#6 - The Freezer

On the farm, the freezer was the chest type, horizontal to the floor and not vertical, and no doubt a Sears purchase, and it might be pumping the cold yet today, wherever it is.  It lived on the enclosed back porch, which in and of itself wasn’t warm in the winter, anyway!  Being asked to get something from it was the beginning of a scary adventure, first for the bone-shattering cold in the winter, and, second, because I was never tall enough to reach easily to its contents, generally packages of meat stacked up from the bottom of the chest in neat columns, placed by type of meat and cut.  The last carton of sweet corn was definitely an exercise in balance, me hanging mostly upside down and holding my breath until it could juuust be reached. 

The tiny freezer compartment in the kitchen’s fridge on that farm was where the ice cream lived, exclusively, so when I set up housekeeping for myself, I never pictured myself needing more freezer space, because, after all, I no longer had to store half a pig or cow nor had a garden.  It wasn’t long, however, before I requested a small one as a Christmas present, and my father was happy to oblige, again from Sears, and I’ve moved it with me through two duplexes in Kansas City and finally here to Seattle.  It’s always lived in the garage or the basement, and getting something from it is still a pretty scary proposition, depending on the time of night!

That freezer, however, is mostly for loaves of bread, my own baked goodies, backup unsalted butter, and only one package each of the three cuts of meat I fix just for myself. 

The fridge freezer upstairs in the kitchen has become my gourmet palace, and neither of the freezers functions as a place where food goes to die.  Instead, I treat each as a valuable comrade-in-arms for meal production, chiefly because I don’t cook for leftovers, so there are never any in there!  Just as I do with the refrigerator, the freezer’s contents are rigidly placed and patrolled often, and I do find an occasional stray surprise, like fudge or the last piece of lemon poundcake.

I’ve also discovered over the last couple of years that cooked beans freeze wonderfully, just the way nuts always have, and individually frozen pieces of fruit make great smoothies, so much better in texture than the same fruit fresh from the fridge.  You drop your yogurt into whatever whirly, chopping thing you use for smoothies, pull several frozen raspberries/banana chunks from the plastic bags or waxed paper cocoons in which they’re stored, and then when you squeeze the honey bear over that mixture, the honey doesn’t incorporate into the finished product.  Instead, it gets almost hard and taffy-like.  Mmmm; a honey-string smoothie.

Once I tried cooking dried chickpeas myself, I’ve since been unable to use canned ones, as though they were some inferior food product, so I’ll cook just a cup of whatever dried bean I need--cranberry, black, chickpea, and my latest find, a huge butter bean type called Corona—and then I’ll use about a third cup for the recipe I have in mind, and then I double-Ziploc-bag the other two portions with a bit of their cooking liquid, placing the bags flat on the floor of the freezer, so they freeze that way.  After they’re frozen solid, I can stand them up in a little plastic box so they’re all together and can be pulled forward like file folders in a file drawer. When I see it there at the back wall of the freezer, I always have to laugh about my “bean file.”

However, I’ve been doing the same thing with nuts for years now, because I could never find those pesky little packages in the freezer when I needed them.  The “nut file” is a shoe-box sized clear plastic box, and the nuts themselves are double-bagged in sandwich bags, because I’ve usually bought the nuts from the bulk section rather than in the Diamond or Planter’s sacks.  Cashews are always in the front of the box, luxury nuts that they were in my past, and so it is that I’ll see them and think, “Hey, I haven’t made a stir fry for weeks!”  You see, that’s why I started keeping cashews in the freezer because I never had them when I wanted to add them to my chicken stir fry with broccoli and celery and scallions.  When I realize that I haven’t used them in awhile, I yank them out and roast them for Citrus Curried Cashews, and, once roasted, they’ll last in the cupboard for a couple of weeks, parceled out for yourself with your evening glass of wine at Supper preparation time.  You’ll just have to add 15 minutes to the front end of your preparation of Roasted Chicken Breasts (#2 – The Protein That Never Fails) to do the same thing yourself.  Talk about efficiency!

The recipe(s):

Curry Powder – The Family Mix

Begin with ground coriander.  Measure out about a third of the jar you’re trying to fill. All other spices, then, are measured according to how much coriander you used.

Measure one-half as much ground cumin, chili powder, and tumeric.

Measure one-third as much coarse ground black pepper.

Measure one-quarter as much celery seed.

Measure one-sixth as much nutmeg or mace, clove, cayenne, and ginger.

Store the mixture with a bay leaf and a dried red chili and a cinnamon stick, just to make it look pretty.  But you never know!  The essences of these whole herbs and spices might just permeate the mixture and add their culture!

Citrus Curried Cashews

This recipe is my adaptation of the buttered, curried cashews served at Columbia City Ale House here in Seattle:  http://www.seattlealehouses.com/?

Prepare the spice mixture and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  For one cup of cashews, you’ll need the grated zest of one orange (about a tablespoon), 1 tablespoon of curry powder, and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt.

Turn the whole raw cashews in 2 teaspoons of olive oil in a dish, and then spread the oiled cashews onto a baking sheet so they’re all in one layer.  Roast them for 7 – 9 minutes, sort of until you can smell them. 

Pull the baking sheet from the oven and use a spatula to turn the cashews over rapidly.  Begin sprinkling them with half the spice mixture, turn them again, and sprinkle with the rest of the spices.  Allow them to cool on the sheet, and as they do, they’ll become crisper.

Store, covered, for a week or more.

Next time: I’m taking a month break, and when I come back, we’ll finish our first menu.

#5 - Meal planning - tastes and textures

Seattle is now in its November-December mode of seemingly continuous rainy days---unfortunately with what I call “real rain,” meaning that it gets you wet when you walk in it.  Still, this is Supper’s best weather, the cold and dark of which makes looking forward to Supper most satisfying. 

I live along the southern edge of Lake Washington, and in late October, there begins this curious gathering of crows, flying in big flocks toward a common meeting place, it seems.  When Daylight Savings Time leaves us and Seattle’s descent into the darker November begins, I’ll look out and see the first big groups about 3:30 in the afternoon, winging their way south and cawing argumentatively.  They sound as if they’re discussing Supper, actually, and I never see this natural happening without wanting to pour my evening glass of wine and pull out the ingredients for the evening meal. Given that the assisted living facility where my parents live begins serving Supper at 4:30, I don’t believe my wanting to start cooking that early is a bad thing, and the daily appearance of the crows makes it seem just right.

It also makes me remember fondly how true autumn was announced in the Midwest, with huge V’s of geese, flying high and honking loudly, so much so that you could hear them even at night or in the Kansas City suburb where I raised my daughter.  True, they flew the other way in the springtime, but for some reason, the flight and its accompanying clatter were never as distinctive in the spring. 

So, those geese and this month’s throng of crows makes me crave autumn and winter flavors instantly, right along with wanting to race into the kitchen and start cooking.  I can smell cinnamon and clove, ginger and nutmeg, and I can almost taste them in soft, dark gingerbread as well as butternut squash, two entirely different textures but equally satisfying tastes.  I can feel the crunch of toasted walnuts in a salad with avocado and grapefruit as well as to recreate that flow of slight bitterness they produce back over your tongue after you swallow. And rosemary, with that strong and herbal scent, beckons.

Supper, too, has to have play among various textures and tastes, and those elements are as important to one’s satisfaction and enjoyment of the food as are the food’s nutritional and colorful attributes.  Creamy is one of those textures, and we just came through what is possibly the biggest creamy food festival of the year in some families, what with mashed potatoes and various preparations of sweet potatoes and creamed corn/puddings.  If you don’t already read Smitten Kitchen, you should.  Deb admits she isn’t a fan of things mashed with what proves to be entirely too much dairy in her pre-Thanksgiving post:  http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/11/sweet-corn-spoonbread/   But I find them necessary rather often, because they make a starch a whole different ballgame on your Supper plate.

Other necessary tastes and textures are salty, crisp/crunchy, density, and melty butterfat.  “Salty” is pretty obvious; it’s why you can’t be satisfied with only ice cream for Supper and probably the single reason it’s traditional to serve pancakes with bacon.  “Crispy/crunchy” as a texture isn’t attained just by slipping a carrot stick onto one’s plate; sometimes, you need toasted almonds scattered among your green beans or the aforesaid walnuts on your soft cheesy toasted bread,  and doing so means that you’re increasing the number of nuts in your daily diet.  Nutritionists across the land will rejoice!  Density is a matter of biting into something at which you actually have to work, so I often accomplish it with a square of cornbread or a lovely and chewy whole wheat bread cut in a thick wedge when a stew is the protein and required vegetables combined (See # 4, Meal planning – the basic food groups).  Otherwise, it’s likely to be the protein itself, because something to chew provides density.

 And I’m sure I don’t have to explain “melty butterfat,” richness flowing over your tongue and filling your mouth with a coaxing, sleepy sensation.  That’s clearly the chocolate of choice one has for dessert!

I mention texture and taste because texture is the final component of the way I plan a Supper, even one for myself. There has to be something “creamy,” and it’s usually the starch on the plate, even if it’s a roasted potato. I roasted the darkest blue potatoes I have ever seen last night for my brother’s family, and they were so satisfying that we all kept wandering back to the roasting sheet to steal another piece of potato.  Because they also comprised “crisp” with their French fry outsides (gloriously brown even on a blue potato!), I didn’t have to roast some walnuts to scatter over the salad, and, in fact, I didn’t even fix the salad, because we had broccoli, so we had our green vegetable covered (See Rule 2 in #3 – Broccoli, the green jewel) and there were carrots in with the braised pork shoulder for our second vegetable, anyway.  I tend to overkill the vegetables with my niece and nephew because I believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that they aren’t eating vegetables any other time than when I cook for them!

To get back to the point, however, it is this:  There can’t be two creamy textures on the plate, so if I want to go to all the work of making a cheesy cream sauce for the dying cauliflower in my vegetable crisper, then I can’t serve a starch of any other kind.  Besides, it’s usually at least a two-step process to fix scalloped cauliflower, and I have to watch out for complicating my cooking procedures, using more than a minimum number of cooking vessels, and wanting Supper right now! 

We, the queens of our kitchens, must be mindful of these considerations (adopt royal air; raise hand to bestow grace); our subjects depend on us, hapless and helpless cooks that they are. . .

Next time:  Enough with the philosophy!  Back to a recipe/technique!