#10 - A Celebration of a Menu Completed

I had spent an entire nine months living in a dorm with an 18-year-old college freshman roommate the year I turned 29, and when I got my first school library job and was finally living in a duplex with a garage (a sure sign of security to my rural Midwestern psyche), I was dying to cook.  I had a paperback copy of The French Chef, the book accompanying Julia Child’s first series, and a non-stick omelet pan was my first major cookware purchase for my duplex kitchen.  Although I was seven years older than she was and she was just a first year English teacher, Debbie and I made decent whirlwind shopping trip friends, and that’s what we had just done when I decided I would invite her to have a spur-of-the-moment supper with me that weeknight, a school night yet.  We had to have omelets, since eggs were the only protein I had in the house, so I whipped up two eggs each and grated on a little cheese, probably Kraft American, while the omelet was setting just so in the pan, and I might even have managed some chopped parsley, because before I left that duplex, I had a cold frame and herbs I could over-winter, even in Kansas City’s nasty freezes and blustering winds.  Debbie sighed with pleasure, “Isn’t this great?”  She was leaning over the footstool, the closest thing I had to a table, which I had insisted she use because she was the guest while I balanced my plate on my knees.  “You’re good at this.  The food was already here; we didn’t have to buy anything, and it was ready in less than 15 minutes!”

Countless times I have done that since, although certainly not always within 15 minutes. I’ve branched out from omelets to spaghetti carbonara to my current roast chicken breast, pulled from the freezer and defrosted in the microwave, and I’ve had varying degrees of success. Now that I can call on a $20.00 bottle of Washington red wine regularly, sometimes the failures get nicely covered up!  I cater a real family dinner, complete with a braised meat almost every week for my brother’s family, where the sighs of pleasure are infrequent, but there is always that moment when everyone relaxes into the meal and actually spends a little time chewing and enjoying.  My niece or nephew might ask a question, and conversation might take off having nothing to do with the food, but they might as well be saying, “Isn’t this great?” just the way Debbie said it all those years ago.

I call that experience of supplying comfort through food Supper Satisfaction. The satisfaction element has little to do with any pleasure derived by the diners; it actually has more to do with my having cooked what I wanted to eat, and everyone I served just happened to enjoy eating that, too, while they connected as family members or supper guests.   Score, and I win twice!

I want that for you.  Ultimately, I want you to feel freedom from tyranny of recipes and comfort with techniques, so much so that you actually might enjoy the cooking you have to do.  You still might hate cooking, but I hope that doesn’t keep you from having one meal you can do without dreading it or resenting the effort it takes to make it for your family, and it shouldn’t dirty every dish in the kitchen or make anyone tired just thinking about producing it.

Here’s how you do it with the menu we just finished:

1-      Set the oven to preheat to 350 degrees.  Pull out your roast chicken breast baking sheet, as described in #2. Pour on the cashews and prepare them with olive oil as described in #6.  When the oven reaches 350, put the cashews in the oven and set a timer so you’ll check them in 7-9 minutes. While you wait, prepare the chicken breasts, as described in #2,  and get out the rest of the ingredients for the cashews.  This is where you’d cut up the second vegetable you were planning to roast with the chicken, like little potatoes or butternut squash or a couple of bell peppers, but don’t let those cashews burn!

2-      When the cashews are toasted, you can either anoint them with the rest of the ingredients right there on the baking sheet or move them quickly to a plate and finish them, so that you don’t have to wash/wipe the baking sheet for the chicken.  Finish the cashews without dawdling, and put the prepared chicken (and your second vegetable, if that’s what you decided) on the baking sheet, place it in the oven and, while you pour that glass of wine, set a timer for 30 minutes so you won’t forget the chicken.

3-      Now you have time to sip a bit while you bring water to the boil on the stovetop and prepare the broccoli as described in #3. Concentrate on cooking the broccoli carefully and getting it drained to wait till you’re ready to serve.  Hopefully, that was completed with about 7 minutes to go till chicken-doneness, and your cashews should be crisp and cooled enough to eat, so you can nibble while you cook broccoli. 

4-      While the chicken rests for its ten minutes after it’s roasted, you’ll have time to reheat the broccoli with a pepper-garlic garnish, if you want, or you can cut up some carrot sticks, or pull that red cabbage slaw you made last night from the fridge (#7) for your second vegetable, if you didn’t roast something with the chicken breasts.

5-      The table is set; the family members are assembled; you’ve appointed someone to wash a piece of fruit, and bring it, with a plate and a sharp knife, to the table,(including that orange you zested over the cashews!) and you can top up your glass of wine, knowing that there are brownies in the freezer which you might share if everyone makes nice at dinner.

There are countless ways to get that meal on the table without your having to bake brownies (#9) or prepare that cabbage slaw (#7 ), but the general outline will always be the same, and the more often you do it, the more efficient the process will become.  It’s also my goal that eventually  you’ll be able to search this blog using each element of a menu so that you can mix and match at will.  Imagine the possibilities!  However, this menu, and this one alone, could be your continuous go-to, once a week, with just a little effort on your part.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with hiring someone to cook the rest of the time, and if you can afford that, then choose someone who sets up a menu the same way I do, with colors and complementary tastes and textures and foods that fit together. Lori does that.  One look at her website might even inspire your own cooking, because her menus read like those colorful cookbooks we all collect.  Link here:  http://nourishfoods.net/ and you can link to her Facebook page from her opening webpage if you want to know more.  She cooks the way I would if I had the energy to cater, and she makes healthy things, like fish and kale, which I wouldn’t do even if someone paid me bunches of money.  Apparently, she LIKES these things!  Go figure.

Nothing tops that feeling of knowing you provided what’s sitting there at the table, and if everyone sat down and ate even just a bit of it, that’s true love they’re eating—even if all you were really doing was cooking something you wanted to eat. That’s Supper Satisfaction, and you can have it, too.

Next time: Another menu cycle begins

#9 - Dessert, otherwise known as chocolate

The succulent with the pink flowers, bergenia, which grows on my rock wall has bloomed--in February, for heaven’s sake.  To a Kansas girl, relocated from windy, frozen tundra conditions, Seattle’s green in mid-winter is unbelievable, so much so that I forget those other encouraging signs of spring until that pink flower shows up, clambering up the wall of rocks lining my driveway.  I consider the pink flower’s bloom to be the high point of my winter, and daffodils won’t be far behind. 

I have used dark chocolate in much the same fashion, to be the high point of a day of questionable repute, a reminder that pure joy can be experienced in eating without lifting a finger to cook.

My 53^rd birthday, nine years ago, was my first one in Seattle, and I did those medical things you’re supposed to do in your fifties with my first doctor here in Seattle.  Her nurse took my blood pressure, and when my doctor came into the examining room, she placed her chin in her hand just so while she looked down at the reading on my chart and said, “Do you think you eat a lot of salt?”  I had to reply that I’d been known to knock back a potato chip or two, and she went on, “because your blood pressure readings are teetering on the low range for high blood pressure, and if you wanted to try cutting back sodium, I’d encourage you to do that.”  Controlling my diet beat taking blood pressure medication, so I murmured something like “thank you, thank you,” and backed my way out of her office.

My first stop was the library, where I checked out everything I could find on high blood pressure; we librarians think all answers are in books! The books faulted things like Mediterranean diets, where we don’t get enough protein spread throughout our day, and there was some other mumbo-jumbo about high carbohydrate intake which irritated me, but I decided that if I chose my breakfast cereal based solely on sodium content and curtailed all use of processed foods like my beloved Zatarain’s rice mixes and canned soups for lunch, I could continue much the way I’d been eating—which was, after all, pretty darn healthy where vegetable and fruit choices were concerned—but that I would never, ever give up dessert, even if it were only chocolate.  Dessert then became one square, a mere ounce, of a dark chocolate bar, but I ate it three times a day.  My blood pressure did drop, after time, and has stayed steadily just at the low-high end for nearly 10 years, although I doubt that the chocolate is solely responsible.

Such diligence in dessert control hasn’t stayed with me, however, but some form of chocolate has always been my go-to dessert choice.  Sometimes, I need the chocolate to be a rich brownie, always made with Droste cocoa or Callebaut 45% semi-sweet or Ghiardelli unsweetened if we’re talking melting chocolate.  Other times, I’m content with a Double Chocolate Milano or a LU Little Schoolboy, the 45%, not the Extra Dark.  If I’m making my Caffe Mocha Muffins as a sinful breakfast indulgence, I’ll use one 70% Lindt bar instead of the recipe’s suggested chocolate chips. But somewhere in the day, one or other of these forms of chocolate has to show up, and these are the only brands and resulting textures that I want.

I remember a story my mother has told only a couple of times, but it has stayed with me, and I think it fits in this chocolate-as-dessert-justification.  Although my grandfather had some Scotch ancestry and was a United Presbyterian, the stricter kind and not the more liberal version of Presbyterianism; AND although my grandmother gardened and canned and stewed and preserved; AND although my mother and her siblings were growing up in the Great Depression on a farm in Nebraska, none of these factors seems to have stunted their family enjoyment of food nor scarred them with worry about scarce provisions.  My mother mentioned that barrels of potatoes and apples were stored in their basement, and when she was sent down to fetch one or the other, her mother or father always advised, “Get the best, and then you’ll always have the best.”  She allowed as how that got pretty hard in an approaching spring when the potatoes or apples were wrinkled and dried out, but at least she could bring up the ones with the fewest bad spots.

In similar function, I always have my brownies or those lovely muffins in the freezer, and there’s always an open box of one of the two favorite cookies in the pantry.  All last a long time, stored properly, and getting home to eat one means that I have “gotten the best” instead of settling for an inferior dessert somewhere else.  I ”have the best” at home; I can wait to “get the best.”  It’s sort of like cooking for yourself first, before you consider all the other needs in the family, and if dessert is a part of that planning, maybe some days, you should even eat it first!

Next time: A celebration and summation of our first Supper Cook menu!

The quickest, easiest brownie, using the fewest dishes, in case you don’t have a favorite recipe:      

Better Homes and Gardens Brownie

(a classic recipe for an 8x8 pan)

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a square baking pan, 8x8x2”.

2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate (I use Ghirardelli or Valrhona)

1/3 cup unsalted butter

Melt chocolate and butter together, using a double boiler if you have one, but paying close attention and stirring, otherwise. Let the mixture cool slightly while you gather the rest of your ingredients.

1 cup sugar; 2 eggs

Using your favorite wooden spoon or rubber spatula, beat in the sugar and, adding each separately, the eggs, to the chocolate/butter mixture

3/4 cup flour; 1/2 tsp. baking powder; 1/2 tsp. salt

Blend in the flour, baking powder and salt.

Now’s the time to add anything wonderful: up to 1 teaspoon of instant espresso powder or a tablespoon of Grand Marnier or Kahlua or the grated zest of half an orange or 1/2 cup of toasted walnuts/pecans or 3/4 cup of 60% chocolate, chopped into 1/8 inch chunks/chocolate chips or 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon.

Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan.

Now’s another time for another type of addition: dollops of peanut butter/almond butter in each quadrant of the pan, which you then swirl with a knife thru the mixture or the same of any thick jam or preserve like raspberry or blackberry.

Bake 30 minutes or just until set in the center, watching those edges.  If the edges are brown, get the pan out of the oven ever so fast as you can.

Refrigerating overnight makes cutting squares easier, if you’re planning to do so.  Otherwise, just serve them direct from the pan after a slight cooling.  And, as always, get the ones you don't eat in the freezer immediately, where they will provide you with pleasant anticipation for a long time to come!

The recipe makes 16 2” squares.