Food, Family, Friday: Chef Dad’s Making Guacamole

One of the classic memes of fatherhood is the enthusiastic welcome home Dad receives at the end of a workday.  In the cartoon version, Dad is literally knocked over with love as kids and dogs express their unbounded joy that he has returned once again to the family nest to share his wisdom, warmth and humor with a loving brood.

For the most part, I work out of the house.  My morning and evening commute is a grueling 10 feet between the home office and the kitchen.   I don’t get swarmed with love.   I get people wondering what’s for dinner and why isn’t it on the table and can I have $10 for school tomorrow.

The only time I ever get overwhelmed with love, a physical outpouring of joy and devotion that threatens to knock me off my feet, a veritable native dance of jumping and arm waving enthusiasm…is when I make guacamole.  Even then, the object of affection is the mulcajete full of green stuff that I have to hold over my head to get it to the table. 

And that’s not easy.  A mulcajete is a large mortar and pestle carved out of volcanic rock.  It’s cool, but it’s heavy.  You do not want to drop this thing on your toe and certainly not on your head.  Culturally, it comes from Mexico, though it is just one expression of the mortar and pestle that comes in many forms around the world.  They are all similar in nature; you put stuff into the bowl and bash it up.  Being a rock, the mulcajete is quite an effective basher.

This elegant rock was a birthday gift from the family.  I dutifully set out making guacamole with it.  After bashing it all together, I set the whole thing on the table and turned to get something to drink with my chips and guac.  When I returned to the table, it was all gone and there was an outcry for more. 

Since then, whenever I get the mulcajete out of the cabinet, my family goes through a werewolf-like transformation.  Though instead of deadly beasts, they turn into a pack of coyotes yip-yipping at my heels.  As her last bit of humanity passes from her body, BMW reminds everyone to leave some for me.

And then she tears the bag of chips open with her teeth and growls at the kids.

Chef Dad’s Making Guacamole

Ingredients:

3 large cloves of garlic

Juice of half a lime (maybe more depending on how juicy your lime is)

2 tsp of ground coriander

1 tsp of ground cumin

Handful of cilantro

Generous pour of good extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste (they’re important ingredients)

2 large, ripe avocadoes sectioned so it all fits into mulcajete

The trick here is to first make a base out of all the other ingredients, and then bash the avocadoes into that base.  Put everything except the avocadoes into the mortar and pestle.  Start by crushing the garlic cloves enough so that you can work with them.  Then bash everything up, moving the mass around.  The advantage of the mulcajete for this is that it is a rough surface so that any movement does some grinding.

Eventually, the mass will be relatively smooth (though still textured) and a uniform green color.  Toss in the avocadoes and repeat.  You should end up with something that looks like the picture above.  Give it a taste to adjust seasonings if necessary.

Then fire a couple of warning shots to clear a path to the table and grab some chips before the coyotes regroup.

Weird Wednesday: My Fitness Pal

I’ve been trying to lose 10 pounds for about two years now.  Recently, I discovered that to legitimately use the word “trying” requires some sort of actual effort.  Apparently, the mental work of setting the goal and feeling health conscious does not qualify as “trying” no matter how many glasses of wine you consume while contemplating the goal.  There is even some scientific evidence that pounds and inches will not melt away from mentally wishing it so.

Who knew?

Anyway, I can now put this whole trying conversation behind me because I am well into the process of “losing” 10 pounds.  And, yes, you guessed it -- there’s an app for that. 

In fact, there is a quite popular app for that called “MyFitness Pal.”  It’s easy to use and offers a wealth of information about foods, exercise and how all that relates to you and your body.  This past weekend, for instance, the kids wanted lunch at Chipotle where I usually crave the chicken burrito that tops out at about 1,000 calories, almost half of what I’m allowed per day.  Between the door and the counter, I discovered that the Crispy Chicken Tacos are only 465 calories and they made a nice lunch.

Did I mention that it’s easy to use?  In fact, it’s so easy to use that it can make you a bit obsessive.  Those of us who remember when computers were only connected to the wall socket (we used bear skins to stay warm in the day) probably remember when Quicken came out years ago.  I lived in California’s Silicon Valley at the time and I knew people who were losing sleep because they were staying up all night obsessing about their finances – simply because they could.  Facebook has the same effect in the connected world.  These tools turn seemingly straightforward aspects of your life into a 3D IMAX screen of endless data and analysis – all about you. 

It’s like Narcissus died gazing into a smartphone rather than a pool of water.  (You’ve now had your cultural moment here on When Dad Cooks and we’ll return you to our regularly scheduled gonzo food rant.)

Once upon a time, you had to first live a life interesting enough for an autobiography, write the autobiography and then find a publisher who agreed that people might care.   Today, any mundane detail of your life can be turned into an autobiography with a few taps of a screen.

“Want to see what I ate yesterday?” I asked BMW.  She was making pancakes at the time.

“No,” she replied.

“But, it’s right here," I said.  "Look, the fish was only a couple hundred calories.”

“That’s nice dear.”

“Which doesn’t even count since I burned 385 calories on the treadmill.”

“Uh huh.”

I picked up the bottle of maple syrup we would have with the pancakes and scanned the bar code.  Up popped all the information you would want to know about something you might put in your body.

“Whoa,” I said.  “This gets me close to the amount of sugar I need for the entire day.”

“Have some pancakes with it," BMW said.  "They’re multi-grain with high fiber.”

I noted that in my automated food diary.

“Maybe we can take a walk after breakfast,” I suggested, tapping away at the screen.  “Should we do a basic walk at 3 miles per hour, a brisk walk at 3.5 miles per hour or a very brisk one at 4 miles per hour?  And how long should we go, that will determine total calories burned.”

“It depends,” BMW said.

“On what?”

“On how fast you can run.”

“I thought we would walk.  Look, there’s still plenty of calories burned,”  I pointed out helpfully.

“You’re going to run because if you don’t get away from me with that phone I’ll be chasing you with this spatula.”

Twenty minute sprint with frequent lunges to the side: 948 calories burned.

Pizza Week Continues: BMW's Pizza Crust Recipe

Gotta make this fast.  I found BMW's pizza crust recipe.  She guards it jealously.  So, I'm crouching in the pantry to get this posted without her knowing.

Better to beg for mercy after the fact than ask permission.

It's worth folding yourself up into a ball and having an electric griddle poke you where the sun don't shine.  It's a great crust.  It has flavor and texture and gets crisp everywhere even with sauce and meat on it.

Apparently, she's been developing this for a while.  I found the ragged remains of a little recipe booklet we got many years ago with a bread-making machine.  We got rid of the machine a while back when she decided to start baking bread from scratch.  I wondered why she kept the recipe booklet.

She uses the base recipe for pizza dough from that book and has modified it over the years.  Pizza crust, like so much else in cooking and life, is a matter of experience.

Ingredients:
1 cup plus 1 tbsp. of water
1 tbsp. of olive oil
1 tbsp. of sugar
1 tsp. of salt
1.5 cups of white bread flour
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 tsp. of active dry yeast

She mixes all that together with a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, you know the one with the patented whirly gig motion.  She doesn't do much extra kneading and then let's that rise until doubled in size.  If you don't have the fancy shmancy mixer, you probably need to do some kneading (or perhaps you're needing to knead, I get confused easily).

This recipe makes one to two pizzas, depending on how big you want them.  Around here, she usually doubles the recipe and then makes three pizzas roughly 10 inches across.  To get there she stretches the dough with her delicate hands and does the classic flying saucer bit as well, throwing the flattened dough in the air.  It has to spin when you toss it to stretch.  Not for the faint of heart or slow of hand.  I'm sure you recently saw the classic Julia Child bit where she flips the pancake or whatever it is and claims it is easy if you have the courage of your convictions.   Then, she has to piece it all back together.  Well, the same goes for flipping pizza dough like a quarter.  If courage isn't your thing, rolling pins and your hands work just as well.

You need a pizza stone to get the crust just right, but I'll get to all that on Friday.  Right now, I need to quietly open the pantry door and get out of here without getting...

Caught.

Food, Family, Friday: Musing on Millet

Husband screw-ups are a special category of mistake.  No doubt there are infinite variations, but they all have at least two qualities in common: 1) they begin with a sense of triumph quickly dashed (think of the DIY husband who declares the kitchen faucet fixed right before the geyser erupts and a thunderous voice instructs him to build an ark); and 2) they somehow have lasting effects, even if it is just a bit of family folklore Mom enjoys telling (“Kids, remember the time Dad stapled himself to the UPS truck and ended up in Nebraska?”). 

A few months ago, I was walking to the car after a furious bout of grocery shopping.  My phone rang and it was BMW wondering when I’d be home. 

“Just heading to the car,” I said.  “And don’t worry, I got your millet.” 

Yup, that exotic grain she wanted took me a while to find, but a trained hunter like this Chef Dad could stalk his prey in any grocery store.  Her man was up to the challenge.

“My what?” BMW asked.

“Your millet.  The grain you wanted for baking.”

“I wanted bulgur,” she said.  “What’s millet?”

A husband can get whiplash from triumph turning to defeat so quickly.

“How much did you buy?” she asked with an entirely unwarranted alarm in her voice.

“A pound and a half.”

Since this is a family blog I will simply say that she expressed a certain dissatisfaction with that data point.

“I wanted to make sure you had enough,” I protested.

“I didn’t want ANY!”

So, not only did I have to go back inside to buy bulgur, the mistake just keeps on giving.  I have been working for the past several weeks to do things with millet.  It’s gone into soups and stirfries and you should see the fashionable millet and duct tape shoes the kids are wearing.

However, the millet odyssey came to a close recently thanks to inspiration from this millet risotto recipe on Cookstr. As you can see from the picture, millet is a tiny – almost seed-like – grain that you can use like rice.  You can pretty much substitute it for rice in many recipes, but it will not plump up the way rice will.  It has a nutty consistency when cooked and offers plenty of al dente bite.    

I seldom follow any recipe to the letter, so here I stir fried the zucchini until it had some color and then removed it from the pan.  Then, some butter went into the pan, followed shortly by a whole large onion, chopped.  In the meantime, about three bulbs of garlic were roasting in the oven.

Take a look at this post for a better primer on risotto, but once the onion softens the millet goes in and gets a little stir fry of its own to coat it with the fat and the sugars from the onion and even toast a bit, maybe two minutes.  Throw in a cup of white wine and simmer until it is absorbed.  I had leftover chicken broth from some poached chicken breast (another blog post) and added it a half cup at a time until the millet was cooked.

A bit of half and half to add creaminess.  About three quarters of a cup of parmigiano-reggiano added in roughly thirds.  Last thing you do is add back the zukes and the roasted garlic. 

Once she tasted it, BMW said, “I guess we need millet, huh?”

Conventional Wisdom

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.