Can We Talk?
about food writing?
I am beginning to define what I want from this experience and this is the goal.
I want to write clear and easily understood recipes. I want to specialize in good food almost anyone can make. I want it made of clean, basic ingredients most people can find, things that don’t cost a lot and that are part of a healthy lifestyle. I think that phrase is lifted from some ad for reduced fat or something, but I don’t think that way. I think you can eat fat, starch and sugar if you also exercise.
I want busy people to be able to cook what I invent, even if some things they have to make on a weekend.
I, for example, don’t know who Rachel Ray is and have never seen her, but the gossip is that there’s a lot of packaged stuff in her recipes. If that’s true, I don’t want to be her, although it might be fun to be gossiped about for drinking and being loud in public. (Maybe I am and don’t know it, but if so it is among a very small group and never publicized on rec.food.cooking.) So my aim is that most everything will start from a recognizable raw thing or several of them.
My pal, Judy, of Divina Cucina says, “Shop more and cook less.” Good advice. Don’t bother with tatty and worn out vegetables, with fake cheese and false prosciutto. Good prosciutto costs a fair amount, but it gives you more miles to your penny. Don’t buy smelly shrimps or wilted greens or fake bacon bits.
It happens that I know that in Oslo you may have to travel a long way to get real Parmigiano Reggiano. I did it .As I recall, it took hours to get the real thing and even then it was available only in grated form. There was just no way I was cooking Pasta al Limone with fake parmigiano. Nor should you.
So what does this all mean? It means I need your help. If you are coming here, maybe you are making some of these recipes. I want to know how I miss when I write the methods. What isn’t clear? What led you down a wrong path and you had to figure it out yourself? Of course I would also like to hear when I got it right. (A flurry of complaints would otherwise be hard to take.)
Comments will not lead to spam or anything else unpleasant. I read 30+ blogs a day and get no spam from that. None. Online games is a different subject.
I am trying to get better at what I do, because I think it’s what I want to do when I grow up.
I’ll try to do my part and help you with your goal.
What are your thoughts on bottled pesto? Last night I made a lovely dish of chicken with vegetables and pesto and I couldn’t help wondering if it would have been better with homemade pesto. Finding fresh herbs (like basil) is a challenge here in Albania so I think I will try growing them in pots on the balcony.
You’re always welcome to email me too Judith if you feel the urge :)
I think too many things must be done to pesto to bottle it. Basil is a very delicate thing and to make it stay green you have to add something to it.
What I do is in the late summer when there is so much basil people chase you down the street to give you a peck for half a buck, is gring it up in the food processor (or blender) with good olive oil. First was and dry the basil, then pulse it until it is about 1 cm pieces, then running it continuously, drizzle extra virgin olive oil through the hole in the top until it forms a thick paste. I put it into tiny clean jars, add a thin layer of oil on top to prevent freezer burn and oxidation, then freeze it. When you thaw it, it can be used to make anything, not just pesto.
You can grow basil easily in pots if you have plenty of sun and heat. Snip snip snip it so it won’t flower.
What most of us nowadays make is not really pesto but frullato, because pesto means it must be ground in a mortar and pestle. (I frankly don’t see enough difference to force me to settle for the amount of pesto I can make that way.)
Don’t stop at pesto. A chiffonade of basil makes many things nicer.
Thanks for the participation!
Hi Judith, all you write about is close to my heart. I have a lot of jarred stuff, condiments, like jams, jellies, pastes and seasonings but by no means are they major part in the meals I make. When I am lazy or tired then I pull out stuff from the freezer that I am stashed away for such a lazy or rainy day. Puttanesca, ragu, pesto and soups freeze well but not forever.
I also think that folks don’t realize that good cooking is often very quick and uses only a few quality ingredients. Keep up your recipes I have tried the leek gratin and like it a lot.
Yeah, Gia, but you have the added advantage of having grown up in a deeply acculturated kitchen! East meets West at Torino!
I have been wondering about those vacuum sealers. Would stuff stay good longer in my freezer? As it is, I have frost on my precious Texas corn tortillas. I bought a little 5′ high and 2′ wide freezer 3 years ago, and for sure things stay frozen better in there than in the fridge freezer. It currently has mostly fruit and fruit sauces I made last summer, some meats on sale and a packet of crumpets I made before I remembered I don’t like them. It must get some brodo before it gets hot and I don’t feel like making it anymore.
Vacuum seal or not? Any educated opinions? Uneducated opinions? They aren’t cheap nor are the bags.
Thanks Judith, I’ll look for some basil seeds soon. I brought coriander seeds back from Canada but haven’t planted them yet. Is coriander used in the Italian kitchen? I made a delicious italian fish stew tonight and used a nice spoonful of fennel seeds which was lovely.
Hi Judith,
Comments about your recipes – I love the ones I have tried, especially the crema pomodoro. I did have to guess at the amounts because I don’t speak Italian, but I am liking to learn. The written parts of your recipes are fun to read and interesting in that I learn why something sould be done one way or another. Maybe you could do both, list the ingredients in one part and then tell the story of the methods etc. in the next part. Not a criticism, just a suggestion. I love your blog.
tp
What is different is weighing things instead of measuring things. It truly ticked me off at first, but now I find I have more control if I weigh.
I still have measuring spoons and cups, mostly because I still make some old recipes from the US, but new ones I pretty much weigh the ingredients.
To make it easier, there’s a free program called Convert you can get from http://www.joshmadison.com . It will alter grams to ounces. 100 g equals about 3.5 ounces. When cooking, sometimes you need a closer weight than that estimate. It won’t matter if you use an extra gram or two of pancetta or cheese, but it sure will if it is baking powder.
Judith, re vacuum seal, and I may be WAY off base as I am sort of completely not a foodie and hardly ever cooked ANYTHING until I met my husband….. but what about bagno maria? My father in law does this all the time with many various jarred items, and they last for totally ever, in the freezer and out. That’s sort of vacuum sealing, right?
Hi Judith,
Wonderful post. And I agree completely with Judy of Divina Cucina. It’s time we stopped worrying about how much food costs but rather how to best use the good food we buy so that we get the most out of it.
You can count on me for feedback for your recipes!
Thank you everyone for your help. It is invaluable.
Laurie, bagno maria is canning. There are many things you wouldn’t want to can, like things that should be raw or a T bone steak or bread. I am way too lazy to can all that much, although I do dill pickles (when I went to Germany I had an epiphany– if you want it, you must grow it and pickle it!) and jams. Both those things are very safe and don’t need special equipment. I will never be my mother, who canned hundreds of jars of things every year until she left for her nursing home. She couldn-t stand commercially canned stuff. I could if there were more of it here!
well I’m still jealous/pissed that you figured out what you want to be when you grow up….I’m still trying to figure it out…..
Yeah! And shortly my first article as a “foreign correspondent” is to be published and it isn’t even about food. It has been a busy time lately.
I shall blog a link later tonight or tomorrow.
Besides, Barb, you want to be the first automatic transmission driver in Italy.
Mmmm. Yummy blog. Keep up the good work.
I remember the epiphany. You had a face like a child on Christmas Eve.
About good ingredients and expensive ingredients: I prefer good potatoes to bad oysters (yuck!)
About recipes in your blog: I agree that having the ingredients listed is useful!
Traveller One: coriander seeds are rarely used in Italian cooking (mostly in preserves) and I’ve never seen coriander leaves used in any recipe.
Hi Judith, You have a very approachable style and I like that…I feel at home here…anyway…I do agree with your philosophy..and I am a firm believer in keeping it local as possible and fresh. I raise heirloom dexter cattle and the differance in taste is amazing. Grass fed, no steroids and funky other stuff. Grind my own organic Kansas grown wheat for bread…have my own 2 acre vineyard ( yes! we can grow wine grapes in Kansas) with a goal of a winery…I am going to help and follow you around Italy on your blog….I would love to know more about bread baking the Italian way. I want to be an expat when I grow up!:) Thanks for making my day!
Giulia, anything is better than a bad oyster, no? One of the things that has struck me in my history readings is how totally something can change in a culture. Coriander leaves were once one of the most frequent perfumes used in Roman cooking. Now no one knows it, let alone includes it in recipes. How does such a thing happen? Of course more things are the same or similar and easily traceable than totally altered.
I will try to see about listing ingredients. It does not come naturally to me because I so often have things to say about an ingredient, and I guess I feel more like I am telling a food story. There are several writers I like very much who have always worked that way– James Beard, M F K Fisher– but since I will never grow up to be the magnificent Fisher, perhaps I should consider being more organized. (And I do not want to end up looking like James Beard.)
Judith: I think your dedication is admirable, and as one of your frequent recipe-tryers, I’ll be happy to contribute to helping with clarity feedback!! I do know that I stumbled across a reality when watching a friend try to follow your crema di pomodoro recipe in my kitchen … she didn’t know how to make rice! She is not a bad cook, either, just that rice isn’t her “staple”. And not all rice comes with easy cooking directions, either…. When I reprinted your version on my website (with attribution, of course), I spelled out how to cook the rice… :>
Hmmm, I thought I sort of did say to put it in lots of water and boil it! It’s hard to consider actually starting from scratch with every possible ingredient. OTH, I am talking to a co-author about writing a book for kids on food, eating and cooking. If we do it, maybe she should get that book!
My proposed co-author is 8 years old.