flowing presence as a kindred spirit.

But, ask her to help with the garlic and she turns into Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Callahan, clearing the streets of San Francisco of all punks, laughing maniacs and garlic cloves. The latter she obliterates, till there is nothing but a smudge of a whisper of where garlic might once have been.

I take credit for inventing the Dirty Harry method of crushing garlic, but my daughter perfected it. If you watch all the cooking shows (well, not humanly possible to watch all the cooking shows but you know what I mean) you see the chefs crush garlic with their knives. That’s fine when Giada de Laurentis has one or two cloves to chop, but we go through a lot of garlic in this house. It’s not unusual for anything worth cooking to be worth an entire bulb of the aromatic jewels. So, about a year ago I figured there had to be a way to speed up the process of prepping the garlic. Some cloves can be stubborn and resist the side of the knife and your fist. So, I got out the meat hammer and just started whacking them. It worked just as well as Dirty Harry’s .44 magnum – ya hit ‘em once and they stay down.

Say it with me now, and get all squinty-eyed:

“I know what you’re thinkin’, did he clobber six cloves or only five. Well, with the heady aroma wafting into my nostrils, I kinda lost track myself. But, bein’ this is a meat hammer, a pound and a half of steel on a stick, you gotta be asking yourself one question – do I feel hungry? Well, do ya punk?”

Somewhere at the non-Clint Eastwood end of the guy spectrum, even Alton Brown would appreciate the Dirty Harry method as it takes the meat mallet out of the uni-tasker category. And, yes, I know that Clint Eastwood has likely never said the word “wafting.”

So, one evening I invited my daughter into the kitchen for a little father-daughter bonding. As usual, she was quietly reading a book and stumbled into the kitchen, her brown hair framing her delicate face. She’s a quiet, intelligent, loving early teen with a heart full of compassion for creation. I instructed her in the basic technique: “Hold the mallet above the clove and WHACK IT!” I expertly crushed a clove and peeled the remaining skin from the flesh.

She took the mallet gingerly, examining it in detail. From her petite frame, she poised a trembling hand above an unsuspecting clove and I thought I would offer encouragement since violence against anything is just not in her nature: “Now the mistake you’ll make the first time is not hitting it hard enou –“

I was cut off by a deafening sound as a heavenly-scented mushroom cloud rose above the cutting board. As the cloud cleared, I heard someone laughing a bit maniacally, like a Dirty Harry villain, and saw my daughter place another clove in front of her like loading a .44 magnum round into the chamber.

Again, she annihilated a clove with a loud “AIYEEEEE” banshee cry.

Then the phone rang. It was the folks from the European Union’s nuclear accelerator in France wondering what was going on. I told them the planet was not in jeopardy, I was just cooking. I congratulated them for being en pointe and hung up.

Across the rubble of the kitchen, my daughter stood, breathing heavily. Garlic covered everything, like a light dusting of tasty snow. Suddenly, she was my demure, quiet daughter again.

“Anything else?” she asked with a smile.

“No. No, I’ll take it from here thanks. Go read your book.”

“OK, Daddy.”

The Year in Food: Chef Dad Style

2009-12-31T13:10:00.000-06:00

We had a quiet Christmas with no extended family plans to create added stress. So, it was not until I fought my way through the grocery store that it dawned on me that Christmas had arrived and it was too late to do a posting for that holiday. Apparently, stressful moments mark time at the holidays. Whodathunkit?

So, I swore to do better for New Years. Enjoy below a brief look back at 2009 with The Year in Food: Chef Dad Style. By “style” I mean no discernible pattern organizes these paragraphs. Things are presented more or less as they really were, though liberties might have been taken at the margins. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, the opinions expressed below are my own, and if you don’t like them…I have others.

The family started a garden in the neighborhood community garden in the spring. We quickly discovered there was just as much “community” as “garden” in this checkerboard area of family plots. The various gardeners joyfully share their bounty and gardening provides a common language for a multi-cultural neighborhood.

Hunting made a comeback in 2009, but with a twist. The New York Times reported on the formation of bands of urban hunters attempting to get in touch with their inner Daniel Boones, learning how to shoot dinner to feed the family in tough times. So, let me get this straight: Armed stockbrokers, ad executives and lawyers stalking food to shoot at? Do trendy restaurants object to guns on the premises?

In a sign of how pervasive food blogging has become as an international lifestyle, digital cameras now come with a “food” mode.

“When Dad Cooks” entered the blogosphere in 2009. Coincidentally, bloggers also came under scrutiny during the year as being somehow paid off to blog about products from generous companies. So trust us newbies. We can only aspire to corruption.

Part of the plot of “The Next Iron Chef” on Food Network included chefs who cheated, hiding ingredients from competitors. So much for the integrity of the food system.

My son learned to make baby back ribs and grilled cheese sandwiches on his own, in addition to making a great Caesar Salad.

The White House established a working garden for the first time since the FDR Administration. Eleanor Roosevelt’s garden was plowed under to symbolize that happier post-war/post-Depression times had arrived. Lawn was the thing, land that could be wasted as ornamentation. The White House Lawn was a synecdoche of suburban lawns everywhere. Today, we read of people planting “recession gardens” so a through-the-looking-glass version of that symbolism still holds today.

The movie “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” entertained young and old with a story about a food system run amok. Special kudos to the producers for treating food allergies seriously rather than as a cheap joke. Mr. T voicing an acrobatic overzealous police officer provided more than enough cheap jokes.

In other movie news, “Julie and Julia” reminded us all what a grand lady we lost in Julia Child. Fresh from that blog-turned-book-turned-cinematic success, Julie Powell carved out an expertise in irony, moving on to…uh, well, look it up, that’s why God gave you an Internet.

Trend or Bust? A quick look around the web suggests that “Peruvian” food was supposed to be all the rage in 2009. Anyone? Anyone?

The media was on top of things as ever, defending the First Amendment and all that. Cooking at home became an identified trend with major coverage pretty much everywhere. Eschewing food riots as a mere blip, the media jumped on a story of domestic cuisine that would have been cutting edge journalism…at the end of the Neolithic Era.

Happy New Year, from our kitchen to yours.

What's in a Name?: Stir Frying Eddy's Mommy

2009-12-17T19:35:00.000-06:00

Edamame. It’s a sleek, exotic name. If it were a cat it would be a large, black predator. If it were a car, you couldn’t afford it. If it were a spy, Sean Connery would play the role and introduce himself as: Mommy. Eddy Mommy.

But, edamame is none of those things my friends. It’s, well, soy beans. Not sleek. Not exotic. Not even an international spy.

Bean. Soy Bean.

It took a Japanese word to turn a pedestrian staple crop into an exotic ingredient. Soy beans are not the only trendy food to undergo this bit of rhetorical magic. Chilean Sea Bass became so popular it was overfished. Yet it is not from Chile and is not a bass, though it does come from the sea, so there’s some truth in labeling for you. The words “Chilean Sea Bass” are like a marketing sauce ladled over the Patagonian Toothfish to make it go down more sweetly.

But, I was talking about (say it with me now)…e-d-a-m-a-m-e…

Edamame and soy beans inhabit a cultural and marketing paradox in the food system. If you’re on the hunt for edamame (put a lot of breath into the vowel sounds, it’s more fun that way), you might have to look around a bit to find it. But that’s not at all true for soy beans. What is not based on corn in the contemporary U.S. processed-food diet is based on soy beans. These odd little buggers are in everything. Unlike corn, though, most people don’t know what soy beans really are. Kids don’t beg for soy beans on the cob on a hot summer day. You’ve never wrapped soy beans in foil and put them on the grill alongside steaks. Even the Texas State Fair does not offer deep-fried soy beans on a stick (although they will deep fry anything up there, so it would not surprise me).

It’s also a fun word to say, though Patagonian Toothfish raises a chuckle as well come to think of it.

Most packaged edamame that I’ve seen are already shelled, though you can find them still in the pod. Shelled, they are just about the size of things you worry your toddler will stuff up his nose. And now that you have that disturbing image in mind, let’s talk about cooking these bad boys.

They are quite versatile, providing great texture and just enough of their own flavor that you can blend them with pretty much any other flavors. From the frozen package, they will thaw quickly with just a little water run over them. They are also packed with protein rather than calories, so they add both protein and texture to an otherwise simple dish. This posting is the result of a quick stir fry with lots of onion and colorful peppers for a visual delight (helps get the kids to eat it), with shredded Napa Cabbage for bulk. In a stir fry like this, the sauce is the thing and where there is a sauce in a stir fry, you need to ready a slurry of corn starch and water to thicken the sauce once it’s done its job of flavoring every nook and cranny of the stir fry.

Sauce:

~1 tbsp minced ginger

4-5 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup soy sauce

A splash of rice wine vinegar

A couple splashes of apple cider vinegar

A splash of Mirin (Japanese sweet sake)

~ 1 tbsp honey

~ ¼ cup sunflower seed butter or your favorite nut butter (peanut butter is just fine, crunchy is better than smooth to this family’s taste)

A whisper of your favorite hot sauce (optional, but - deep down - you know you want to)

Mix all these ingredients together and then play with the proportions until it hits your taste. It should be sweet, savory, salty and buttery. Let it sit while you tend to the stir fry.

Edamame versus soy beans. Goes to show that we eat with more than just our senses. We eat with cultural sensibilities as well. Come on – if Chilean Sea Bass were called the Patagonian Toothfish all the way to the plate would it have been so popular it was overfished? And just how many erstwhile escargot lovers have spluttered a delicious sauce on themselves discovering the everyday name of that delicacy?

Chicago, Restaurant Musing, Cousin Elsie's Ghost, and Risotto redux

2009-12-05T15:22:00.000-06:00

As I write, I am flying back from Chicago, having attended a hoity toity conference of really smart people. Me…I’m just over-educated as the banner above says. I came to talk about food and what we’re doing with it these days (Do you know some people are taking pictures of their dinner and posting them on the web? What’s up with that?)

The really smart people let me in anyway, saying something about the holiday spirit and just try not to talk to anyone. Strangely enough, I was reminded of my Cousin Elsie the other night, someone who was neither hoity nor toity and never took a single picture of her dinner despite being a great cook.

Living and cooking in the South, I am often reminded of Elsie. She lived with my Grandma Helen in Georgia, having come to comfort Helen after my grandfather died in the ‘60s and she just never left. Elsie was my mother’s cousin by marriage, I guess, or something like that (I could never keep track of the many nooks and crannies of the extended family, no Facebook back in the day). Anyway, Elsie was a great cook. As we used to say, when you went to see them in Atlanta, you ate one meal a day…it began at 10 am and continued until 10 pm.

Elsie did not often go out to dinner. She was never fully satisfied because she knew she could do better. Being a southern belle, she would always find something about the meal she could compliment. “That sure was a nice fresh salad,” she would tell the waitress, ignoring the fact that she thought her steak was overdone and her beer not quite cold enough. Elsie always remembered her southern manners unless someone else forgot theirs.

But, I was talking about Chicago before I detoured to Atlanta. After having to be smart all day, I was hungry and went out to dinner with an old friend. The concierge got us in at a local bistro specializing in northern Italian cuisine. The place had all the right signs and symbols of a trendy Italian restaurant: brick ovens and wait staff dressed in black (and what’s up with that BTW; don’t understand how dressing like an emaciated wraith became trendy in restaurants). And there was a risotto special. Northern Italy here I come.

I’m sure you know where this is going. “Sure was a nice fresh salad,” I told the waiter when he asked about the meal. The risotto…not so much. Just not enough THERE there. But, in such moments I often feel Elsie's presence and cannot tell them what I really think.

Risotto is a food of love. A food of love is like a dance of many veils and this serving was naked by comparison. Yes, mine is better. As it happens, I had just made risotto a few days before heading to Chicago. So here it is.

Mushroom Risotto Etc. Etc.
Ingredients:
1 medium onion chopped into medium dice
~1 pound shitake mushrooms, stems discarded and sliced fairly thin
A few cloves of garlic
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1 cup of white wine
1 quart (give or take) of chicken stock (you made it yourself, right?)
1 tbsp butter, plus a splash of olive oil (raises the smoke point of the butter and adds some flavor)
~ 1/3 of a cup of half and half
1/2 cup or so of grated fresh parmigiano reggiano
Some fresh herbs to finish it (whatever you have)

Whip it, whip it good
Bring your stock to a boil for a minute, then turn it down to a low simmer.
Heat your butter and oil until the butter foam subsides. Add the onion and saute until the onion is translucent, then add the mushrooms. Stir that from time to time. Depending on the pan you're using, the whole thing might produce enough liquid that it starts to stew. Don't panic. Shitakes do not have as much moisture in them as basic white mushrooms so that will subside fairly quickly. You'll know things are working when you hear it start to sizzle again. Get a little color on your onions and shrooms.
Add the rice and stir it to coat the rice with all the juices. Stir it until the rice is becoming translucent (it'll work from the outside edge of the grain inward). Add the wine, stir and then let the rice absorb the wine. When it's close to dry, start adding the broth, about a half cup at a time and letting it absorb. Most recipes will tell you to stir the rice constantly and that's just a bit of an exaggeration. They tell you that because they don't want you to forget about your rice because you're yelling at the Chicago Bears quarterback after he threw yet another interception for the season (guy couldn't catch a break on the morning news shows around here, but apparently he can't throw one either). As long as you are paying attention, stirring faithfully and don't let it go dry, you'll be fine even if you stop stirring now and then.
Somewhere in here you want to season it with salt and pepper, but remember that the cheese will bear some salt as well. Taste from time to time until the rice is the texture you want (Al Dente is what most recipes call for but Al's softer brother Luigi might be more to your liking). Add the half and half a bit at a time until it gets as creamy as you like. Then toss in your herbs and once they're incorporated, add the cheese a small handful at a time until it all comes together to taste. Adjust any seasoning at the end.
This is a great dish on its own. On this particular night, I grilled some halibut (yes, yes, just for the "halibut" if you will) to put on top of all this. If you're adding a whitefish, you probably want to add some flavor to it that will give you just a little contrast to the risotto, maybe paint it with a vinaigrette or something.

Elsie would approve.

Shut Up and Eat Your Culture Like a Man

2009-11-06T07:11:00.000-06:00

A father has an obligation see to his son’s education in, well, guy stuff. On this particular night, my 11-year-old seemed a bit dubious, but I assured him it would come in handy some day.

In Texas, father-son bonding includes football. Around here, football is the only officially-recognized exception to that “no establishing a state religion” thing. So, we settled down in front of the TV for an evening of football.

“That guy is the quarterback,” I pointed out. “Around him is his team.”

“What?” He seemed confused, so I laid some additional fatherly knowledge on him.

“That other guy there,” I said, “is the quarterback for the other team. See how he directs his offense. Any questions so far?”

“Yes,” he said, and I awaited a question about strategy or perhaps the Texas Longhorns’ chances at a national championship. “Why are we watching a cooking show?”

“A cooking show?” I snapped. “No, this is football, I’m sure. Listen to the play by play, the color commentary. Definitely football.”

“Dad, it’s Iron Chef America,” he insisted. “If it’s football, why is there no defense? Why aren’t they wearing helmets?”

“Helmets?” I looked at the screen. “Well, maybe these are real men. Don’t need no stinking helmets.”

But, I looked more closely at the screen, shifting to the HD channel for added detail. He had a point. There did not appear to be a defensive unit in the entire stadium. Yet, they called it a stadium, I pointed out.

“It’s called Kitchen Stadium, Dad. Listen to them.”

I could see his teen rebellion was happening prematurely. Perhaps it was too soon for this type of male bonding. I turned to cultural sensibilities instead. A man needed to recognize quality cinema, so I described the films of Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa and how the master director used the ancient samurai tradition to tell human stories with classic themes. One of his films was on another channel. I warned my boy that there would be some grisly violence as I changed the channel, but it would be manly and culturally uplifting grisly violence.

“Dad,” he said, shaking his head. “This is the original Iron Chef Japan.”

“Well, why do they dress like samurai, then?”

“For the same reason Iron Chef America sounds like football,” he said in that please-lower-my-allowance tone of voice. “I’d rather watch American Idol.”

So, he shifted the channel from the classic samurai movie to the latest in pop culture silliness aimed at our kids’ generation. What’s up with this need to witness demoralizing competition that is completely manufactured for that purpose? But, after a few moments, I was confused.

“Son, is this really American Idol?”

“Of course. You have the nasty judge there and the pretty judge there and the funny one there. That’s the basic formula. Yup, American Idol all right.”

“Son,” I measured my words. “Playing the role of the nasty judge is Iron Chef Bobby Flay. This is The Next Food Network Star.”

We turned off the TV and made quiche like real men everywhere.

Clams Diavolo: Vampires Beware

2009-10-23T09:50:00.000-05:00

One of a man's genetic duties is to protect the family. In our current environment, there is one threat we must take seriously.
I speak, of course, of vampires.
Our culture has been overrun with vampires of late. This happens periodically. Not sure why werewolf books, movies and TV shows do not have the same following.
But if a man is going to keep his family safe in this cultural milieu, he needs more than just a wooden stake and mallet. He needs that most formidable of weapons: Garlic.
We go through a lot of garlic in this house and I am proud to say that we do not have a single vampire attack among us. We put garlic in virtually everything and even serve it in olive oil as a condiment at the table. On those "garlic and oil" nights I often suspect an outbreak of vampirism. Everyone at social events struggles in talking with us until they run screaming to wash out their eyes and gulp oxygen from a tank.
But, they don't bite.
Clams Diavolo features garlic, and then more garlic. There's a couple clams in there as well. The Diavolo sauce can basically go with anything. I often use it with fresh mussels, but it could also go with grilled shrimp, chicken or what have you. On this particular night, dinner needed to be quick so I just opened up a few cans of clams I had in the pantry (and yes, fresh clams would be hoitier and toitier if you have them). The croutons help make the meal, so be extra careful not to burn them under the broiler. For me, "extra careful" equates to having my wife see to the croutons.

For the croutons:
1 baguette, sliced into half-inch rounds
1 wife willing to make sure they don't get burned

For the sauce:
2 or 3 slices pancetta (Italian bacon), sliced into small dice
A pinch of red pepper flakes
Half a small onion cut into small dice
As much garlic as you can stand (I use about two bulbs, depending on size)
About a half cup or so of white wine
2 15 oz. cans diced tomatoes
3 cans minced clams
Fresh herbs (I use basil and oregano)

Choose a decent sized pot and put it over low to medium heat. Toss the pancetta in and you want to slowly render the bacon fat out of it. This will also cook the bacon. When the bacon is cooked, remove it with whatever slotted gadget you might have and put it on a paper towel to drain. You do not need much more than a tablespoon of the fat from here on, so pour any excess off. Toss the onion and the pepper flakes in and saute until the onion is translucent. With whatever shovel you have handy, add your garlic. The garlic does not need to cook that long before moving on. If you hold a canary over the pot and it gets dizzy, you are ready to add the wine.
Let the wine cook until almost dry and then add the tomatoes with their juices. Stir it and cook just long enough for the tomatoes to blend in and the juices to reduce a bit. In truth, this will make more a "diavolo broth" than a sauce but that's what you want in this rendition. If you're ultimately putting this with pasta or something like that, you want to cook it down to a saucier consistency.
Finish it with the herbs and then toss in your clams and heat through.
Paint the baguette with olive oil or spray it with whatever (hopefully chemical free) cooking spray you prefer. Run them under the broiler until they toast nicely on one side and then flip them for the other side (and in my case, don't be offended when your wife reminds you of all the croutons you've reduced to radioactive slag and completely ignores you during this process).
Serve the broth in a bowl with the croutons on the side. Sprinkle some of the crisp bacon over the broth at the table. Scoop up the broth, clams, bacon and garlic on your croutons and enjoy. Then you can go trick or treating with no worries.

Food as Communication: Communication as Food

2009-10-20T07:25:00.000-05:00

The title of the posting is the working title of a book coming out in early 2011 from Peter Lang Publishers. It is a scholarly tome on food and the ways we use it for more than just sustenance. I am humbled to note that I will have a chapter in the book. The chapter is about the lowly pre-roasted chicken we all occasionally buy at the supermarket when we are pressed for time. It's not hard to find recipes from master chefs that tell you what to do to dress up those roasted chickens and make them yours, kind of like adding an egg to a packaged cake mix so you feel like you're really cooking. The chapter wonders out loud what's really going on there when something that looks like traditional home cooking can be purchased at the counter driving home from work.

Chef Dad, PI: The Case of the Tuesday Night Special

2009-09-16T07:03:00.001-05:00

It was a lazy Tuesday afternoon at the Chef Dad Detective Agency. Even the fleas in my flea-bitten office had stopped biting.
Then the phone rang. It was a dame. It was always a dame. I could tell this one was hungry for something. Trust me, I'm a detective.
"Do we have a dinner plan?" she asked.
"Oh so it's a missing dinner case, is it sweetheart?"
"Why are you doing a bad Humphrey Bogart impression?"
"Because I can't do a good one. But, tell me more about this dinner. What's it look like? Where was it last seen?"
"Whatever," she said in that way women have. "Remember, it's Tuesday. Gotta eat early."
"Well, that's just swell, sweetheart," I said. "So, it's a rush job and you can't even give me a description of the missing dinner. Do you at least have any suspects?"
"There's peppers in the fridge," she said like she was talking to her poodle. "And you're not going to be doing this all night are you?"
Click. The phone went dead, like the empty bottle of cheap whiskey in the desk drawer. Seems like this kind of case always happens on a Tuesday. Starts with the same dame calling, too, come to think of it. You'd think she'd keep better track of her dinners. But then, maybe it was just an excuse to call her favorite dinner detective, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
These missing dinner cases did not just solve themselves. I'd seen enough of them in my day to know you have to follow one clue till it leads to another. I shook down the vegetable drawer and found the peppers the lady had mentioned. They were smooth and colorful, like me once, but that's another story. Experience said that where there's peppers, there's usually onion so I ransacked the pantry until the onion begged for mercy. I had an idea that point. It was an instinct built out of years of being a dinner gumshoe. I opened the freezer and found the dame had some sausage on ice. But, the pantry was holding out on me. I roughed it up a little more and found the pasta. So, my theory of the case was that peppers and onions cooked for an hour or so over medium-low heat pretty much made their own sauce, with a little kicker of balsamic vinegar at the end. The sausage could be taken out of its case, sauteed quickly and added with some fresh basil and there you had it: sausage and peppers over pasta.
There's a thousand dinners in the naked city. I gave the lady hers. All in a day's work. I'm Chef Dad: Dinner Detective.

Changing the Oil

2009-09-16T06:59:00.000-05:00

So, my wife and I were going out for the evening. It wasn't a coat and tie kind of night (almost never is in Austin, a town where you can go just about anywhere in shorts and sandals), but it was a "dinner and a play" night so I wanted to be presentable. She had just bought me a new polo shirt and when I paired it with khakis I thought the combination looked pretty sharp. So, I sidled up to her and said something in that "I'm your man" kind of way a husband with ideas sometimes does (if you know what I mean and I think you do).
She appraised me briefly, then smoothed my collar and ran her hands down over my shoulders. Wait for it, wait for it. Patting my chest, she said, "Try not to get olive oil on it."
For some men, the indelible stains on the shirt are 10W-30 motor oil. For me, they are most likely extra-virgin olive oil.

Choose Your Weapon

2009-08-28T06:39:00.000-05:00

You need a big knife. A big knife can do anything a small knife can do, but the opposite is not really true. A small knife is not going to help you carry onions and garlic from the cutting board to the skillet, for instance. But, with a little practice you can do even fine detail things -- like peel the strings off a celery stalk -- with a big knife.

And a big knife is a great way to get the male of the household into an apron. Add some danger and men will try anything. Get a big knife for a Father's Day gift and promise a blow torch if they learn to make creme brulee for Christmas. Big, sharp blades and fire? Sign me up.

My weapon of choice is a Chinese cleaver. It is a more subtle version of the meat whacking blade we're all familiar with from old movies and cartoons. Mine is an old Martin Yan ("If Yan Can Cook, So Can You!") signature product. I'm sure Martin fronts for a different company these days. But, I keep this old blade. I've had it many years, it didn't cost that much and it holds an edge better than some of my fancier knives.

My cleaver is like an old pickup truck with 150,000 miles on it. Not as stylish as today's products, maybe even a little beat up from wear and tear; but it's comfy, gets the job done and I can't find a reason to replace it.

And it's big, did I mention that? Manly big. You nick yourself with this bad boy and your grandchildren will bleed.

Tuesday Night Special: Easy Mediterranean Wraps

2009-08-25T06:21:00.000-05:00

My wife likes eggplant. Seriously so. If I didn't cook eggplant for her now and then I'd be out on

the street. Dom Perignon and jewelry are nice, but she wants eggplant. And don't peel the skin or you get quite an interrogation. "Why are you peeling it? What did it ever do to you? You expect me to eat naked eggplant?"

Fortunately, I discovered eggplant while I was still a single guy, prior to meeting my wife. I remember the grocery store checkout person eyeing my produce and saying, "I never thought I'd see a single man buy eggplant."

Little did he know, it was destiny.

So, she called me late Tuesday afternoon to say that she got held up with what she was doing and didn't make it to the store. "And remember, I'm going to the thing at that place tonight? We need to eat early and quick."

As a result, our dinner plans had been transformed from a carefully thought out process into a desperate foray into dark magic. It was up to me to conjure yet another Tuesday Night Special -- a quick, healthy dinner based solely on what we had in the house. I call this a "Tuesday Night Special" because, for reasons that I could not hope to explain, these situations always seem to happen on a Tuesday. Go figure.

In a moment like this, you need to be creative. When you open the fridge or pantry door, Wolfgang Puck will not appear with an already-prepared dish in his hands (and if he does, get your own darned blog). I look for elements I have and try to fit them into food stylings from different cuisines. You have to think broadly about these forms and the elements that fit them -- and often you'll be twisting the form a bit to fit what you have. What I found were the elements (veggies, cheese etc.) that generally fit the "taco" form, but are not usually considered Mexican ingredients. So this form is twisted a bit into "wraps." Playing the role of salsa tonight is sun-dried tomato tapenade.

Easy Mediterranean Wraps

Ingredients:

A couple veggie sausage patties (I used Boca Burger - noting that trademarks are the property of their owners who did not pay a dime for the plug - but you could use a little regular sausage, leftover chicken or just skip it altogether)

1 or 2 smallish, firm purple eggplants (back away from the peeler and nobody gets hurt)

1 or 2 large beefsteak-style tomatoes or equivalent, seeded, chopped

1/2 a medium onion, diced

About a cup or so of fresh grated parmigiano-reggiano

8 flour tortillas

For the tapenade:

2 decent-sized cloves garlic

About 1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes

3 to 4 kalamata olives, pitted (buy them whole and pit them yourself)

2 anchovies or 2 tsp anchovy paste (OK, sure, it's optional you wimp)

1 tbsp capers

A splash of balsamic vinegar

Extra virgin olive oil

A bit of fresh herb (whatever you have, I usually put oregano in tapenade)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Slice the eggplant into half-inch rounds then into strips. Combine the eggplant, tomatoes and onions in a baking dish. Toss all that with olive oil and if you season it, do so just lightly. Put in the oven to bake, stirring the mixture now and then. You want it to just start caramelizing and in my oven that was about 30 minutes.

Put the tapenade ingredients into a food processor, with enough olive oil that you get something that's a loose paste though not really a sauce. Add the olive oil little by little as you whir it up. You can always add more, but can't remove it once it's in there. Adjust all the ingredients for your taste.

Microwave the veggie burgers, leftover chicken or if you're using regular sausage cook that up in a pan quickly. You want it shredded enough that it can be mounded in the wrap. For the veggie burgers, I just cut them into strips.

To serve, I put the eggplant mixture on the table along with the other elements and let people make their own Mediterranean wraps.

The kids ate it. The wife got her eggplant. Disaster was avoided. Dad was a hero.

2009-08-23T11:31:00.000-05:00

Cussin' in the Kitchen

Unfortunately, men cuss (you heard it here first). We break a window in our heavenly palaces with each utterance, but there you have it. Cooking is no different from rebuilding a carburetor in that manner. You scrape your knuckles with a crescent wrench or a chef's knife and, well, it hurts!

Recently, my son and I had a talk about cussing. In watching the movie "Get Smart," he noted that the character of "the chief" had a moment of existential terror and related that his thoughts went something like this: "Holy 'Beep!' Holy 'Beep!' I was almost hit in the head with a swordfish!" Well, that's my son's version of the dialogue anyway and his rendition is far funnier than anything on the screen.

I told him that maybe we can cut people some slack when they stub their toes or slice their knuckles. But, I also pointed out that there is another genre of cussing that seems to me to be the product of a lazy mind and we shouldn't let our minds get lazy. So, the other day he was expressing his dissatisfaction with something and he said "Duhbunketah!" Not wanting to cultivate a lazy mind, he decided that he would make up a word on the spot to express any dissappointment. My goal is to adopt his philosophy in the kitchen.

Bang my head on an open cabinet? Duhbunketah!

Slice off a finger with the chef's knife? Duhbunketah!

Out of garlic? Holy Beep!

2009-08-21T13:28:00.000-05:00

Rule #1: Save Dem Bones!

Right now, my freezer is loaded with chicken stock. The kids have trouble finding their ice cream and complain. But, they eat tasty stuff because of that stock and every cup of stock makes the chicken it came from that much cheaper.

Don't buy consomme or any of the other pre-packaged chicken stocks out there. I came to this conclusion in the grocery store one day when I literally had a chicken in one hand and two containers of chicken stock in the other. The chicken stock was going to cost me more than the chicken. But, it was loaded with salt, so it had that going for it.

Save Dem Bones and Use them! And don't worry that this sounds like it takes a long time. Your active participation in the process is only about 15 minutes or so.

Basic (Not sure there is any other kind) Chicken Stock

Ingredients:

Chicken bones (preferably those not gnawed on by any males in the family)

Water

A medium onion

A few cloves of garlic

2 or 3 regular-sized carrots

1 or 2 stalks of celery

Some dried thyme

Put the chicken bones in a stock pot. Try to include some breast bones as they usually have some meat that can be stripped later for yet another meal. Add water until the bones are covered by an inch or so (hey, you're gonna simmer it a long time). Bring it to a boil.

Turn the flame down to a simmer and add the other ingredients. Chop the carrots, onion and celery but you don't need to pulverize them. Do NOT salt the stock. Add any salt to taste when you actually use the stock to make something.

When I say "simmer," you're looking for a small bubble, like the chicken is relaxing in a spa. You're not boiling frogs here.

Now simmer the stock until the spousely person in your life asks, "Is this done yet?" a few times or three to four hours, whichever comes first. You're looking for it to reduce to less than half of what you started with. It should look like it's rich with flavor and any chicken meat still on the bones should look like the color of gray on the heel of a sweat sock (don't worry about "pretty" while you're still cooking; that's for presentation and that's another posting).

Let it cool, then pour it through a sieve, cheese cloth or other fine mesh gadget. Put that in the fridge overnight. Strip any meat off the bones and package that for a pasta or something.

The last step is to skim the fat off the surface with a slotted spoon, then package the stock in one-cup containers and freeze it. To use, pull it out of the freezer, thaw in the microwave and be sure to bring it to a boil first when you add it to whatever you're cooking.