Thinking Big

If seventy-five percent of Americans do not have passports, it is not surprising that George Bush was  popular when he defended America’s right to global supremacy at the expense of other countries. Before he became president, Bush hadn’t even traveled to Europe let alone Canada. And one doubts he would have dipped his toe into Mexico had it not been so culturally, financially, and historically linked to Texas.

Travel is said to broaden people’s perspectives, so I say give every American a passport without them having to sign up for it: if you’ve paid taxes, the passport is in the mail.

Imagine a world where Americans actually understand the problems of others and learn to empathize with them. Maureen Dowd, the journalist I hate to love, recently dropped some of her mordant commentary to wonder at the perversity of American’s love for everything big. “How big do we need to be to still feel American?…How big can our cars be? And how big is our clout abroad these days? …How do we come to terms with the gluttony that exploded our economy…how do we  make the pursuit of the American dream a satisfying quest rather than a selfish one?”

That world imagined above might just be dawning. It is as if president Obama read Dowd’s questions and answered it at the G20 summit yesterday, in response to a question from a foreign, er, Chinese, reporter. He said, “Look, I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the president of China. It is also my responsibility,” he added “to lead America into  recognizing that its interest, its fate, is tied up with the larger world…Unless we are concerned about the education of all children and not just our children, not only may we be depriving ourselves of the next great scientist who’s going to find the next new energy source that saves the planet, but we also may make people around the world much more vulnerable to anti-American propaganda.”

And that is exactly what Bush accomplished, if he accomplished anything: a world full of anti-American propaganda. The worst thing the press can do is discuss the “American way of life” or the maintenance of our life-style as if it were either deserved, God-given, or the be all and end all of a person’s, let along the world’s happiness.

Americans are capable of thinking big. And this economic crisis may be the best thing to have happened to America in generations. It provides the greatest opportunity we’ve ever had to show just how big we can think: by having a not-exactly humble, (perhaps reasonable is a better word) and brilliant president who acknowledges that our strengths are also our weaknesses: Michelle’s taboo breaking but instinctive and natural arm around Queen Elizabeth showed that genuine affection trumps protocol; Obama’s acknowledged  fumble regarding “foreign” journalists corrected immediately,  humorously, and unselfconsciously  by saying “well, foreign to me ” shows that we all make the same mistakes and are all capable of learning and moving on.

So before we call for a chicken in every pot, let’s rally ’round a passport in every pocket. In that way, foreigners can be turned into friends, “foreign” countries “familiar”, and “US interests”, “universal interests.”

Big, Bold and Delicious Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups walnut pieces

1 cup oatmeal (not instant), divided in two

2 Tbsp butter

1/2 tsp coarse salt + 1/2 tsp sugar mixed together

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Place nuts on one baking sheet and the oats on another.
3. Bake 12 minutes or until lightly brown and fragrant. Watch the oats carefully. They should get lightly browned
4. Remove both pans from the oven.
5. Toss the butter into the nuts to coat, then sprinkle with the salt and sugar. Cool.
6. When cool, chop the nuts into slightly smaller than pea-sized pieces.

Meanwhile:

1/2  cup jumbo raisins

3 Tbsp Jack Daniels bourbon whisky

1. Mix together in a heatproof bowl and microwave for 45 seconds. Stir and set aside.
2. Grind the remaining unbaked 1/2 cup of oatmeal in a food processor until finely ground.

3/4 cup butter

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

1 large egg

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips

1. Place both in mixer and beat on medium speed until fluffy.
2. Add the cinnamon, salt and nutmeg and mix well.
3. Add the egg and vanilla and mix. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl and mix again.
4. Mix the  ground oats, flour and baking soda together.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the mixture in the bowl.
6. Mix on low speed for one minute.
7. Add the toasted nuts and oatmeal, raisins and chocolate chips.
8. Mix only until the chunky ingredients are incorporated.
9. Scoop the dough onto a piece of parchment paper into a log about 18″ long.
10. Roll into an even log and cover both ends.
11. Refrigerate for 24 hours.
12. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350F.
13. Using a sharp chef’s knife slice into 1/2″ rounds.
14. Place on baking sheets and bake for about 9 minutes or until browned around the edges.
15. Cool and enjoy!

Eat one of these and call me in the morning….

Do you feel better when your doctor wears a white lab coat or street clothes? Do you read books recommended by The New York Times book review or by a friend? Do you believe in magic?

I ask these questions because as President Obama has assembled the most impressive brain trust, dream team, intellectual powerhouse cabinet, call it what you will, there’s still no sign that any of them have “the answer”.

Things are so bad that most of us are relieved that the White House is at least throwing solutions at the economy even if we don’t know why they’re supposed to work and they don’t know if they will work.

We want badly to  believe that the experts know something we don’t, know far more than we do, and will therefore somehow save us from this terrible mess. But fund manager Eric Sprott  recently pointed out  that the experts are trying to revive an economy based on behaviors that got us into this miasma in the first place; they’re not creating a new paradigm; they’re saving something dysfunctional and asking us to continue being enablers when it’s the last thing we should be doing.  He does not, however, supply any answers himself. Another expert with expert experience and opinions, but without a recipe for renewal.

And that’s why I asked the questions above: we want to take the advice of people who society says are experts: doctors in crisp, white lab coats bear the symbol of their knowledge and experience even though they are frequently baffled by the body; book reviews in the Times have the imprimatur of wisdom and intellectual range, even when the books are duds; and while there are many  things we can’t explain, like Bernie Madoff’s amazing investment returns, we still want to believe in those experts even if we don’t believe in magic.

It’s chilling to think that all those geniuses in Washington throwing money at every institution that’s too big to fail cannot predict the outcome of their actions.

And so it is with baking. Experts abound and none with more scientific credentials than Shirley Corriher who in two books-Cookwise and Bakewise- provides the scientific background for how and why ingredients behave the way they do.

Despite the fact that a much-touted cake recipe which heralded her book in that expert of expert venues, the Wednesday New York Times food section, was disappointing, tasting more tore-bought cake than homemade,  I bought Bakewise in the hopes that the cake recipe was more a matter of personal taste than of philosophy.

And so I baked expert Corriher’s Chocolate Crinkle Cookies which she describes as “slightly crunchy on the surface and gooey chocolate inside…oh yum!” What she fails to mention, although she does elsewhere in her book, is that she loves sugar, not only how it performs in baking, but how it tastes.

The cookies look great but they released hardly any chocolate aroma while baking, a sure sign that something was amiss. And while the look and texture are as she describes them, to my palate, they are a disappointment: all that expertise and a lackluster cookie. That said, my SO thinks they’re tasty.

I have bolstered the recipe by calling for bittersweet chocolate and adding cocoa nibs for additional crunch and  chocolate flavor.

Shirley Corriher’s Adapted Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

3 dozen

1 3/4 cups plus 2 Tbsp all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

8 oz finely choppped bittersweet chocolate, melted

2 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup canola oil

2 Tbsp corn syrup

2 large eggs

1 egg yolk

2 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup cocoa nibs

1 cup icing sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Mix the dry ingredients together and set aside.
3. Blend in the bowl of an electric mixer the sugar and oil.
   
4. Add the eggs, corn syrup and vanilla. Mix until blended.
5. Add the chocolate and mix well, scraping the sides and bottom.
6. Add the flour and mix only until the dough comes together. It will be stiff.
   
7. Chill for an hour covered.
8. Preheat the oven to 325F.
9. Roll the dough into golf ball sized rounds.
   
10. Roll each ball in granulated sugar and then icing sugar, coating completely.
11. Place 12 to a tray and bake about 12-14 minutes or until puffed and crackled on top. They will deflate.
12. Remove from the baking tray after 1 minute and cool on a rack.
    

Limousine Chicken

Many African-Americans never thought they’d live to see the day a black man ascended to the presidency. Most Americans both black and white  never thought they’d hear a president, any president,  own up to making a mistake and taking responsibility for it, not years after the event or after he left office, and certainly not barely three weeks into his tenure.

Yet today, President Obama sat down with Brian Williams on the NBC Nightly News and held himself accountable (“I screwed up” were his exact words) for proceeding with Tom Daschle’s nomination for secretary of Health and Human Services despite his owing $128,000 in back taxes. The president accepted that both he and “his people” had made a mistake.

Well…yea. Anybody in their right mind could see that; and we saw it as soon as    Daschle admitted to tooling  around town in a chauffeur-piloted limo provided by, shall we say, someone with more than just interest in getting Tom to the church, I mean Senate, on time. What was he thinking?

In the interest of public disclosure,  you should know that back in the mid-60s my dad answered a newspaper ad and soon found himself the proud owner of… yes, a  stretch, shiny black, limo (what was he thinking?) complete, with a Neolithic car phone. ( “Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?” yelled into the heavy hand-piece was about all the communication possible back then).

On the (thankfully) rare occasions that my sister and I were taken to school in this undoubtedly comfortable voiture, we insisted on being dropped off blocks away where no one could possibly see us exiting such a humiliating form of transportation.  Unlike Daschle’s wheels however, it vanished about six months later after about as many burglaries and vandalisms. Of course, the phone was the first thing to go….so don’t think I don’t know something about what I’m talking about here.

What is it about Washington, or is it government in general, that makes elected officials (see States of Illinois and Connecticut) feel that they are either above the law or below the radar when it comes, in particular, to paying taxes?

Is it the corridors of power that supply just enough oxygen to develop a tax code that makes the word Byzantine come to mind, but not enough fresh air to enable delicate legislative brains made cognitively lax by too many rubber chicken dinners to think logically, let alone ethically?

And here one has to include the President and “his people”.  Maybe it’s not the air. Maybe it’s the light inside the White House and what all those klieg lights (alluded to by the departing Bush), do to a president’s ability to really see, not visually of course, but as in to understand the implications of one’s actions.

Thankfully, Obama’s youth and relatively short time (compared say, to Tom Daschle) on the campaign circuit, in the corridors of power and in the White House, haven’t (yet) permanently clouded his judgment or blinded him to his ethical commitments.

No doubt he stepped outside the White House today as much to visit a charter school as to get a breath of fresh air and clear his brain.

Definitely Not Rubber Chicken Dinner in a Pot

This is a delicious and easy dinner when you want something elegant enough to serve guests but not at all fussy. Take your time browning the chicken, and the rest is done by the oven.

Serves 4-6

1 whole 4-5# chicken
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 each carrot, onion, celery, shallot diced
1 cup chicken stock
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1/2 each sweet potato, turnip, fennel bulb, diced
6 shiitake mushrooms, quartered
1 zucchini, quartered lengthwise, cut into 1” pieces
1/2 cup sweet white wine
juice of 1/2 lemon
fresh parsley

1. Preheat oven to 400F (175C).
2. In an oven-proof casserole with a lid, heat the oil on the stove over high heat.
3. When it shimmers, place the chicken breast side down. Lower the heat to medium and cook until very fragrant and the sizzling has become subdued. Check the colour of the skin: it should be a deep, rich, caramelized brown. If not, return it to the heat until it is. This can take about 10 minutes. Be sure not to burn the skin.
4. Turn the chicken on its side and brown as above. Then the other side and finally the back.
5. When all sides are nicely seared, sprinkle the carrots, onions, celery and shallots over the top. Add the chicken stock and herbs.
6. Put the lid on and place in the oven for about 40 minutes. The broth will be bubbling, the vegetables cooked.
7. Remove the pot from the oven and place the chicken on a carving platter, lightly covered with foil.
8. Return the pot to the stove and add the remaining vegetables and wine. Simmer covered for 10 minutes. Remove the lid and simmer until slightly thickened, another 5-10 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Skim excess fat if necessary.
9. Add the lemon juice and parsley.
10. Carve the chicken at the table. Ladle some sauce onto each plate and top with a piece of chicken.

Mea Culpa Pasta

I am trying to follow President Obama’s stellar management syle: finding consensus, setting aside old antagonisms with Republicans, seeking solutions, not blame, letting go of assumptions, and being open and honest. The latter is perhaps the hardest part when it comes to being a politician or cooking for my husband (otherwise known in the blog as my SO or Significant Other).

Politicians have to appeal to  many interest groups, trying to satisfy them all. Often they are forced into corners to appease one group, and have to weasel their way out by denying ever having made a clearly taped sound bite, or worse, having to admit that they “mis-poke”. Hilary’s description of dodging bullets in Bosnia comes painfully to mind. (My hope is that we never find President Obama in that position, but who knows, politics make strange soup.)

Comparatively speaking I have it easy. I have only one constituent to satisfy, my SO, yet he comes with a culinary constituency of  highly refined opinions about certain foods.

If I were a culinary politician, and pandered to his every whim I would be cooking a never ending rotation of turkey breast, meat loaf, brisket, mashed potatoes, chicken cutlets, anything and everything Italian and Jewish. He likes olive oil but won’t eat olives; he hates anchovies; loves pit barbecue and bacon but won’t eat pork; loves Indian food in restaurants but when I cook it at home asks “What’s that terrible smell?” as I toast the spices. He will eat halibut, salmon and sole; grapefruit, grapes and berries but infrequently.

But if I pandered, I would not be able to express myself culinarily and lucky for me, he understands that and has, therefore, had a different meal every night for dinner for the 28 years of our marriage. And to his credit while his tastes haven’t changed that much, he has started to like and eat a far more varied diet thanks to my frequently changing passions be it low fat, no red meat, fish at least once a week, full-bore vegetarian, Indian, Middle Eastern, you name it.

By now, if he’s reading this, he will be saying “That’s not fair. I eat everything on my plate.” Factually speaking, he is correct. He is a good politician. He ate them, yes. At the same time, he didn’t comment on many of them either and looked askance at leftovers sneaked into pasta or pizza.

At the same time however, I , another good (old-time) politician have had to, um, be creative in my descriptions of dishes, leaving out key ingredients whose very presence would make him grimace and take tiny bites, fishing around the offensive items in search of something he deemed edible. But frankly, I am tired of the old”he didn’t ask, I won’t tell” paradigm.

And so, in the interests of starting a new administration, so to speak, I have a confession to make. I have been cheating on my husband; and I have been doing it for some years now. Once, I actually told him about it and, naturally, he wasn’t happy  While upset, he didn’t throw up, walk out or swear he’d never trust me again. He was just disappointed that I hadn’t been truthful.

And yet I continued to cheat: I used anchovies in a dish, and didn’t tell him; I made him pork cutlets and said they were veal; he never noticed chopped olives in tomato sauce; an Indian dish was described as chili; sustainable sea bass was said to be halibut. I could go on in the interests of open and honest communication, but you get my drift.

And just last night, in possession of a sample of lovely, silky fresh black and white fettucine, I made Mea Culpa Pasta with not black and white mushroom pasta (as described to my SO) but squid ink pasta, knowing full well if the truth were known,  he would wrinkle his nose and likely say in a forlorn voice “Can’t we ever eat anything normal?” And spear the mushrooms like valuable truffles from a forest of despoiled pasta.

So when he admired the dish and took seconds, I felt mildly justified in my deceit and  equally bad given my Obama intentions to abandon assumptions (he won’t eat it if I tell him) and to tell the truth (“The black part? Oh, it’s made with squid ink but you won’t taste it.”).  And so like Governor Blagojevich, while I regret the words I used, I have come clean and told the truth.

Will I deceive my SO in the future? Let me think about it.

Now that’s an answer no politician is ever allowed to make and yet that’s the truth.

Mea Culpa Pasta

Serves 2 generously

1 rasher bacon, finely diced

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 onion, diced

1 generous handful thinly, thinly sliced green cabbage

1 shallot, diced

1 clove garlic, thinly sliced

1/4 cup sherry

2 cups chicken stock

2 sprigs fresh thyme

3 cups assorted sliced cultivated mushrooms or small whole wild mushrooms (I used whole chanterelles and sliced shiitake)

1 Tbsp dried porcini pieces

1/2 cup frozen or fresh peas

1/2 cup diced smoked turkey, chicken or ham

200g fresh squid ink pasta, preferably one with holes, squiggles, or pockets

Grated Parmesan Reggiano

1. Bring a large pot of water to a low boil while you prepare the sauce. Fresh pasta, depending upon the variety, cooks in less than 3 minutes so you want to have the sauce and pasta ready at the same time.
2. In a large saucepan set over medium heat, cook the bacon until it is crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain the bits and reserve as the garnish.
3. Add the olive oil to the bacon fat and reheat until the fat shimmers.
4. Add the onions, shallots and garlic, cooking until they begin to soften.
5. Add the cabbage and toss with the fat. Continue to cook until the onions brown and the bottom of the pan gets sticky with caramelized bits.
6. De-glaze the pan with the sherry, scraping up the bits and reducing the sherry to a thick syrup.
7. Scrape the contents of the pan into a small bowl and set aside.
8. Heat an additional 1 Tbsp olive oil in the pan. When hot add the mushrooms and cook until they sizzle and start to release their juices. Eventually they will begin to stick to the pan.
9. As soon as this begins, add the stock and bring to a boil.
10. Reduce to a simmer and add the dried mushrooms and thyme.
11. Simmer until reduced by about a quarter. Add the reserved onion mixture and peas. Stir to blend. Add the diced smoked turkey.
12. Taste for seasoning. Add salt and pepper as required (different stocks require different levels of salt so be careful to taste before you add).
13. Drop the pasta in to the simmering water and return to a boil. Cook for no more than 3 minutes and preferably 2 since the pasta will cook further in the sauce for a minute or two.
14. Remove the pasta from the water with a strainer or tongs and place on top of the sauce. Toss coating it well. If the sauce seems too dry, add some pasta water, tablespoon by tablespoon and heat through for no more than a minute or two.
15. Pour into a serving dish and sprinkle with the reserved bacon bits. Pass around the Parmesan cheese.

Stove-n Chicken

Why is it that the day after I wash my long, curly locks I decide to make the one chicken dinner that perfumes the house for days with minute particles of tasty chicken fat that cling to everything including my hair which only this morning smelled of mangoes and now with only the addition of some curry,  might tempt someone to eat off my head?

That block of chicken flesh that defrosted overnight on the counter (I know, I know, you shouldn’t defrost at room temperature but it’s so cold in the house that it’s as good as a fridge),  sat patiently and wanly on the counter awaiting its final, final fate (Is that your final answer? Roasted or panfried?).

All day long I had walked around work wrestling with the weighty decision of another Friday night roast chicken, roast vegetables and predictable salad, or my world famous chicken and bread salad varied with the spiced pears that were poached in red wine and pomegranate syrup a few days ago, or the boned chicken recipe from Red Cat cookbook? As people asked for help to solve their problems, find products; as I replied to emails and wrote a few snarky ones, the back of my mind was simmering the question down to a final clarity: thinking about the golden brown, crispy skin of the Red Cat chicken set the decision.

But, like childbirth, one soon forgets the pain, although in this case the “pain” isn’t in the cooking but in the cleaning. Recipes that work well in restaurants where there are cleaning brigades, not to mention heavy duty ventilation systems, tend to frazzle the home cook; and not because they are difficult per se but because they are very messy.

The Red Cat’s chicken is a case in point. First you have to bone the damn thing. Make sure your knife is a real boning knife and that it’s sharp: the chicken is very slippery when cold and the more you handle it the warmer and  slimier it gets.

After you’ve accomplished this no small feat in about 10 minutes, you heat a pan with some hot oil and place the chicken in skin side down. If it doesn’t immediately make so much noise that you can no longer hear the evening news in the background, turn up the heat, until the only thing audible is the sound of sizzling, frying chicken.

It’s at this point that you must turn on the vent, perhaps consider putting on a bathing cap to keep your hair from smelling like you’ve spent the night in a KFC, and keep a damp cloth handy to wipe down the splatters from the pan that cover the stove and all surrounding areas.

After about 8 minutes, when the skin is a deep golden brown, you pop the pan into a 450F oven for exactly 20 minutes. It’s that easy. And that messy.  You’ve spent about 10 minutes actually handling the chicken, 8 watching it cook, and then another 20 waiting for it to bake. Ideally, you want it to sit for an addition 5-10 minutes after coming out of the oven.

That’s a good thing since you’re also probably going to want to open all the windows and doors (never mind it’s -19C outside)because as soon as the oven door opens up, a billow of chicken smoke emerges the size of Casper the Friendly Ghost, and if not given an outlet will   set off your smoke alarm,  and hang in the air like smog for several days. Trust me, open your windows and doors or else every piece of clothing in the house will tell the story of Red Cat chicken. And by the time all the windows and doors are open, and you’re now freezing your ass off, the chicken will be ready to eat. Incidentally, while it’s been cooking in the oven, you’ve been whipping up some mashed potatoes and simmering some leftover chunky tomato sauce.

You may be shivering by the time you sit down to dinner (unless you make it in the summer in which case you might be cursing) , nevertheless, the technique  produces a very fine specimen: beautifully juicy and tender on the inside, deliciously crisp and tasty on the outside.

This time it was served surrounded by the simmering chunky tomato sauce beneath a mound of red bliss potatoes, parsnip, celeriac and a matzoh ball puree. That got your attention! Yes, this is now the second time I have added matzoh balls to my mashed potatoes.

Why?   Because I am lazy; because I am convinced when I portion out the matzoh ball soup, I will know exactly what’s in the container 6 months later and therefore do not label anything. Never mind that blond chicken stock with a matzoh ball frozen in its centre looks exactly like chicken stock without a matzoh ball!

But back to the stove: the  melting chicken stock (for de-glazing the pan and smoothing out the potatoes) suddenly ceased to melt, or so it seemed. There was a stubborn center that wouldn’t melt: looking closer I recognized a fluffy matzoh ball from Rosh Hashanah. Oh well, as you know, nothing goes to waste in my house, so in it went into the mashed potatoes (it is starch after all). My SO watched with a kind of morbid fascination; actually, I don’t think he realized what I was doing so dumbstruck was he, but that didn’t stop him from second and third helpings.

The meal took 45 minutes to make, perhaps a half an hour to consume if you include our brownies for dessert, but the cleanup itself took an hour. The stove had to be completely disassembled and wiped down as did the back splash and side counters. The oven? I had to use my blade scraper and a scrubber to make sure the interior  was clean. The sink was slick with fat. The saute pan was a basket case (is that mixing metaphors?) or in this case, a mess of baked on fat that needed real and commercial elbow grease to clean its surface. And my hair? I’m too tired now to wash it. And that’s a good thing: the aroma will no doubt cling long enough to remind me that this is a great recipe…for my next restaurant.

Stove-n Chicken

1 chicken

vegetable oil

chicken stock, white wine or Madeira

chunky tomato sauce

mashed potatoes/polenta

Preheat oven to 450F

1. Bone the chicken. Better yet, get it cut in half and boned for you, keeping the wing bones but removing all other bones. If you’re doing it yourself, remove the back, cut down the center of the breast and work your way from the leg and thigh bones, scraping the flesh off the bone, to the breast where it’s fairly easy to do.

2. Reform the leg which in all likelihood will be turned inside out so that you can reshape the chicken half into more or less its original shape, only sans bones. Season with salt and pepper

3. Heat an oven proof saute pan large enough to accommodate both halves over high heat and add about 2 Tbsp of vegetable oil. When it shimmers, carefully lay the chicken halves skin side down. Turn on your ventilation. It will sizzle and pop vigourously.

4. From time to time, after about 6 minutes, lift the chicken up using tongs to see how brown the skin is. It should be a deep, golden brown.

5. Place the pan in the oven and bake for an additional 20 minutes. Through the window you will see lots of smoke swirling around. It’s okay, as long as you get the windows and door ready to open.

6. While the chicken is in the oven, heat your tomato puree and make your mashed potatoes or polenta, both are great.

7. Remove the chicken from the oven and let sit for about 5-10 minutes.

8. Pour the fat out of the pan, making sure you use a dishcloth to hold the handle since it’s HOT from the oven. Deglaze it with some chicken stock, white wine or Madeira, scraping up the crispy bits. Bring to a boil and simmer down until it’s thickenend.

9. You can either swirl it into the mashed potatoes/polenta, or reserve it and pour over the chicken. In either case, spoon some tomato sauce in the bottom of a plate and make a large circle. In the center place a mound of potatoews/polenta and top with a chicken half. Serve immediately.

Cooking is all about transformation…

Anyone who follows this blog on even a semi-regular basis will be reminded of the opening sentence in one of Calvin Trillin’s books (I think it’s from Alice Let’s Eat) where he says that his mother never wasted anything, and always served leftovers, the original meal for which was in some long forgotten past.

And so it is with me. Working in a grocery store where we do our utmost to make sure we waste as little as possible, it would still be possible to run a good sized, high end restaurant on the food we give to shelters and food banks. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, it’s just that you don’t want to get to this point at home.

Cooking is all about transformation: raw into cooked; cold into hot; solid into liquid; inedible into edible; leftovers into something completely new! Nothing, or almost nothing goes to waste in my kitchen. That Pot au Feu I was wrestling with a few days ago in an earlier post? It never made it into it’s original dish, but I’ve frozen the broth and turned some of the meat into a delicious, cold-weather, borscht for tomorrow’s dinner, when both the SO and I will settle into the one at-home, together meal we get with our crazy schedule this week.

The “recipe” is below, but it’s seat of the pants, or in this case tailored to the size of the pan which is deliberately smaller than usual since in thinking about any meal, I think ahead to what I could do with the leftovers. Short of stuffing cabbage with a chopped up, cooked down version of the borscht, I don’t think there’s much else to be done with it so I deliberately used a pot big enough for three people, about a litre and a half .

Stay tuned for what will happen to the leftover canned tomatoes! The beef stock! The cabbage!

It Was a Cold and Stormy Night Beef Borscht

Serves 3

10 minutes to assemble; 90 minutes simmering

Saute 1 large onion, chopped,  1 clove garlic, diced, 1 leek, sliced, if you have it, 1 carrot, peeled and diced in about 1 Tbsp olive oil. Cook over high heat at first, lower the heat after about 3 minutes and saute for an additional 5 minutes. Sprinkle with 2 tsp Hungarian paprika and stir to mix.

To this add about 1 1/2 cups  canned peeled tomatoes and their juice, 1 1/2 cups beef broth, about 1 cup cooked beef, pulled into pieces, and 2 cups thinly sliced cabbage, 1 Tbsp sugar. Simmer on the stove for about an hour or until the cabbage is soft and the sauce has thickened.  Right before serving squeeze a little bit of fresh lemon juice and taste for a balance between the sweet and the sour. Serve garnished with chopped fresh dill and sour cream.