Make it Beautiful

VEW

I love cooking, but my first love is painting. I am a painter and my preferred genre is still life. That pretty much means I get inordinately excited about things like grocery store produce sections and farm stands. I think there is an insane, even existential beauty in simple, natural things. If you really stop and think about it, the lovliness of vegetables and fruits, not to mention the tastes and textures when we actaully put them to use and eat them, it can truly be overwhelming.

Today was the first pick-up at the farm from which I have purchased a share. We were told not to expect much--it's still early in the growing season here and the nights can still drop to fifty degrees or so. I arrived not expecting much and was pleasantly surprised. Three types of lettuce, bok choy, pea shoots, strawberries, chives. I couldn't wait to get it all home and washed, and when I did, I wrapped it up bouquet-like in papertowels and layed it in the fridge. Every time I opened the fridge I smiled.

As I prepared dinner tonight I realized that as much as I love cooking I look forward most to plating things. It can be an artform. I don't always do a good job of this--to be honest, many nights it's all I can do to get a decent meal on the table in the pot it was cooked in. But taking the time to make what you've spent time cooking beautiful is worth the minimal effort. Plating elevates anything and adds to the sensual pleasure that is eating. Early on in my cooking career if nothing else I would grind some cracked pepper, or sprinkle an appropriate dried green herb around the edges of my plain white plates. Tonight I made a great summer appetizer that we learned at Reza's restaurant in Chicago: Pita with feta, radish and parsley. I have a large white circular platter, I arranged the pita quarters fan-like down two of the sides and placed 2 chunks of feta at either end. The center was filled with bright red radishes and bouquets of parsley framed the edges of the plate. I'm sure I'm the only one who gets excited at the sight of such a thing--but it really was pretty, and that makes it more fun to eat.

None of us lives life as slowly as we would like, taking a little extra time to make it beautiful is worth the time and will enliven your table in new and fun ways.

A Serendipitous Kitchen Mishap

VEW

One fine day, as the birds were chirping and the sun was shining and a gaze out my kitchen window revealed that after three years my gardens were at last showing signs of flourishing, I decided it would be better to prep some food for a party under these idyllic circumstances rather than fitting it in willy-nilly to the mayhem (albeit joyous) that tends to make up Saturdays at home with young children.
My tasks were easy enough, even a bit rote, so perhaps I was daydreaming as I reached out my arm to place the 1.5 liter bottle of olive oil that I keep at hand back in its spot by the stove…and missed. Let me take a moment to set the scene: In the corner of the kitchen where I usually work, there is a large, two- tier lazy susan that is likely supposed to be used for pots and pans. I find that it is much more convenient to store my spices, oils, vinegars, garlic, etc. there instead as everything can be seen in a quick spin. At this given moment, the lazy susan was open, revealing numerous bottles of all sorts of things. On the counter above are glass jars with flour, sugar, etc. and some oils, salt and pepper that I use regularly. Can you picture it? As I reached out to put the probably-too-large bottle of olive oil back, it jumped out of hand smack into the corner—glass hitting granite--and simultaneously spewing oil and tiny fragments of glass all over the top of the counter and its inhabitants and more horrifyingly, the lazy susan and all it contained. Now, when my stove was installed, one of the feet broke just slightly enough to make the oven ever so uneven that whenever I make a cake I have to arrange the layer just so or I have a sadly lopsided cake…I was not so lucky with the lazy susan. It was installed impeccably, and somehow doesn’t sag under the weight of everything it is forced to carry; I found this out as the oil quickly engulfed all the spices from B to T (yes, I alphabetize them) encompassing about 320 degrees of the circle--47 bottles of oil soaked glass and paper.
After cleaning up the glass, which stuck like shrapnel to the sides of so many bottles and occasionally my fingers, I began the long and tedious process of bathing each bottle in hot, soapy water and massaging them clean with towels. As I was doing this though, my woe-is-me pitying of myself turned to thoughts about cooking and why I love it so much as to have all this junk in the first place (and yes, I use it all…except perhaps for the pickling spice. Just why would I have that?). This is what I realized, again, for I have had this epiphany before: cooking brings people together, allows you to serve people you love and enjoy and reminds of times and places. Eating together is one of the most intimate things people do—across all cultures and times. As I washed off each individual bottle, stories came flooding into my head; the tasty Garam Masala from a little shop the my sister-in-law discovered and gave as a gift along with a great cookbook from Madhur Jaffrey, the copious yellow-labeled bottles from Penzey's Spices that I was turned on to by CLN of this blog, the saffron that was brought back from Turkey by a friend of a friend and shared with me. Washing the paprika I began remembering the first time I decided I liked hummus—at a party given by a friend who I’ve lost touch with and shouldn’t have. It seems silly and sentimental, but the preparation of certain meals and use of certain spices reminds me of travels with my husband and dear friends, of people come and gone, of who we were before we had kids, of who we are since having kids. It truly is one of the threads that makes up the tapestry of life and this little mishap made me take a rare minute (or 25 really) to contemplate how blessed I have been in life, how much I love the people with whom I’ve shared meals and of all the meals I look forward to sharing in the future.
So while I can not recommend shattering your own bottle full of olive oil all over your kitchen, I can say that life’s too short to eat without thinking or cook without caring—at least some of the time. Food is sustenance in so many more ways that the obvious. Perhaps that’s why heaven is often described as one big feast. Count me in. Cheers!

Great Pancakes!

VEW

These are easy and quick to whip up from scratch--and I feel good about giving them to my kids which is always an added bonus:

1C wheat flour

2T flaxseed meal

2T wheat bran

1T sugar

2t baking powder

1/4t salt

Mix the above ingredients together and then add the following 3 ingredients after you've mixed them together:

1C milk

1egg

2T canola oil

I usually add blueberries (the small, wild ones are best) at this point, but you can add in whatever you like.

Cook them up, put on "It's A Good Day" by the Susie Arioli Band and you have all the makings of a June Cleaver sort of day.

Grilled Salmon with Dijon-Honey Vinaigrette

VEW

When you live in the northern parts of the country you must squeeze every drop of warm, sunny weather out of the few months that comprise Spring, Summer and Autumn. For me that means grilling often. I'll grill just about anything that one can eat, but fish has always scared me a bit. I've done fish steaks, but fillets have always left me with visions of shredded bits of flesh stuck to my grill thereafter flavoring all other meats with a general and no so appetizing fishy-ness. I am well aware that there exists a host of gadgets to combat this problem: cedar planks, roasting baskets, racks. Being a relative gadget minimalist, I have never wanted to acquire any of these, but I have the cabinet space so what am I afraid of? I am currently in the market for some such things. However, as a recent trip to Florida proved, such things may make life easier, but are not necessary. I was cured of my irrational bias against grilling fish when my brother-in-law, a self-proclaimed mere occasional griller, grilled a large Grouper fillet to not-shredded perfection over a sea-air corroded gas grill that had 3 of 4 burners on the fritz. I came home determined to get right in the saddle. I went to the store and bought some wild Coho Salmon and made this recipe from Bobby Flay. It was great. The vinaigrette was just as good on a simple salad of Romaine, cranberries, walnuts and crumbled blue cheese as it was on the fish, and I am confident that when I grill chicken tomorrow, it will not taste like last night's salmon. Did I mention the whole meal including time to light a charcoal grill took 25 minutes? Give it a whirl.