Posts filed under 'Waste'
I’m adding a new article from BBC News that seems to have a handle on how this crisis is developing. I’ve been waiting for seven years for the Italian people to get angry enough to shake their fists in the faces of those who don’t serve them. They are in the piazzas now doing just that.
In addition, there is another blog with an article on this problem with more discussion among people who care about waste.
Bear with me please. I am going to try to bring you the real story of what is happening and has been happening in Naples concerning refuse. Rai Television has films used on the newscasts, in Italian, of course, but the visuals are compelling. I’m hoping that link will take you straight to the first story, but if it doesn’t, you can select TG1 Emergenza Napoli Rifiuti, but first you must watch a brief commercial starring the old man of Italian TV.
And then you can see this, TG1 - Rifiuti, Campania ancora nel caos. I know you won’t understand the words unless you speak Italian, but the images will help you understand what’s going on.
It’s possible that this only takes you to the player and you will have to select the film you want to see.
There’s some print media on the subject, like here at Yahoo! news. I think the reports are seriously underplayed. The crisis is mindblowingly terrible and it has been building for over a decade. When I was in Campania last autumn, my friends and I walked through a beautiful gem of a city, Caserta, and had to encircle piles of trash in the streets, stinking and rotting. There’s too much trash and nowhere to put it.
The reason is partly nimby and partly corruption and partly that like almost everywhere these days, people make too much junk. Somehow, and I will let the Neapolitan politicians explain how that happened, refuse contracts were made with the mob, which in Naples is the Camorra. Even though they and their families live there, they didn’t have the sense to know they had to keep dangerous medical refuse separated from household refuse, that they needed to contract for and build landfills and that they really needed to cart the stuff away and get rid of it. Instead, they took the money and ran, not far, because they would have no power at all outside Campania, and they therefore proved that criminals are stupid, the politicians who play ball with criminals are stupid and people in general will have to come to grips with organized crime because no one else will. Now the criminals, the corrupt and weak politicians and all of the millions who live in Campania live with the resulting mountains of deadly refuse. The people have gone to the streets over this and set fire to the trash mountains, with possibly even more deadly results. I’m not sure which is more sick-making; breathing those fumes or drinking water polluted by the unburned trash.
So, you ask, why should you care? Isn’t it enough to just say we’ll skip Campania on our trip to Italy?
I don’t think so. There is no place on earth that is proof against this problem of too much trash produced over a long period of time. Those mountains of refuse were produced in what is one of the poorer parts of Italy. Imagine what is being produced in more affluent parts of the world. Now multiply that by the length of time it will take for your grandchildren to grow up. What will happen to all this stuff? Will you fill the Grand Canyon? Throw it in the ocean and kill or make poisonous all the fish? Or the latest, which is to throw it into active volcanoes? What if it just gets thrown back up?
This article in the Independent expands the statistics to include other European areas, but we all know that it isn’t just Europe.
The truth is that we all have to take responsibility for ourselves and our production of waste. We have to think hard about every single thing that becomes refuse in our own lives and how it could have been prevented in the first place. Whether that is new packaging ideas, tighter recycling laws and possibilities or just saying no to packaging and disposables and cutting back on the endless purchasing we do, something must change.
The next story could be yours.
January 5th, 2008
My wonderful digital camera still works after 9 years, but the memory card went blonky. I of course immediately tried to buy another.
They no longer make this card. What a waste to have a great camera for which you can’t buy the “film.” Disgraceful waste, I say.
I loved this camera so much I bought stock in the company. Now I won’t buy another camera from them. I will probably also sell the stock.
So it’s off to the store to buy a new camera, which because I am in Italy will be outdated technology for more than the original new release suggested retail. I guess Italians don’t care enough to put up a stink. I looked at UK sites and the prices there were even worse. UK prices on the same camera were double the US price.
But these days you can’t write a food blog without a camera.
September 8th, 2007
The menu this evening will be:
Foglie di salvia fritte
Lenticchie di Casteleucci
Cicoria brasata
Battuta di olive piccanti (or tapenade)
Vittello ripieno di vitello
Fagiolini alla greca
Torta di pesca con salsa di yogurt e zucchero di canna
Last things first, the torta. I made two. Buy pasta sfoglia or puff pastry and follow the directions for thawing it. Be careful not to over thaw, because it becomes impossible to handle without stretching it and making it tough if you do. Preheat the oven to 200°C or 400° F. My packages come with two sheets, so that I end up with two oblong tortes of about 8” X 10”.
Once it is thawed, put each on a piece of baking paper or parchment, then using a sharp knife cut straight down and remove about ½” or 2 cm of each side. If you saw, your edges will not puff up. Pick up the strip you cut off and make a border on top of the pastry sheet, cutting off the extra bit at the end. Pop them into the hot oven and cook for 10-15 minutes until puffed and browned. Remove to a surface to cool. There will be a dome in the middle, but don’t worry about that now.
Boil some water and briefly dip 6 fresh peaches into it until the skin rubs off with a finger, then using a cooking fork, remove the peaches to a bowl of very cold water. Use your hands to slip the skins right off.
Make a glaze using cornstarch, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, sugar, a dried hot pepper (or pinch of cayenne powder) and water. The recipe is free form, but I will post one below that you can use if you need it. Let it cool to lukewarm.
Using a paring knife, cut around the dome in the middle of your pastry sheets, then pull it off with your fingers, (these crunchy shards can be distributed to good little girls and boys) cut the peaches into attractive wedges and arrange them in rows across the two pastry shells. Carefully spoon the cooled glaze over the peaches, making sure to cover them so they won’t discolor and will be glued to the pastry. Put them into the fridge.
To serve, cut the tarts into 4 pieces each, and then you will layer Greek yogurt and brown sugar in a bowl, so that it comes out striped when spooned out onto the tart servings. Let the diners serve the sauce or skip it.
Next, the veal dish. This is an adaptation of a recipe I learned in culinary school that uses boiled chestnuts. Chestnuts are more wintry than porcini, to my mind, so I made up a new one that is seasoned quite differently and not cooked as individual rolls, but as a carvable roast.
Vitello ripieno di vitello (Veal Stuffed with Veal)
2 boned veal breasts
Stuffing ingredients:
1 slice of bread
½ cup of minced soffritto
1 teaspoon of thyme leaves dried or 3 teaspoons of thyme leaves fresh
Milk as needed
1 egg
1 heaping tablespoon of powdered porcini mushrooms. This you can make if you get dried ones, remove the stems and then carefully brush away any dirt from the caps. Grind them to a powder in a food processor with muscles.
Salt
Pepper
Butcher’s string
Simmering broth:
1-1/2 cups of soffritto mixture
½ pint of broth reduction your own or Better than Bouillon or something like this
Salt to taste
Water to cover
When I work with raw meat, I wear surgical gloves the whole time and then throw them away once the meat starts to cook. That way there’s no chance I will cross-contaminate something eaten raw with anything from the raw meat. I happily eat raw meat, but when I’m feeding others, I don’t take chances. You never know when something will get caught under a nail and end up in something that marinates at room temperature and then is eaten without cooking. Better safe than sorry.
Take one of the veal breasts and mince it with your trusty and well-sharpened chef’s knife. Don’t substitute with ground veal or have the butcher grind it unless you trust him not to turn it into hamburger. It should be a roughly ground meat that doesn’t pack down or emulsify.
Put the bread into a biggish bowl and pour milk over it to soften and soak it. Squeeze it with your hands to break it up really well. Add the minced veal and then all the other stuffing ingredients. Using your hands, squish it around and mix it well. I start with about 1 teaspoon of salt and a couple of grinds of pepper. When I think it is right, I take a small piece of this forcemeat and fry it to taste it. You should, too.
Once it tastes terrific, I open up and lay out the un-minced veal breast and spread this filling over it. You may have too much, but you can use it to stuff a pepper for lunch tomorrow if you do. Then roll up the breast quite gently, not tightly, and using the technique shown here, tie it up with butcher string, leaving a long loop for a handle. You will want to tie over the ends as well, though, to help the stuffing stay stuffed.
Put a tall pot on the fire and add some olive oil and then the 1-1/2 cups of soffritto mince. Sauté it until it smells good. Add a pint or so of water and then the broth reduction. If you use commercial reduction, don’t add any salt until the whole thing goes together, then taste and salt as you see fit. Lower the stuffed veal into this broth and add boiling water until it is covered. Taste for salt and correct. Lower the heat to a simmer and put a lid on it. Do not ever let it boil. Ignore it for at least 1-1/2 hours, and then start to test for tenderness with a cooking fork. When it goes in easily, it is done.
If you want to serve it cold, let it cool in the broth. If not, use the loop handle and a fork to pull it out, letting it drain a bit and put it on a carving board. Don’t carve it for a few minutes, as it is a bit delicate at first.
The broth is served to the diners in cups before the meat course, so do that while it rests. You will re-heat it if you’ve let it cool. When it has rested briefly, use a very sharp knife to cut slices—about 5/8” to ¾” if hot. Cold it can be cut much thinner. Arrange the slices on a platter and throw some thyme branches here and there , if you have them.
While the veal cooks, you can begin the Lenticchie di Castelleuci
These are very special Umbrian lentils. They are so tiny they look like doll lentils, and they stay nicely firm and have a bite even when they are cooked. I always scatter them across a plate and check for anything that isn’t a lentil. It’s much easier with these than it is with larger lentils.
The ingredients are only:
250 g (.5 lb.) lentils
.5 cup soffritto
1 tablespoon of good olive oil
½ teaspoon of salt
Water to cover about 1” higher than the lentils.
A dash of Tabasco or a pinch of cayenne or other powdered chili would not be wrong.
Heat a pot, add oil, then the soffritto. Wilt it until it smells good, stir in the lentils, add the salt and the water. Cook about 20 minutes. These are served from hot to room temperature and it doesn’t matter which.
Cicoria brasata
Any slightly bitter green will do. The cooking time depends on which you choose. I wash them very well in several baths of water—showers don’t work—and then cut them into ½” lengths. I heat a bit of oil in a heavy pan, then toss in the greens, sprinkle salt over them and put a lid on. Check for moisture once in a while so they don’t catch on the bottom before the stems are tender. These are served at room temperature, so there’s nothing else to do.
To serve these I copied the Pugliese style with puree of fave. I ladled lentils on half a plate, greens on the other half, drizzled with a bit of Pugliese oil, and then put a dollop of the battuta or paste of spicy olives on top. If I couldn’t buy this battuta,
I would get tapenade or make it. David recently posted lots of ways to make tapenade and some suggested ones to buy.
Fagiolini alla greca
1 kilo of green beans, topped and tailed, then washed
2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 ripe tomato, diced smallish
Olive oil
Salt to taste
Heat a big pot of water to boiling, then drop a small handful of salt into it, then the beans. Bring back to a boil and cook for from 90 seconds to 3 minutes. When they bite well to your taste they’re done. Drain them into a colander, put the pot back on a low burner and add the oil. Instantly add the minced garlic, and then the beans, Toss a bit, very quickly, then cut off the heat. Add the tomato dice and toss about. Taste for salt and correct. These can be served hot or cool. There just is not a prettier dish of vegetables for summer.
Just before serving the meal, I quickly fried fresh sage leaves in olive oil, then put them on paper napkins, strewn with a bit of salt. They are really nice with some Prosecco, and usually a surprise to newcomers.
Okay, this time I arranged the recipes more or less in the order you should tackle them. What do you think? Is it better to arrange them in the order in which one eats them and you figure out when to start what? Or this way?
Here again a white wine with lots of body and fruit would be great, a big oaky Chardonnay, or a light and fruity red like with the turkey in the previous meal. If you are ever confused just serve champagne. I’d like it.
Here is a lemony glaze recipe you can use.
175 ml (.75 cup) water
59 ml (.25 cup) lemon juice
the finely grated rind of one lemon
250 ml (1 cup) sugar
a couple of small dried chilis or a pinch of powdered cayenne or peperoncino
Put all these ingredients into a small pan, bring to a simmer and boil for a couple of minutes, stirring. Remove from the heat and allow to cool to tepid. Remove the chilis.
July 15th, 2007
There are two made ahead ingredients involved in the next dinner menu. One is time consuming and can be replaced, the other is easy, fast and helps avoid wasting good food.
The first is an extreme reduction of broth, in this case mostly veal and some beef. Over the winter I cooked a lot of dishes that used bony and tougher cuts of veal and beef. Every time, I made broth with them, often adding trimmings and extra rib bones and so forth. I would re-cook and further reduce the broth every time and then freeze it. In all I used about 40 liters of broth and ended up with one pint of reduction. For this veal dish I used the last half-pint of it. I’ve often told about making stock and brodo, so I won’t explain it all again, but haven’t talked before of the long, slow cooking that leads to this thick and syrupy reduction that I kept in the freezer. It can be replaced with reductions that you can buy from restaurant supply sites, or with “Better then Bouillon” reduction which you can buy in smaller quantities at many grocery stores, including Trader Joe’s.
The second is one of those simple things anyone can do to have on hand all the time. When I come from the grocery store with fresh celery, I wash it and cut the top part off. The celery I buy is longer than my refrigerator is wide—not the inside but the outside! Sometimes I chop the leaves and freeze them for adding to things I cook. Once in a while I cut off about 8-10” of the top, and cut it into 1” or so lengths, stalks, leaves and all. I then peel 2-3 carrots and 2-3 onions and chunk them into a similar size. I put it all into the food processor and pulse it until it is very finely chopped. I load this mince into cupcake and muffin forms and freeze them hard. Once hard I pop them out into plastic bags and store them like ice cubes. Voila! One-half cup portions of basic soffritto are on hand any time you need it. With one of them and a couple of cups of water you can make a 20 minute fast vegetable broth. Lots of Italian recipes start with this soffritto, usually sautéed in oil before adding the other ingredients. Three of them, a chicken and water to cover makes up into a wonderful chicken broth and a cooked chicken to use for lots of cooked chicken recipes, and the chicken won’t be tasteless and sucked dry of all its flavor, but very infused with the flavors of these “profumi.” Just strain the broth… it won’t be clear and golden like Nonna’s soup, but it will be just the thing for a risotto or a gravy.
July 13th, 2007
I made the nettle raviolis again last night with two girlfriends. It’s more fun to make stuffed pastas with friends, because there’s quite a lot of small and repetitive work involved. Until your hands get used to it, it can be slow going, so some friends, an assembly line and a glass of wine make the whole experience a very nice one.
Making stuffed pastas is also something to do with children. Very small children can make big 4” squares with a dollop of filling and then folded into a triangle. Gluing the edges together with some cool water on your finger is close to the experiences they’re having in school, too, so it’s an occasion to find out that what one learns in school is useful in everyday life. As they grow older and more adept, they can make the smaller and more intricate ones. All things considered, I think children have a better shot at getting good at it faster than adults.
Fillings can be so varied that there’s almost no possibility that a child won’t like at least some of them. It’s good for kids to know where food comes from and how it becomes what’s on their plates. When they see how delicately some things are used, they may be more open-minded about trying again things they rejected before. Somehow, mixed with other things and cooked inside pasta, spinach loses its ick-factor. And what kid could resist the idea of pork and cookies used together? Amaretti in crumbs are used in several spicy fillings where the sweet and the almond add a soft note.
This time, it was the same as last week, but I got some more photos. Why nettles again? Because the heat moved in yesterday and shortly they will bloom and become useless for human food until the autumn. (They will still make the best plant food around.) I made too much pasta, too, but I cut the rest into ribbons and dried it. Today’s lunch was some of that cooked and served with frozen sauce from the Winter Foods entry.
Here is a shot of the filling. The recipe was in the post a few days ago. Tonight’s was doubled, because we were having only the ravioli and salad. I bought peaches for dessert but we never got to them and they are the biggest ant attraction in town now.
This bowl contains a big colander packed full of nettle tops, 200 g (7 ounces) of sheep’s ricotta, which could have been cow ricotta, and 70 g (2 ounces) of grated Parmigiano Reggiano. The nettles were cooked with some salt, so I added no more, as the Parm is salty. The nettles could have been any green at all, as long as it was cooked well then chopped finely.
Here are our little half moon ravioli. Marianne asked me why I don’t use a form that makes a bunch of square ones at once and I told her it is because the dough must be thicker or they don’t seal and you end up with soup.
I think these look nice, but do NOT stack yours like this. Humidity develops and by the time you get to cook them they are stuck together and some will rip. Lay them onto a clean kitchen towel instead, which you can lightly flour for even more safety.
Heat salted water to a simmer, drop them in and when the float, skim them out. In the pasta bowls I laid fresh sage leaves, a chunk of butter and then the hot pasta. Everybody else ate theirs with more grated cheese on top, but I rarely use it unless the flavor demands it or the pasta isn’t salty enough. Unlike other kinds of pasta, do not boil stuffed pasta. A simmer is all you want.
These are Jon’s hands last week, Microplaning a really hard and really old Parmigiano Reggiano. Last night, since I had no big hands around, I used freshly grated from the shop. Finely grating 70 grams of cheese is quite time-consuming.
What else would I put into ravioli? Anything from a small piece of a very tasty soft cheese to a single shrimp. Stuffed pastas are one of the most creatively free things around. Leftover pasta sauce? Blend it, add some cheeses to stiffen it a bit and use that. Pumpkin or squash? With free-ranges of spices, absolutely. Eat them smoking hot with a well-chosen sauce or cold in a salad. Fry them and pass them on cocktail sticks with drinks. Go fusion and try fillings from other ethnic ingredients and spices.
But first of all, try making them. If you still haven’t bought a pasta roller, after being urged to do so THREE times already, you can roll them out on a floury surface with a big rolling pin. Better you than I. The pasta should be thin enough to read through.
If this isn’t pasta, although not exactly presto, I don’t know what is. Let’s get the world’s cooks to eat weeds like we do.
June 20th, 2007
On the BBC world news site, there is a photo essay with photos taken by Nepali girls. I had not realized what a desperate situation those girls lived in. You’ll be amazed at what they’ve done with a camera, but don’t neglect to read the text.
What can ordinary people like us do to help these girls? When will countries around the world, especially those in desperate straits, realize what a resource they waste when they don’t take care of and educate and free the girls?
The photo above is by Parvati in Pokhara.
June 16th, 2007
This photo has nothing to do with dinner. It is where I was on Tuesday, watching a thunderstorm move in. I was hanging off the top of Spoleto in southern Umbria.
Jessica who seeks dessert in Switzerland and her significant other, Jonathan, came to visit. Jonathan was a chef at a very great restaurant until he decided to have a life outside the kitchen. These were guests who obviously care about food, and we even set the dates based on their being here on a market day.
We trolled through the market for what looked good. Jonathan wanted to try porchetta so he bought some of that. At the vegetable stalls he liked green beans, immature red onions and some half-cured olives, so we threw them in the bag as well. We lounged around a café and looked at people, talked to a very nice Belgian family who live near Cortona and critiqued the passing fashion.
We drove on to the Coop supermarket where we could get sheep’s ricotta and try some cured meats and cheeses. We picked up a whipped lean cheese called ricciolo of something. Does anyone know what it is a curl of? It was piped into a tiny basket and was irresistible. Bread from Altamura, sì. Strawberries sniffed out by Jessica, some pasta I recommend that isn’t available most places and that they could take home.
We lazed around the afternoon, and then began to prepare last night’s dinner.
While Jessica cleaned and macerated the strawberries, Jonathan and I went out to pick nettles and mint. When we brought them in I washed them and steamed them with a spoonful of oil to remove their sting, and then minced them with my knife. Jonathan used considerable arm power to grate a really old Parmigiano Reggiano and I stirred the nettles and the Parmigiano into the ricotta we’d bought, then grated some nutmeg over it as well. Jonathan, meanwhile, made a composite butter with garlic and lemon and chilled it.
All of us had a hand in mixing up the pasta. I’ve almost nothing to teach Jonathan, believe me, but I think the damp skin image took and he absolutely agreed with me that that’s what it feels like. We rolled out sheets at thickness #6, the next finest setting, and laid them on clean towels on the dining room table. All three of us used a biscuit cutter to cut circles of pasta, then Jessica and I formed half-moon shapes with a dab of the filling, sealing them well.
Jonathan blanched the clean green beans and drained them. He cleaned and sliced the red spring onions into thin slices and then used my Indian Kari to heat the composite butter and sauté the onions impressively patiently while we built tiny ravioli. When he deemed them done, he added finely minced mint and the beans and tossed them about to coat them.
A pot of simmering salted water awaited the ravioli. Having become an Italian termagant about eating pasta smoking hot, I asked the table to be set and ready to eat within a minute, and then carefully slid the ravioli into the water. They bobbed up, done, almost instantly. I put a knot of butter into each of three pasta bowls and then used a slotted shallow ladle to remove them to the plates. A little more Parmigiano—not much—and they were ready. I thought they were lovely. Perfectly al dente shapes with a belly of green and cheesy vegetable, what could be nicer?
We served the porchetta with the green beans, and I am testifying here that those green beans were wonderful. The mint was undetectable, but surely contributed to the overall deeply sweet and satisfying whole. Crisp but cooked and the original and natural sweetness of the bean had been coddled at every step and reached its zenith. Bravo, bravo, ancora per favore!
Dessert was Jessica’s strawberries macerated with a little sugar and balsamic vinegar with the ricciolo cheese and some slim slices of baked lemon ricotta from Sicily. Again, brava Jessica! You don’t have to search for dessert any more, I think you’ve found it. In truth, Jessica bakes, so our light dessert didn’t come close to testing her, but t’was good anyway.
One or the other was flashing photos all evening, so there are photos, I just don’t have them. When they return to Switzerland, they may let us have some of them—but I get editing privilege.
Ravioli all’ortica
Pick just the young tops of stinging nettles; about a colander full
100 g sheep’s ricotta (about 3.5 ounces)
35 g Parmigiano Reggiano freshly grated (about 1 ounce)
A few gratings of nutmeg
Wash, drain and pack the nettles into a pot with a cover over a spoonful of olive oil, sprinkle about ¼ teaspoon of salt over them and slam the lid on, put them on a low flame and cook until they wilt back but are still brilliantly green. Remove them to a chopping board and mince them with a sharp knife. Put the ricotta into a bowl, add the nettles and the Parmigiano, grate the nutmeg over it then use a fork to mix it all to a firm and creamy mass.
Measure 200 g (about 7 ounces) of plain soft wheat flour onto the work counter, make a dent in the middle and break two eggs into it. Using your hands, work the egg into the flour, scraping the dough off your hands bit by bit as the egg gradually moistens the flour and becomes a dough. For this small amount, it won’t take very long, just a few minutes. I hear people say that sometimes they have to add a drop of water, but it hasn’t yet happened to me. I suppose it matters how fluid the eggs are, and mine are very fresh.
Set up the pasta roller—you did buy one when I told you to last winter, right?— and with the roller set at #1, feed the dough through, then fold in two, re-feed it, and continue to do this until the pasta has become smooth and flexible. When it reaches that point, cut the dough in half and begin to put each half through ever increasing numbers. At about number 4, cut each piece into two again. You should end up with four equal, long strips about 4.5 inches wide. Continue to thin the pasta to #6. It will feel like damp skin.
Use a sharp cutter to cut circles or squares about 3” X3”. Have a little bowl of cold water nearby. Put a small ball of the filling onto the center, wet the edges with water and carefully fold the pasta over and pressing with your fingers, seal them completely, making sure to leave no air inside that can expand and burst the ravioli. The biggest mistake beginners make is trying to put too much filling in them. As they are finished, lay them on a dinner plate.
Bring a large pot of water to a simmer and toss in some coarse salt. Put a generous knot of butter into the bottom of three pasta plates—which are called soup plates in the USA. Gently slide the ravioli into the water and have a slotted spatula or spoon at the ready. When they rise to the top, they are done. It is a matter of seconds, really. Remove them so that the water stays behind and lay them on top of the butter. Serve freshly grated Parmigiano as an option, and pass a pepper grinder, too. Any leftover pasta was cut, dried overnight, packed in paper and off to Switzerland this morning.
I have described the green beans (fagiolini) dish, but I don’t know how much of what went into them. Maybe Jonathan will tell us later, but I’m not waiting. I’m going to try to copy his mysterious ways and even if they are half as good as Jonathan’s, they’ll be worth eating.
I don’t know what you’ll do about porchetta if you don’t live in Italy. Too bad, poor you.
June 15th, 2007
This blog was destroyed and deleted last Friday. There had been an error in loading the program that no one could have predicted, and therefore avoided. The whole wordpress program was working out of a trash can file. POOF!
That could have been less disastrous if it weren’t that the site hosts did a backup before restoring the deleted file. They back up OVER the previous backup. POOF!
I am rebuilding using cached pages from Yahoo! and Google, for which I am very grateful. Unfortunately, all the comments, which are my favorite part of the blog, are gone forever, because they crawl and preserve the pages and not the things behind them. POOF!
Today I can be a bit lighthearted about this, because a gentleman in Cornwall, UK has been working to get it all installed and working again. He deserves a post of his own, for sure, because without Rich, this whole blog would still be POOF!
Over the next few days links and blogrolls and categories will reappear, and if you feel like rethinking and re-commenting, even that can get closer to normal.
Stick with me, because you are very important to me and without you, I would POOF! off into the ether.
May 15th, 2007
Much less calorific and when I made it last night I thought the angels were feeding me. And about time, too. I’m sick of dealing out one ounce portions of this and oil free portions of that.
I’m also stumped on which photo to choose, so I will put two up and you choose. I’ll remove the one we don’t like.
If you want to make regular asparagus soup, which is creamy velvet in the mouth, go to lobstersquad because she presents it as matter-of-factly as I have ever seen. This is simple cookery, folks. No magic, no special skills required. Her illustrations are ineffably finer than mine, too. However, nice as it is, I want asparagus soup without calories.
Buy a bunch of asparagus, wash them and snap the ends off. Then cut them to an even length that will fit in your big pot. Put your big pot, filled with water, onto a big burner and turn it on. Add a small fist of coarse salt. While it is heating, chop up the parts you removed, and put the pieces into a small pot with water to cover and some broth concentrate, or forgo the water and just put in broth. Put that on a smaller burner to come to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and leave it alone.
When the water boils in the POT, toss in the whole asparagus. Watch it come to a boil again, wait about 30 seconds and test. They should still be firm but not taste raw. Fatter ones will take a bit longer, but not longer than one minute. Remove it from the cooker, put the pot under the faucet and add cold water to stop the cooking. Drain the asparagus into a colander. You already have your snacking and nibbling techniques in place, I think.
After about 20 minutes, remove the smaller pot, drain off the broth and keep it. Pulverize the cooked asparagus and then sieve it– I used a food mill, but many things will do. You do not want teensy weensy openings, or all you will get is juice, but you also don’t want the fibers to remain. I milled it right back into the pot it cooked in. Add back the broth.
Pick up a handful of the cooked asparagus spears and cut them into small pieces, leaving the tips whole. Toss those into the asparagus puree and bring the whole pot to a simmer. That’s all, folks. No cream, no flour, no butter, just delicious asparagus taste and the rest of the stalks you didn’t use can be bagged and kept in the fridge for tomorrow.
It’s a very good diuretic, as well.
March 24th, 2007
Know yourself. It hurts less that way. I’ve never had anything but trouble when I’ve tried to be anything different except on stage.
It starts in my kitchen. It lately became more chaotic than even I can deal with, because there are new objects and new comestibles. They come, one by one, and each in itself doesn’t present a problem and I can find a nook or a corner for it. But over a short time you can be tempted to get another, then another, and before you know it, there’s a slum in the corner of your kitchen.
This time it was silicone baking dishes. They’re cheap here. Hmmm. They don’t burn you when you touch them. Nice. Oooohh, look! Here’s a darling shape I’ve never had before! Cute! I could use it instead of muffin tins! Then you see muffin tins and buy those too. A bundt cake form, a cake tin that can double for a pie plate, can you see what I mean? They made a pile in my pantry cupboard back in the dark and took away the room I needed for staples and special ingredients. When I tried to find one I hunted by touch and pulled out bunches of stuff before I got what I wanted and that stuff didn’t get re-organized, either. The pantry was a mess. Often the one I pulled out was warped and had to be filled with warm water to reshape it. That’s a pain in the neck.
So I pulled them all out one day and put them on a chair in the kitchen. My thinking was that if I had to look at that pile all the time, sooner or later I’d figure out what to do next, but time dragged on and they eventually had to be washed to get the dust off them and they were still in a pile in the kitchen.
One day last week I noticed that a deep drawer had developed an empty space. The drawer above it had been infected with weevils and needed cleaning out. So I did the dirty work of removing everything, dumping it into a sack for Olga’s hens, and scrubbing all the containers and then the drawer itself to be bug free. When the new things were put into the drawer, it was suddenly more spacious. So I cleaned the lower drawer. And it too became roomier. Now what was it that I needed a space for? Ahhh, yes. The silicone stuff. It wouldn’t fit. But the space looked big enough for the pile of ceramic casseroles behind the pot lids! Yes! Wow—look at that! But if I put the silicone pieces behind the lids on that dark upper shelf, I’d never see them again. Where’s the gain in that? If you don’t see it, you won’t use it.
I measured what was on the brighter and more accessible lower shelf—just possible. Out everything came and the cupboard washed out, in went the stockpots and the Dutch oven and the salad washer and behind them the pasta roller. Next to them went the gigantic lids that don’t fit in the lid rack. Yes!
The silicone went at the rear of the bottom and I slid the rack, which looks like a toast rack for a behemoth, then filed the lids in a row in that. And there was space left over, so I pulled out the cooling racks and the Italian toaster and racked those too. And gained room in the drawer under the oven for my Wasa wafers to keep them crisp. I was some kind if pleased with me.
I walked away feeling like a champion, and thought, “I could do that to the whole kitchen; rethink every part and make it all neat.” Well, yes, I could. If I were someone else, I could and probably would.
The truth is that as I thought about it I realized that I would rather be staked out on an ant hill or set loose in a forest with nothing but a match. The vision of pulling everything I own into the middle of the floor and shopping for organized space for each thing, meanwhile, of course, scrubbing out every cupboard at once was appalling. I can do two, three maybe and feel great. I even pull out the used-once-year extra champagne flutes from the tiptop and wash and polish them—once a year. I use a stepladder and leap over the sink to the big counter space behind it to do a really good job on everything back there—knife rack, dish rack, window, beams and the mask of a pig—twice a year. I get in there and go at every single part as I need to, but I never pull it all apart at once. I have this deep-seated fear that something will happen and I will never get it back to usable again.
If you don’t understand how someone could have cleared a 4000 square foot house, divided the shippable from the not needed, had a gigantic auction, packed up 6200 pounds of stuff and moved it all to a foreign country where her grasp of the language was 400 years out of date, join the crowd. I don’t know why I can’t do this.
The important and operational thing is to realize that I can’t do it. Maybe I used up all those skills doing it once.
There are people who sanitize their garbage bins every week. Bless them. Others iron Jockey shorts, socks and washcloths. (They’re nuts.) I read recently that there’s a woman who goes up to her bedroom every night, turns the bed down and sprinkles it with lavender, places a full carafe of water with its matching glass on the bedside table, then opens the window and closes the door, this all before dinner, so that when she goes to bed, it is all perfect. I would just go to a hotel if I had those standards.
I think my best recourse is to celebrate that we are all different and all wonderful. If I can get that into my mind I might even be able to skip washing that pig mask this spring. Except that I don’t think it is wonderful to have a plastic pig face coated with oil and dust from cooking.
March 5th, 2007
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