Bad Home Cooking

A little Peas and Quiet

I get a few cooking magazines sent to me every month. Three to be exact. Two of the three baffle me upon arrival in my mailbox. Every month I get my Bon Appetit and I ask myself what I was thinking when I ordered it. Its pages are filled with recipes for gracious outdoor parties and uber-cool dinner salons. The people in the photos are all beautiful and interesting-looking. The kitchens are showcases. The recipes presume a certain level of kitchen know-how and go from there. They also make assumptions about your gear. Naturally the kind of urban sophisticate who throws Tuscan dinner parties on her inlaid-brick patio have all the right equipment. Me? I have what could pass as a patio, but I don't have a George Foreman grill. I don't have a pasta maker. And while I think I may have a lemon zester, I have never actually used it for its intended purpose, which, come to think of it, I'm not really clear on anyway. It did nicely scrape residual tape off my landlord's wood floors recently, though. One day I may have the skill to attempt a recipe within the pages of Bon Appetit, but not this week. In fact, likely not this decade.

I get Gourmet also. I don't remember ever ordering it. Maybe I was sleepwalking? Maybe it's somebody's idea of a joke? Barbara Cleaver Tilsner nudging me from Beyond? Anyway. I flip through it and promptly toss it into the recycling bin. Why would somebody like me even attempt a recipe found in such a magazine? Even the weight of the paper stock intimidates me.

The one cooking title I subscribe to with delight, however, is Everyday Food, a clever, paperback sized magazine that features the kinds of recipes people like me might actually try, and even better, might actually have some success at. Yes, it is published by Martha Stewart Living, but obviously they've found a new, lower-caste niche audience and are exploiting it to great profit. Over the cover title a banner reads: Your Guide to Fast, Great Meals. I like fast. And I like great. Wouldn't it be great if I could actually make great, fast meals for my family?

The book excites me because it makes cooking well seem so accessible. The recipes are all broken down into simple steps. They even include a shopping list so you can actually have all the ingredients onhand before you start (a common misstep of mine). It has features aimed squarely at me and my ilk. "Food Facts" is one page all about a commonly-used foodstuff - honey, for example, or wine, or tomatoes. It has a page about spices, a page about basic kitchen items you might find helpful, like a chef's knife, or a cheese grater. There are recipes on basic sauces, so you never have to guess about how much garlic to use in your vinaigrette ever again.

I flip through the pages and feel my sap rising. Zucchini frittata. Asian chicken and chili soup. Potato leek soup. Gingered carrot salad. I dog ear many pages. I use Post-It notes without restraint. I almost paw the pages. The photos are simple, uncluttered. Inviting. I might be able to make some of this, I think.

I'm not normally prone to deluding myself. As of my most recent birthday, I'm afraid my dreams of being discovered to star in a Broadway musical are long behind me. I will never grow into my looks. My skin will never clear up. I accept all of that and more. And yet, when it comes to cooking, hope springs eternal. I feel that desire to cook well should supercede utter lack of ability and talent. And so I forget past embarrassements and forge ahead.

I forget about the meatball soup debacle, for example. That's a recipe from Everyday Food. And it's for the best that I've blocked out what I did when trying to create the white bean chili featured in the "Cooking for One" section. You just don't want to know. Some things can not be written about.

And so it was with this particular dementia that I flipped through my latest issue of Everyday Cooking and set my eyes upon a recipe my entire family would enjoy (switch on copywriting tone).

Tortellini with peas. My kids like tortellini. They like peas. They like garlic and they like Parmesan cheese (especially when they don't know it's there). If I could make this dish I might successfully add to my daily evening repetoire, which these days seems to consist mostly of plain pasta, breakfast cereal, Dino Nuggets and edamame beans.

Tonight I tried it. Although maybe I should have waited until a day that was not Friday, as well as a day that we didn't have a play-date over. Also, it's hard to concentrate when your kitchen iPod is competing with your six-year-old's Godzilla movie in the next room. But when have I ever let chaos stop me from cooking?

Well exactly.

OK. Here's what you need:

1 1/2 pound frozen tortellini (yeah right. Like I live in North Beach or something. Get a package of dried from Trader Joe's)

Some frozen peas

2 tablespoons of butter

1 garlic clove, smashed

1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

course salt and ground pepper

Cook the pasta about two minutes less than it says to on the package, then throw in the peas. Cook on until the pasta is al dente and the peas are tender, two minutes more. Drain the pasta and peas, but reserve 1 cup of the pasta water.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pasta pot over a medium-low heat. Add the smashed garlic, and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Discard garlic (or eat it, because it's yummy and good for you.)

Dump your pasta and peas, the Parmesan cheese and most of the reserved pasta water, back into your pot with your butter sauce. Mix it all together. Add salt and pepper. Add more water if necessary. Top with additional Parmesan if desired.

Couldn't be simpler, right? Here's where I fouled up.

The timer dinged just as I was yelling at the kids to stop playing with their light sabers in the house and I drained the pasta even as I realized that A) I forgot to put the peas in and B) I forgot to reserve the 1 cup of water.

So I dumped the steaming, not-quite-drained pasta back into the pot, poured the butter sauce onto it, dumped the Parmesan in (I had grated, not shredded) WITH the frozen peas and mixed it all together really quickly, hoping the friction would help cook the peas.

I forgot all about the course salt and pepper.

It didn't look so bad, though. The cheese melted nicely. The peas cooked through. I put some in a bowl even as my children and their friend were rolling pillows and other objects down the stairs, and I gathered up my library book on the Alhambra in Spain, and I sat down at my Ingo table in the kitchen and I ate my tortellini and peas in relative peace and quiet, all the while reading about why things were always better in Andalucia, even 1,000 years ago.

And I had a small epiphany of my own. My kids would sit and eat this dish. When they got hungry enough.

Also this: I don't like peas.

Tortilla y ya!

Originally published in August 2006

I did it. I nailed the tortilla. Or at least I made a version of it that both tasted great to me and impressed a flamenco guitarist who grew up on the real thing.
Here's how I did it:
Four small to medium Yukon potatoes, washed but not skinned. Cut in half, then again, then sliced from there.
One medium onion, sliced
two garlic cloves, diced
a cup of oil. Olive oil is fine, but corn oil is more flavorful it seems.
Six eggs, lightly whisked.
A dollop of milk.
A bit of chopped parsley. A tablespoon at most.

Heat most of the oil into a NONSTICK SKILLET. If you don't have a non-stick skillet, your tortilla won't turn out. I don't know how women in Spain did it before this invention, but thank God I live in the plastic age.
Add the garlic and onions - saute for a bit, then add the potatoes. Stir once or twice to cover the potatoes in oil, then don't touch again. Cover
Ccook for about 20 minutes. Don't brown. But a little brown is always ok.
Drain the potatoes. I remove them with a slotted spoon.
Whisk your eggs with a dollop of milk. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Add the remaining oil to the skillet and return the potato/onion mixture. Pour the eggs over this and stir once or twice to cover the potatoes. Don't forget to add your parsley.
Cover. Watch.
As it cooks, shake the pan a little every now and then to make sure the tortilla isn't sticking to the bottom.
When the eggs are almost cooked, (mostly solid except for a small pool of runniness on top) take a plate, put it on top of the pan and FLIP that tortilla. Slide it back into the skillet and cook on the other side. Five minutes or so.
Return to the plate.
Let cool for ten minutes.
Pour your glass of wine, break out your crusty bread, and make merry.
Buen Provecho. Or however you spell it.

You say potato, I saw potawto...

Christina Bess, a kitchen Goddess I worship, once told me that there are two kinds of people. Pie people and bread people. I am, according to her, a pie person. I went through a phase years ago of making apple pies from scratch at Thanksgiving time. These, to my delight, seemed to turn out deliciously, and won the accolades of everyone who dared a mouthful. Alas, peeling and cutting a bag of apples and making pie pastry by hand takes patience and focus I no longer seem to have, so I haven’t made a signature pie in a long time.
But apparently I still have the baking stuff. For someone who’s a bad home cook, I can bake surprisingly well. Not like Audrey Smith, of course, but I can make edible Christmas ginger snaps and passable Toll House cookies. It’s also a little known fact that I make a mean zuchinni bread.
So the other day my daughter was looking through her “World Cooking” book and asked if we could make scones. I’d made these once before, using the recipe from Mark Bittman’s marvelous “How to Cook Everything” book, and presented them, along with tea and a dozen chipped and mismatched tea cups, for snack to her Brownie Girl Scout troop. They were a huge success. And not too hard, as I recall.
Funny thing about scones. We here in the states pronounce them “Scones,” with a long O, and joke about the hoity-toity British, who pronounce them “Scawnes.” Actually, though, in Britain, where accent dictates who you are and where you sit on the economic and social pecking order, only Sloanes, or the wretched upper classes, pronounce “scones” with a long O. “Only ponces say Scones,” sniffed Annie’s Dad, Luke, a Brit from North London. Non-ponces (middle class and below) pronounce it “scawnes.”
Well. Who knew? I tried to say “scawnes,” for a long while, but in the end, it just sounded too, well, poncey for me, so I reverted to my Yank diction.
At any rate, darlings, making the bloody little things is dead easy.

From Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything”

2 cups all purpose flour (plus some more as needed when it’s time to knead the dough)
1 scant teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
5 tablespoons cold butter
3 eggs
¾ cup heavy cream
1/3 cup raisins, cranberries or blueberries
1 tablespoon water

Preheat oven to 450
Mix the dry ingredients together, reserving 1 tablespoon of sugar
Cut the butter into bits and work them with your fingers into the dry ingredients until you have an ever-so-slightly moist mix.
Beat two of the eggs with the cream. Using a few swift strokes, blend this into this mix. Use only a few strokes to beat your raisins or whatever into the mix.
Turn the now sticky mixture into a ball and place it onto a floured surface to knead, no more than ten times
Press the dough into a ¾ -inch thick rectangle and use a glass or a biscuit cutter to cut into rounds
Place the rounds onto an ungreased baking sheet. Reshape the leftover dough and cut again. You’ll get about 10 scones.
Beat the remaining egg with the 1 tablespoon of water and brush the top of each unbaked scone with this mixture. Sprinkle each with a little sugar from your extra tablespoon.
Bake 7 to 10 minutes or until the scones are a golden brown.

It couldn’t be easier. But of course, you must pay a little more attention to details than I do if you want perfect success. My scones came out OK, but a little dry. When I went back over the recipe, I discovered a few mistakes I made:

I preheated the oven to 350, not 450.
I read the part about withholding one tablespoon of sugar, and withheld one tablespoon of butter instead. So of course my dough was going to be dryer than it should have been.
My daughter was helping me knead, and got carried away, because let’s face it, kneading is fun. Like playing with Play-Dough. I think over-kneading changed the consistency of my dough.
Feh. How typical of me. Christina wouldn't have made such trifling mistakes.
In the end, the scones were OK. Good enough for the kids, anyway. But it was another humbling moment for me, reinforcing my knowledge that a little concentration goes a long way in the kitchen.

Tortilla Española Take Two

Originally published in June 2006

I feasted on Antonio de Jerez's tortilla all week. I had three pieces when it was still warm. That next morning I reached into the fridge and ate it cold, con mucho gusto. I brought a large piece to my neighbor Tamlyn, who often brings me portions of her delicious and soul-satisfying soups and ragoux and who I knew would appreciate this delight. I fed off that beautiful tortilla for several days, until there was nothing left but a few crumbs. And I ate those, too.
And then it was gone. I stared at the empty plate and felt...alone. Insecure. I had the same kind of general sinking feeling I get when I drink the last of my Two Buck Chuck. "Oh no. It's gone. Now what am I going to do?"
Then my daughter started putting the pressure on for me to get her some Pop Tarts. Not Trader Joe brand pop tarts, but the real stuff, in all their chemical preservative goodness. I was hungry. I wanted tortilla. Then I had a brainstorm.
If I'm at Ralph's, I thought, I can just get the ingredients for tortilla and give it another try. It's easy, right? It won't take long.
I can make my own tortilla and eat it tonight!
So the girl got her Pop Tarts (S'more Pop Tarts...igg!) and I procured the necessary items to try, once again, my own tortilla. Thanks to the thoughtful and very good-looking Tony Triana for the list. To be safe, I replicated even the brand names.

Three tablespoons Mazola corn oil (that's what Antonio de J. uses, apparently. Not olive oil)
one and a half Paul Newman organic russet potatoes
one bunch Italian parsely
5 eggs

I peeled and chopped one medium potato, which was much smaller than the russet potato I used on my first attempt, so I added a second, smaller potato.
I fried these up gently in my cast iron skillet, stirring often so they wouldn't stick. I didn't want to let them brown either, just soften.
I added just the tiniest big of chopped onion.
I whisked five eggs in a glass measuring cup, added salt and black pepper.
I chopped up about a fourth of a cup of parsely.
I found a pan I felt sure would mold the tortilla into a pleasing shape, and I oiled it up well.
I drained the extra oil from the potatoes, and transferred them to this new pan.
I added the eggs and the the parsley.
I watched. I jostled the pan so it wouldn't stick. I used my spatula to loosen the sides.
When I felt it was firm enough, I put a plate over the top and flipped the whole thing so that I could cook the other side.
And here's where it all went to hell.
Most of it stuck to my pan. The part that didn't both crumbled and dripped onto the plate.
With no form left, there was nothing to do but scrape it all back into the pan and cook it up.
That's when I realized my many mistakes.
To wit:
- I don't have any sense of proportion. My potato-to-egg ratio was embarrassingly off, to significantly worse results than last time.
- Wayyyyyyy too much parsely.
- structural problems. It stuck to my pan, even though I oiled it and kept it all moving and the result was gloppy chaos. There are some foods that simply must meet a basic aesthetic standard and a Spanish tortilla is one of them. Antonio's was round and firm, like a cake almost. It's pleasing to look at. You can't wait to cut into it.
I'm still very far from my goal. I have the ingredients, but only the vaguest idea of how to combine them properly.

The results of this round: Crap. A potatoe stir-fry with some egg and some parsely.

Viernes Alegria

Originally published in June 2006

Tony actually did it. He paid cash money to Antonio de Jerez to make me a tortilla española. But he wasn't allowed to stay and watch this alchemy, oh no. He brought over all the ingredients, two expensive German beers and one crisp new Jackson but was then sent away. He returned a few hours later to receive the perfect, hot tortilla.
"She really wants the recipe, Antonio. Won't you tell her how you do it?"
"I don't think so," said Antonio. He handed Tony the results of his clandestine labor. "And make sure you bring the plate back."
So Tony brought this beauty down to me, still warm under tinfoil. You can see that it's a flawless piece of art. And it tasted every bit as perfect as it looked - lofty, but dense. Slightly salty. Chewy. Filling. Perfecto, eh? But after careful inspection, we realized we were no closer to its secrets.
Stay tuned...

Tortilla Española Take One

Originally published June 2, 2006

The first time I ever ate the simple Spanish dish known as Tortilla I was in a restaurant in New York City with my agent and my editor. They told me this place made a killer tortilla so I went ahead and ordered it, wondering in my stupid Southern Californian way about how I liked homemade tortillas as much as the next Mexican but did they really constitute a meal? Anyway, the lovely potato and egg pie that arrived in front of me set me straight. Fast forward about ten years. My agent and editor, along with any alleged publishing potential I may have once had, have dissolved into the sinkhole of time.
And yet. And yet. The tortilla abides. I cling still to that dream. So simple it’s silly. Egg and potatoes. Add whatever you want, it’s still a cheap and nutritious meal. Peasant cooking, really. Comfort food. Starchy. Filling. Good hot or cold, they’re ubiquitous in Spain, where they come in all textures and shapes and grace the counters of tapas bars high and low.
It’s one of those dishes that everyone knows how to make. Except for me.
I’ve got a thing about simple dishes. I want to master them. I want to be able to make good miso soup, or a dal that brings tears to the eyes. I feel like I should be able to whip up the simple but cockle-warming dishes that anyone’s grandma can make. And yet, it’s the simplest recipes that most elude me. My inattention, my many distractions, coupled with wretched self-esteem in front of the stove, foil my best intentions, no matter how elementary the recipe is in front of me.
This is my journey, though. Step onto the road to failure and fail, big time, until I at last get it right. It's kinda fun when you think of it this way.
And nothing is more fun than trying to wring a basic recipe out of a bunch of flamencos who don't really know and wouldn't be able to remember anyway even if they did.
I’d been told that Antonio de Jerez made the best Tortilla in Los Angeles. If you’re into flamenco and you live in Southern California, you might have heard of him. But since you probably aren’t, and so haven’t, he’s a singer, from Jerez de Frontera, Spain. Been here since the mid -70s. Now in his 50’s. About this tall and bitter, and very close-mouthed when it comes to disclosing the secret to his outstanding, perfect tortilla.
I had it at a party once, and indeed, it was an extraordinary thing. Cool, cut into slices that you could eat out of hand or wrap in bread. The fresh, chewy, ever so slightly salted taste of egg cooked with potato. It was hugely satisfying with a salad. If I’d been left alone I could have eaten the whole of it by myself.
I asked him for the recipe. He laughed and walked away.
After a trip to Spain in which I ate a lot of tortilla, but only one, in Granada, that matched his own, I redoubled my efforts.

I pinned him at the bar of a crowded Pasadena restaurant where he was gigging with Tony. "Antonio!" I call. I notice he cringes and tries to turn away.
"What do you want?"
"I want to make your tortilla. How do you do it?"
“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
“C’mon! Tell her,” said his girlfriend, Maria-Jose.
“I can’t! I don’t really know. It’s different every time.”
This is standard Gypsy tact for squirming out of being pinned down on anything. Ah, but I was a journalist for years and years. I can counter squirm.
“Let’s say you have one medium potato,” I say. “How many eggs? Four?”
“More like two. Maybe Three.”
“Three eggs for each potato.”
“…er, yeah, I guess.”
“What about four eggs?”
“Too many.”
“So three eggs then. Firm?”
“I guess.”
“Yes? No?”
“Yes.”

So I used five eggs because that’s what I had left, and what’s the sense in leaving yourself two eggs in the fridge?
And I used one and a half russet potato because just one potato didn’t seem quite enough to counter five whole eggs. I peeled them and chopped them, doing my best to create orderly, proportional squares.
Olive oil. No idea how much. Enough to fry potatoes in.
A little tiny bit of onion.

Onion? Everything starts with an onion, remember.
But oh yeah, not every time.
“No! No onion!” Tony is alarmed when I ask him this over the phone. I don’t tell him that as we speak I am already sautéing an entire medium onion, chopped.
“So never any onion?”
“No!” he says. “OK, maybe just a little bit, for flavor. “But only the tiniest bit.”
Damn. I don’t know why I’m listening to Tony exactly, since I don’t think he’s ever turned on his own stove much less attempted a tortilla. But he grew up on his Dad’s tortilla, so presumably he knows a bit more about its making than I do. And I need a roadmap of some sort, so I take his advice. I spoon most of the onion into another pot, telling myself I’ll use it to make lentil soup later on that night. In my skillet, I leave only the “tiniest” bit.
Next I throw in the potatoes, and cook them up. But I don’t stir them enough or else I didn’t use enough oil, because as they cook they stick to the bottom of my skillet.
I whisk up the five eggs and add them to the mix. Then I put the heat on medium and watch.
There are always secrets with the simple dishes, I’m discovering. How much of this in proportion to that. How long to cook, and on what heat. When to turn, when to stir. Little details not ever articulated or written down in the cookbooks that will trip you up at every turn unless you know enough to intuit them.
“You’ve got to cook it just so,” Tony had warned me. “You don’t want to undercook it, but you don’t want to overcook it, either.”
“Well how long, exactly? What does that mean?”
“I dunno. You have to ask Antonio.”
I watch the tortilla bubbling in my skillet. I'll just have to guess when it's done.
There are also equipment requirements for a good tortilla, I’ve discovered. A simple iron skillet, medium sized, will allegedly do the job, but for me anyway, it’s not the right tool for the gig. Maybe there’s a special “tortilla” skillet – I imagine there is, since the high-end kitchen market is there to meet even the smallest of needs with an expensive and beautiful pan. Anyway, I don’t have such a pan. Only my two cast iron skillets, found at flea markets long ago, that have served me well so far and will be one day passed forward to whichever kid expresses the most interest.
Another tool I lack – a more flexible spatula, so I can get in there and flip that thing. Apparently that’s the challenge of tortilla for most people – the intact flipping of the thing. Tony told me that his Dad used to use the lid of the pan, so I duly try it and, no surprise, fail miserably. It had not yet cooked enough to retain a solid shape. A quarter of the tortilla oozes out onto the lid while the remainder sticks to the skillet. I curse myself bitterly as I dig at it with my spatula, and eventually manage to flip the tortilla, in two pieces, onto its other side to cook. Truly. I just suck the big dog in the kitchen. I’m not worthy of the apron I wear.

And so it sits. My first tortilla Española. In two steaming pieces on a square yellow plate. The top is burnt black, but not exactly scorched. I’ve done worse. Still, I wonder if I shouldn’t just throw it out now and save face. I decide to let it cool first.
Fifteen minutes later I decide to taste it. When I fall on my face, I like to wallow in the pain for a little bit. I’m funny like that. Not only did it look like crap, no doubt it was inedible too. Oh, the suffering. So I cut off a little slice, away from the burnt bits.
It’s chewy. Eggy. Potato-y. It’s not inedible at all. In fact, it’s kind of yummy. I eat another slice.
The girl walks through the kitchen. “What’s that smell, mom?”
“It’s my tortilla.”
Silence.
“Wanna try some?”
Basically I bribe her, promising her fame and fortune on this very blog if she tastes it and tells me what she thinks. She slowly comes around and agrees.
She inspects her piece carefully. She smells it. She takes the smallest nibble. Chews. Considers. She takes another, slightly larger bite (this indicates success already in my book). She takes a THIRD bite and pronounces it “OK. But you burned it.”
Yeah, yeah. Of course I burned it. “But you liked it enough, didn’t you?”
She shrugs, pops the rest into her mouth, and flees my kitchen.
Later on Tony comes over and agrees to try my tortilla. Imagine the hubris! My serving my first tortilla to a guy who grew up eating his Spanish father’s tortilla. I understood where I was on the tortilla totem pole. Would I deign to present this as an actual meal? Not me. To make clear that this was a taste test and not a meal, I handed him a piece on a napkin. Granted, Tony’s prone to forgiving my every fault, but in this instance of ethnic pride, I think he’d tell me if it sucked. The prospect of my total failure perversely excites me. At least I’m on the road to learning. He takes a bite. I search his face for the horrible truth: It's an abomination.
He raises his eyebrows and shrugs. “Actually not so bad,” he says. “A little heavy on the potato maybe.”
“You’re just saying that,” I say.
“No.”
I decide that the proof will come if he takes a second piece. He doesn’t. But he does take a second bite of his first piece. And that, my friends, is not a small battle won.

Lessons learned from this, my first summit attempt:
Less potato. Balance the egg to potato ratio.
Fry the potatoes in a separate skillet to prevent burnage.
Pam that damn skillet up like a greased pig. My next tortilla should pop right out of there.
Cook a little longer over a medium flame. Since I didn’t really time it this first round, I can’t say how much longer that would be. I will try to intuit.

Stay tuned for Tortilla Española, Take Two. The plan is, we’re gonna pay Antonio de Jerez to make one, then we’re going to take it home and dissect it….

Kitchen Goddess One

Originally published in May 2006

I must tell you about Leah, a girl I roomed with just after college. A girl I shared almost nothing in common with except a great, grinning love of food. Leah was a half-Chinese, half-white twin. Born and raised by artist parents in San Francisco’s North Beach, Leah's most interesting element were her looks. She was a sexy creature, with her long black hair and cinammon skin and indecipherable heritage. Ten units shy of a degree in theater from San Jose State everyone but her knew she'd never finish. A cocktail waitress. A party girl. Men swirled around her: pretty men, older men, playboy bachelors. She was uninterested in anything that wasn't shiny and exciting. She had hundreds of shoes, a mini-skirt in every hue and texture, and not a single book. She came home one afternoon to find my boyfriend and I on the living room couch engrossed in our novels and laughed all afternoon as if she’d never seen such a sight. For a while, we had the perfect living situation – she would get to bed about the time I’d get up in the morning for work, and when I returned home she’d be putting on her makeup to get out the door for her shift at a local nightclub. Sometimes I’d hear her return in the wee hours, often with friends, or a man or two, and they’d quietly take their bong hits or have their final drinks before retiring to her bedroom on the other side of the bathroom from mine. I was just out of college, working part time as a receptionist at an architecture firm and part time at an art magazine. I was madly in love with a man I’d met on the student newspaper, a man with a baritone voice and a 67’ Chevy Impala who wrote like John Steinbeck. This was back before everything. Back when I fretted about whether I’d ever really be a working writer. Back before I even wanted children. Back when $300 in the bank was cause for relief and back when I bought what is still my most valuable possession: a six-inch-thick 1923 Oxford Dictionary, found at a garage sale around the corner for just $10. Leah and I had nothing in common, and, truth be told, we didn't particularly like each other. But she was neat, and considerate in her message-taking and bill-paying. And with our schedules, we never had to spend more than an hour in the same room with each other. We didn't need to be best friends, we agreed, as long as we were good roommates.
The only thing we did share was a fascination with eating. Every month or so we’d meet at a Chinese restaurant somewhere downtown and we’d dine, both of us practically dancing a jig with anticipation. She’d order dishes on the very edge of my Caucasian ability to ingest. And except for the sea cucumber adventure, I went through every door she opened and never looked back.
At home, Leah concocted wild hybrid Asian meals out of ingredients I’d never seen or heard of before. She’d make a giant pot of rice every morning, and use it throughout the day as her staple, over which she’d throw all manner of curious things. She hipped me to kim-chi, that spicy, fermented vegetable glop that graces every Korean table. She’d crumble ground beef into an iron skillet and fry it dark brown and crunchy, almost always setting off the smoke alarms, and on top of that she’d scatter a handful of some dark, mystery ingredient pulled from a dark earthenware jar with Chinese lettering that she kept covered in tinfoil. Then she’d throw the whole thing over a bowl of rice and hand me a pair of worn wooden chopsticks and bid me dig in. Delicious. Smoky. Tangy. I developed a taste for kim-chi over rice as well. She made her own brown rice green tea. Her steamed white rice was always perfect. She kept coral-colored persimmons in her hanging basket by the kitchen window and every so often she'd stop and lean over and snatch one up to hold it to her nose to determine its ripeness.
One day Leah’s waitress shift changed and she started hanging out more during the evenings when I was home, and not surprisingly, we clashed. Soon thereafter I got my first “real” newspaper job and moved up the peninsula and out of her life. We spoke only a few times after that, mostly to argue over the phone bill. We never broke bread together again.
But to this day I remember her. I use chopsticks regularly. My love of kim-chi has surprised and delighted Korean friends met much later. The mystery ingredient she threw into her ground meat was preserved turnip, which you can buy at any Asian market, although I haven’t seen the keen little jar with the lettering for many years. Maybe Ranch 99 is too upscale for that sort of thing. Yes it looks a little funky to white eyes, I suppose, but it's really adds a delicious smoky, tart flavor to meat or rice.
I think of her every year when the persimmons come to market, and I buy them for no other reason than because I love their color and shape on my table. Funny. I bring them home and set them out, and every now and then I snatch one up and hold it to my nose, even though I don't particularly like them.
And Leah’s secret to rice is this: wash the rice first to release its spirit. Drain, spread flat on the bottom of your pot and fill with water so that it reaches the top of your thumb nail, if your thumb is just on top of, not buried in, the rice. Bring to a boil. Cover tightly and simmer for 20 minutes.
Thanks, Leah. Wherever you are.

The road to hell is paved with...

I was reading my own blog and berating myself over just how much rewriting I needed to get to when I realized that most every entry features a recipe of something I can actually make. Lentil soup? Got that one down, for the most part. Chicken No-No soup? Yeah yeah. Rice? No problem. Haven’t nailed the Japanese breakfast yet but that’s a work in progress. I realized that I was woefully off-topic only a few entries in. Perhaps this indicated that years of trial and error had helped hone my feeble skills in the kitchen. Maybe I was getting better. I wondered whether my blog name was even accurate anymore. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad home cook after all.
Alas, no.
Just this last week: two culinary disasters,both because of maddeningly elementary reasons.
Audrey S. is a friend and neighbor. A housewife/mom who turns the stereotype on its ear. She’s Martha Stewart if MS was black and went to art school. Her womanly skills are formidable, and her talent in the kitchen is legendary. The woman makes her own jam and ketchup, for God’s sake. When Audrey invites you over to try something, you drop everything, get in your car, and show up with a little gift to thank her for the honor. She is a Kitchen Goddess I will feature at more length in another entry, but I introduce her here because she hipped me to a meatball soup recipe so simple a child could make it. I expressed doubt.
"Maybe your child..." I muttered.
“No, this is really simple,” she insisted. “And it’s delicious.” Only a couple of cans and some frozen meatballs are involved. Nothing could be easier, she promised.
Naturally I tried hers, and it was of course to die for – hearty and piquant, but not greasy or heavy. I’d pay $12.95 at a bistro for that very soup. Especially if crusty bread were included.
So she left the recipe on my message machine that evening.

Two teaspoons of olive oil.
Two thinly sliced garlic cloves
¼ tsp red pepper flakes
One bunch of kale, wilted for three minutes
Two cans reduced sodium chicken broth
two cup or so water
One can canelli beans
20 frozen meatballs

Serve with course salt and fresh parmesan cheese.

That very night I bought some frozen meatballs and some chicken broth from TJ’s. It didn’t sound so terribly hard, did it? And my dad was coming over that weekend. He’d love a nice, steaming bowl of meatball soup, some fresh bread, and a cold glass of German beer, wouldn’t he? What dad wouldn’t?

My first mistake. I cut up half an onion and sautéed that in the olive oil. The recipe doesn’t call for onion, but I have internalized the dictum that all good cooking starts with an onion, and there you go. Right from the start I altered the taste and made it wrong. Heavier than it should have been.
First mistake and a half – Audrey said to brown the meatballs before I threw them into the broth. But how do you do that, exactly? Fry them up in some olive oil? That was the only way I could think, so, into the frying pan they went.
Second mistake. I didn’t have all the right ingredients, and I tried to improvise. Bad move. Others can improvise. I need to realize that with me, improvisation in the kitchen only leads to bitter failure. Why didn’t I write down the needed ingredients on a Post-it note and made sure I either already had them or arrange to buy them at my last trip to the store? Martha Stewart would have done so. But of course that requires forethought and organization, qualities I don’t possess much of. The consequence was that while I was sautéing onions in olive oil and frying up the meatballs, I realized that I didn’t have red pepper flakes. I could have sworn I had red pepper flakes. I searched my cluttered shelves. I pulled out my spice bin and plumbed its depths. Twice. But there were no red pepper flakes. Nor did I have canelli beans. And I couldn’t find kale at the store.
What I did have was red chili powder and garbanzo beans. And I’d bought a big bag o’ greens to use instead of the kale. Greens were greens, right? And the recipe called for only ¼ teaspoon of pepper…how bad could I mess it up by using chili powder instead?
The smell of frying meat hung uneasily in my kitchen. I turned the stove fan on.
I cut the garlic into three clumsy “slices, using the wrong knife.
I threw several handfuls of greens into the pot, covered it, and let steam. After about three minutes I lifted the lid and saw with relief that they had, in fact, wilted as promised.
I added the chicken stock. Plus the two cups of water. I added the meatballs, sizzling, into the mix.
I almost forgot about the beans, but I added half a can of garbanzo beans at the last minute. I simmered for a while, then served.
I threw some sea salt over my bowl, and some ground black pepper. I got my parmesan cheese out of the fridge, but noticed it had gone over. Oh well. I took my first bite, expecting a clean, brothy taste similar to what I’d just sampled at Audrey’s…
No. What I’d made was a greasy, flavorless, urp-inducing soup that I wouldn’t be able to stomach a bowl of myself, much less serve to my father or foist upon my starving children. Once again I had fouled up what, on paper anyway, was a simple, straightforward dish. I threw half of this down my drain and threw the rest into a plastic bowl destined for the fridge. Maybe if I let it sit overnight its flavors would mingle and it would improve.
It didn’t improve. It did mold over nicely when next I checked though.

In my second ruinous kitchen gaffe I quite simply over-steamed asparagus until it fell apart in the tongs I tried to take them out of the steamer in. I have successfully steamed asparagus in the past – but my problem this night was that I was trying to hastily put together a simple meal for a friend and got flustered and lost track of time. It’s not too complicated to correctly time a piece of salmon, with heating crusty bread and steaming a vegetable, but it’s apparently beyond my abilities. Coming on the heels of my soup oops, and because this was for a guest, I was furious with myself. Steam asparagus for 5, maybe 10 minutes – I think…don’t forget about it for 20.
It’s always worse when you’re trying to cook for somebody and it comes out wrong. Even when the guest eats it graciously and proclaims it delicious, as my guest did, the ugly facts remain – I am a miserable, incompetent cook and I’m man enough to admit it. I really want to be a good home cook and nourish my friends and family with my output, but I suck in the kitchen. I have many, many examples of good intentions gone horribly, inedibley wrong, the most egregious of which I plan to share with you on this blog. This week’s fiasco simply reminded me that I’m still a bad home cook, and may indeed always remain a bad home cook. Come to my house and let me make you something.
At your peril.

Chicken No-No Soup

Originally published April 2006

With a title like this, you’re probably thinking that this is a dish I’ve spectacularly mangled. But you’d be wrong (for the most part). It’s a very easy dish, and one that I’m particularly proud of because my daughter actually requests this from me, which means that when she grows up and has kids of her own, God willing, she may fondly remember something I made for her from her childhood kitchen. I don’t remember anything from my childhood kitchen other than creamed tuna on toast and crock pot chicken over rice. Sorry Mom. I think of you as one kick-ass woman; the dame I’d want in my corner if I ever found myself in the gutter with one nickel and a shot glass. But if I had to ask how to cook a roast chicken, I’d ask someone else first. She taught me how to drive a stick-shift, write a killer resume and stare down an angry man twice my size. Puttering in the kitchen didn’t interest her, which really, is admirable for a woman raised in the ‘50s. I do continue to wonder about her penchant for processed food, though. To this day she can’t see what’s wrong with pre-cooked fettuccini Alfredo in a bag from the 99-cent store and “fresh” bread pulled out of a Pilsbury cardboard roll. No wonder I’m so crap in the kitchen: No early training and questionable culinary genes.

When I’ve polled my friends who cook about what childhood experience compelled them to excel in the kitchen, they all say the same thing: They watched their mothers cook for them. They helped her in the kitchen. They sat down to hot meals at the family table every night. Food and the preparing of it became entwined with their sense of self, home and health. Their stories made me think of large, extended families in gracious East Coast homes; traditions; coherence. These people most certainly did not sit down in front of the idiot box with a TV dinner on a tray. Somewhere along the line I must have decided it was an admirable trait, this cooking from scratch for your family. Because I started trying, in my own feeble way, around the time my daughter started eating solid foods.

And so we’re back to the chicken no-no soup. When my daughter was a toddler, one of the only foods she’d eat was Trader Joe’s chicken noodle soup. It had noodles and veggies and heck, she had to eat, so she had it pretty much every day for probably her entire third year. She pronounced it “Chicken No-No” soup, and the name stuck. Years later I tried making my own version of it, and the concoction I created wasn’t half bad, as evidenced by the fact that my daughter, now hovering around 10-years-old and a full-blown kid with opinions of her own, actually requests it. She doesn’t want the store-bought soup anymore. “Make your home-made soup, Mom,” she says. She likes it; devours two whole bowls of it, and often eats her younger brother’s portion of it, too. Which means she’ll remember it fondly, and tell her friends about it. I imagine her sitting in Paris, where she’ll be studying the art of pastry, and she’ll be a tall, gorgeous young woman who all the French men will covet, because although she’s an American she is tempered by her bookish demeanor and her laughing yet haughty green eyes. And she’ll say, “I know you said this bistro had the most exceptional chicken soup in Paris, Etienne, but you know, my mother made a superior version.” And Etienne will try to argue, but my daughter will wave him away. “Argue all you will. My mother’s is better.”

I’ll have taught her how to make it herself, but she’ll always prefer the bowl I make for her myself. She’ll make it for her own children, and maybe for her grandchildren. “This is what my mother made for me when I was a little girl,” she’ll tell them. And they’ll wonder what kind of woman I was, what I must have been like, to make chicken no-no soup like this that was so tasty and fragrant. And that means that my scattered, no-tradition Southern California family will have created a culinary tradition as good as anyone’s Italian or Jewish grandma.

And in a way, that’s immortality for you. If somebody remembers the chicken no-no soup you made for them, you'll live forever. I’ll take that over fame any day.

Two end notes: Yes, I did once foul this dish up by putting too much pasta in for too long. It got way too starchy and became more a soggy noodle and vegetable dish than a soup.
And no, I’m not on Trader Joe’s payroll.

Mom’s Home-made Chicken No-No Soup

One tablespoon olive oil
One pint Trader Joe’s chicken broth. Free-range or organic, who cares which?
One cup water
One medium onion, diced
Two cloves garlic, diced
One teaspoon ground cumin
One teaspoon ground coriander
One half teaspoon ground tumeric
Four or five pieces of chicken, raw or pre-cooked.
Two small zuchinni squash, cut
Lots of baby carrots
Two handfuls of pasta, preferably the curly kind
Sea salt and pepper to taste.

Cut the onion up as best you can. Smash the garlic with the back of your knife, and chop it up, best you can.
Sauté the garlic in the olive oil quickly to flavor the pot (I learned this on a cooking show I saw once). Add the onions. Sauté until translucent.
Add the spices one at a time. Give a swirl to each before adding the next. Tumeric is great for you and adds a lovely golden color. Sauté gently for another few minutes.
Add the chicken broth and the water
Add the carrots because they take a bit longer to cook.
Bring to a simmer - add the chicken bits. I like to use Trader Joe’s flash frozen chicken bits myself. After they’re cooked through I cut them up into smaller chunks and add them back to the soup.
Add the zuchs.
When the soup has simmered about 20 minutes, add the pasta.
When the pasta is al dente, add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with fresh crusty bread.

Rainy Day Lentil Soup

Today it rained out of the blue. Didn’t read the weather reports. Had no idea it was going to piss. But it did. And I sat around the house, not writing, hungry and cold. And then I figured I’d do something about it. I pulled out my Xerox copy of the soups from the Convent Garden Soup book and turned to my favorite; Lentil and Tomato soup with cumin and coriander.

I am not a good cook. Much of what I attempt turns out, if it turns out at all, not what it could be. But with lentil soup I seem to have a modicum of touch. It turns out tasty more time than not, which for me is a success.

My theory is that in a past life, I lived somewhere on the Levant. All my life I’ve been drawn to things Mediterranean: the food, the music, the colors, the smells, the men.

My favorite recipe is easy, and almost impossible to foul up. Except that I did once because I used chicken broth instead of vegetable broth. It tasted awful and I couldn’t figure out why until I pulled the broth container out of the trash. That’ll teach me to cook while divorcing.

Pay Attention!

2 tablespoons olive oil.
1 medium onion, finely chopped.
¾ teaspoon ground coriander
¾ teaspoon ground tumeric
¾ teaspoon ground cumin
pinch of ground cloves
1 and ¼ cup red lentils, well-washed and picked over
14 oz chopped tomatoes (in a can, silly)
2 pints vegetable stock (one Trader Joe’s box of veggie stock)
fresh coriander leaves
sea salt and ground black pepper

First, you must rinse the lentils. Measure them out and put them in a bowl. Run water over them and scoop them around with your hand, drain, and repeat until the water runs clear. This might take five minutes or so. But it’s an important step if you don’t want brown scum in your soup. You don’t know where these lentils have been.

Drain the lentils, set aside.

Chop a medium onion (or half a large one) as finely as possible. Even with the fabulous Wusthof chef’s knife Luke got me for my birthday I can’t manage fine chopping of any kind. This wouldn’t surprise my kindergarten teacher. I could never neatly cut anything. I content myself with medium chop. You go ahead and try for fine.

Sauté covered for five minutes. Don’t burn it. That means keep the flame on medium, watch it, and stir occasionally.

Add the spices. I round up to one teaspoon per spice. You have to try hard to overspice lentil soup. For that pinch of clove, I crush two or three cloves with the back of my knife and stir that in.

Add the carton of vegetable stock. I use Trader Joe’s brand because it’s good and because it’s convenient. If you want to use your own stock, I applaud your ambition. Using those Herb Ox cubes will diminish the potential of your lentil soup. Just run out and buy a can of veggie stock, would you? Learn from my mistakes.

Add the lentils. Stir. Cover and bring to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes until lentils are tender, then add the can of tomatoes. Stir again. Simmer some more. Season with lots of ground black pepper and salt.

The original recipe calls for pureeing this liquid with the fresh coriander leaves, and adding a little sauté with fresh green chili. I never do this, and it still turns out OK.

I dish this up with toasted pita bread and a dollop of plain yoghurt. Let the pita bread get soggy in there. Num!

Many lentil soups improve in texture and flavor after they’ve sat in the fridge for a day or two. This is definitely one of those soups. A pot of this will make you a dinner and two happy lunches.

Bon appetite!