Food and Drink category archives

I cook everyday, but for some reason, blog about cooking only once in a blue moon.

Feast time

August 31, 2010
locust borer on goldenrod

locust borer on goldenrod

I’m ready to let summer go. But I’m not sure summer is quite ready to let go of us: the forecast calls for a high of 90 (32°C) tomorrow. By the weekend, they’re saying, it will grow cool again — just in time for Labor Day, our version of the holiday which the entire rest of the world celebrates on May 1 in a kind of merger with pagan rites of spring, but which we Americans use to mark the end of summer with one last vacation. Labor Day, like Memorial Day, must always fall on a Monday to give us a three-day weekend, and therefore qualifies as a kind of moveable feast. As for the feasting part, that’s pretty much an everyday thing this time of year, especially for those of us who refuse to buy fresh corn or tomatoes out of season. This is the time to gorge, to spoil ourselves with sliced tomatoes in every sandwich and fresh peaches a half-dozen times a day.

Here’s a recipe adapted from one of the Moosewood cookbooks which I made for lunch today. It uses fresh chopped tomatoes in a kind of unique way.

North African Cauliflower Soup

In a big ol’ soup kettle, saute a large chopped onion in a couple tablespoons of butter. Peel and dice two medium potatoes. Grind one tablespoon each of fennel and cumin seeds. Add potatoes, spices, and five or six cups water to the pot and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, chop up two medium heads or one large head of cauliflower (I did the former. One head was pale yellow and the other was orange). Add that to the pot along with salt to taste, plenty of fresh-ground black pepper and an optional bullion cube (vegetable or chicken).

Reduce heat, cover and simmer for half an hour. Meanwhile, get a lemon out of the fridge and go out to the garden and pick some chives, if you have any. Dice one medium fresh tomato for each soup bowl, unless you’re using really small bowls, which I don’t advise for this soup (it’s a main dish, not an appetizer). When the vegetables in the pot are good and soft, puree the soup in a blender along with two or three tablespoons of lemon juice, return to the heat briefly if you’re a hot-soup fanatic, then ladle it over the tomatoes. It should be thick and creamy. Garnish with chopped chives or scallions.

6 Comments

Dictionary Fruit

December 3, 2009

I didn’t have the name for it
in English: lumpy fruit soft
as thin leather, knobbed with
the biggest outie I’d ever seen.
She took it back, sliced it in half,
& handed me one of the hemispheres
together with a Western spoon.
Kezuro wa ne, oishii desu yo,
she said, speaking slow & smiling
as if to a child. That first seedy,
pulpy spoonful tasted like
it could have been any fruit.
I remember the brush of her fingers
on mine, & how it suddenly became
difficult to meet her gaze.
I placed the empty skin cup
upside-down on the table & fumbled
for my dictionary. Pomegranate,
I said, handing it over with my finger
on the word. Her brows knit
as she sampled the unfamiliar syllables.
I still have it, that little red dictionary
bound in thin fake leather.

For Read Write Poem’s pomegranate prompt.

Also posted in Memoir | Tagged | 21 Comments

Drunkest Guy Ever Goes For More Beer

October 26, 2009

The anonymous YouTube folk hero speaks out

The security cameras only catch
one side of the story. Notice how they stick
at the 38-second mark, keep me standing
still as a parking meter for long seconds
only to skip
faster than light to the far wall
& its chorus line of coolers.

Just because you’re looking down
doesn’t make you omniscient.
What appears to the straight-laced
like a shopping trip gone awry
was really a pas de deux
with some wild weather.
True, I am loose as a flag
flailing around its pole,
buffeted by winds you barely feel.
But drinking is an escape into the open.
I round an aisle or pull on a door handle
& the cross-wind catches me;
I try to walk like a sober person & I go down.

And there on my fundament
I begin again,
exploring the deep
contingencies of consciousness
with all four limbs at once,
supple as a newborn.
Luck — as the madman
of Chu told Confucius —
is lighter than a feather,
but no one knows how to bear its weight.
Be it a 12-pack or a bowl of candy,
as long I cling I’m anchored
to the spot.

But in the end, in the part that got cut
from all your amusing remixes,
when I let go & just sit for a minute,
my body remembers on its own
how to evade the world’s
persistent embrace
& I rise & walk.

Also posted in Beer, Humor, Poems & poem-like things | 13 Comments

Split

September 7, 2009

eye of the bread

In a poorly lit temple museum in Japan, there’s a thousand-year-old sculpture in unpainted wood of a monk caught at the moment of enlightenment, his face splitting open like a cicada’s shell to reveal the monk beneath. This reminded me of that. In the first ten minutes after it goes into the oven, the dough experiences a burst of expansion before the heat kills it — or, if you like, transforms it into its next, immobile state. Many bakers, disliking irregularity, cut slashes into the dough so it will split where they want, and sometimes I do this too, but most of the time I prefer to be surprised by what opens and what stays closed.

Also posted in Photos | Tagged | 19 Comments

Family Restaurant

August 20, 2009

Underneath the spoon’s
small lake of chowder
she fears her face
is still staring back,
upside-down, like
some girl in China,
& depending on the angle,
either outlandishly skinny
or outlandishly fat.
She shuts her eyes
& quickly shoves it in.
“Delicious, isn’t it?”
her mother smiles
from the other side of
their round, round table.
__________

In response to a word prompt at Read Write Poem (from which I used only the first word, “spoon”). Read the other responses here.

Also posted in Poems & poem-like things | Tagged | 16 Comments

Kneading

August 13, 2009

From the first fist into
the risen mass, the dough
is a-hiss. To live is
to master a liturgy
of winds — even yeast
knows this. Gas
whispers out through
a thousand pinholes as
I fold & press, fold
& press that limit-
less quilt.

*

Written for the RWP vowel prompt. Other responses may be found here.

Also posted in Greatest Hits, Poems & poem-like things | Tagged , | 19 Comments

Early American Hotbread: the best cornbread recipe ever

July 4, 2009

This is my adaptation of a recipe from the classic Cooking with Wholegrains, by Vrest and Mildred Ellen Orton, originally published in 1947. A Google search only revealed one mutilated version of this on the interwebs, so I thought I’d do my part for God and country and post it myself. This serves four to six people, goes great with chile or baked beans, only takes a half hour to make, and is, as the title suggests, the best cornbread recipe of all time. As one proof of my claim: You know how regular cornbread is kind of gross to save and eat for leftovers? Not this stuff. It’s almost as good the second time around!

EARLY AMERICAN HOTBREAD

Preheat oven or toaster oven (saves electricity!) to 425° F. Grease a nine-inch-square baking pan, ideally with lard.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the bejeesus out of one large egg. Whisk in one cup milk and two tablespoons maple syrup or honey (but really, you want maple syrup. American maple syrup, not that inferior Canadian stuff).

Sift in one cup whole wheat flour, ¾ cup corn meal (either the regular stuff or masa de harina, e.g. Maseca brand, for an even earlier American flavor), and one tablespoon baking powder. Add one teaspoon salt and stir forcefully with whisk or spoon until complete and harmonious integration is achieved. Then mix in three tablespoons of oil or melted lard with as few strokes as possible. (It’s all in the wrist.)

Spoon into the waiting pan and smoosh and smooth it until it’s flat as Kansas, then bake it for twenty minutes.

It can be cut and served immediately after removal from the oven. A good, flat metal spatula does wonders for removing hot cornbread from the pan.

*

Leftovers tip: Cut a piece of cold cornbread in half, heap a spoonful of hot salsa on each half, top with a slice of cheddar or jack cheese, and heat it in the toaster oven until the cheese is all melted and bubbly.

24 Comments

Theory of the garnish

January 28, 2009

Crescents of lemon & circles of orange orbit the earthly paradise of the plate. A freshly felled miniature tree, a replica of the inner ear fashioned from a single slice of apple — the garnish turns eating into a cautious act. We pause with our forks poised over carrot curls & strawberries exposed as if for surgery, pickle slices stacked like green coins. How many truckloads of produce bound for the city each day go into these brief displays of inconspicuous non-consumption? It seems wrong to keep count. The devil is in the details & that’s where we like him: red as a maraschino, ridiculous as a toothpick parasol. During a rare lull in the general hubbub, one can just make out the bellowing of a prep cook who’s severed the end of his pinky.

Also posted in Greatest Hits, Poems & poem-like things | 8 Comments

Open-faced sandwich

December 12, 2008

peanut butter sandwich

First the crust must be carefully removed from the slice of bread. The peanut butter must be mixed with wildflower honey, or vice-versa. Then the ambrosial spread is ready to be removed from the sandwich, one fingerful at a time — or if that seems too slow, by direct application of tongue to bread. Don’t worry if some of it ends up on the face or in the hair; it can be cleaned out later.

The hard work of chewing becomes easier once the tastebuds have been bribed. Cleared of spread, the bread may be cut into bite-sized pieces to facilitate consumption. The least appetizing part — the crust — is saved for last. Maybe it will be eaten and maybe it won’t.

This is the currently popular train of lunch-time events, and the wooden caboose may be pushed back and forth to help keep it in motion. The black-and-white cow stands in for a docile passenger. And as the wheels turn, the conductor spins, a big grin on his round wooden face.

Also posted in Photos | 7 Comments

Bell Pepper

November 25, 2007

Something has drilled a tiny hole
right above the base of the bell pepper.

I try to picture what it must’ve been like
to inhabit that green cathedral space as it expanded
& its single cloud grew ponderous with seeds.

Imagine the light & the sliding shadows of leaves
shaped like enormous beetles.

Imagine an orange sunset, in the absence of a horizon,
starting from random spots
that slowly spread across the vegetable sky,
deepening week by week into fire-engine red.

There is no heart like this, so roomy, so full of sugar.
If it is a bell, it’s much too good at absorbing
every kind of blow — or else
its tone is too high-pitched
to be heard by anything larger than the head of pin.
__________

Written for the prompt #2 at Read Write Poem. The other responses (mostly food poems) are here.

Also posted in Poems & poem-like things | 11 Comments
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  • "On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
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