#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.  

#8 - Fruit

I don’t remember what she looked like, nor do I remember where I met her or under what circumstances this exchange took place, but I’ve been jealous of this woman for over 35 years.  We were probably talking about food, a conversation I have had with everyone I’ve ever met eventually, and she grinned as she said, “I need to eat a candy bar after I eat lunch, so I do.”

Her wry deliverance—“I need”-- and her quick grin have stayed with me powerfully through the years, and when I hear the echo of her voice, I always wish I were That Girl, whoever she was.  Of course, I was an adult when I heard her say that, and even all those years ago, I’m sure her definition of  “need” was much different than the one ringing in my head all the time, but that makes little difference to my feeling that I have to justify myself every time I’d like to have a candy bar.  However, that little mind game is a story for next time.

This time, I’m talking about fruit, whole pieces of fruit served without any preparation or adulteration, and I do indeed think of fruit as something I “need” to eat, whether I want to or not.  Back the 30 years ago before my daughter was born when I was teaching myself to eat healthy (See #7 – A Second Vegetable), I decided that I would eat fruit only if I took the time to do so, and that’s when I devised another of my Supper rules: Fruit is to be served as a separate course, and it must be eaten every Supper time.

I suspect I was influenced by the obviously romantic descriptions read or seen in movies of long European meals eaten in summery orchards or vineyards. After all, it’s easy to imagine yourself eating fruit when it’s juicily ripe and doesn’t need anything but a light wash to make it appetizing. And you’re already sitting down!  How hard can that be, to cut up a peach and share the slices around the table??  We’ve all raised our children to enjoy pieces of banana, just the way my niece was a blueberry eater, and I can still see her bald little head and tiny index finger chasing frozen blueberries around on her highchair tray.  Once they were in her hand, they were smooshy enough to spread all over her face so that she was blue from her nose to her chin, very happily so.  That was too messy for me, so my own daughter never got to enjoy a baby blueberry course.

She did, however, carry the “fruit as separate course” rule with her into college. In their first apartment together during their sophomore years, one evening after she and  her college roommate  had finished their evening meal and cleaned up,  my daughter was standing in the doorway of the kitchen eating a banana.  Her roommate asked, “How can you EAT that?”  My daughter replied, “I need to.” 

Adult fruit servings, particularly in the winter, as we are now, are harder to plan and eat, however.  There’s the apple, nut, cheese thing, matching very nicely with red wine, making everyone linger at the table. . . nice thought, but I really don’t like apples, so it’s not my ideal. I have trouble taking bananas seriously enough to eat them at Supper; they’re sort of a breakfast food in my book.  And this isn’t the season for lush tree fruits or berries.

I will, however, cut up an orange or wait for a pear to ripen on the counter and cut it at the table at the appropriate time; pineapples from Costa Rica have just come to my grocery market, and I will sharpen my big knife and attack a pineapple with abandon, thus having a piece of fruit which lasts several days in the fridge. If I wait a week before I buy another one, I won’t suffer those sore places in my mouth from eating too much citrus!

I will also relax the rule when I can find a way to serve fruit before the meal begins, as a part of an appetizer, for example, so when grapes are in season, they’ll be offered with cheese before Supper.  And this winter, I’ve been segmenting grapefruit (Here’s how to segment a citrus fruit: http://cookblast.com/video/how-to-segment-an-orange-awt-on-itv-s-daily-cooks-552540) to layer with avocado, toasted walnuts, and a lemony vinaigrette on a bed of lettuce.  The Fruit Course is covered, in both scenarios.

On a bad day, though, when eating fruit is just one more damn thing, and it’s one thing TOO much, there are always those Orange Essence Prunes that Sunsweet packages.  Two of them are just perfect when I’m feeling put upon, and then I can still feel good about moving on to dessert!

Next time: Always dessert!

How I cut up an orange without peeling it:

Do the first step of the Segmenting a Citrus Fruit video referenced above, cutting off the ends of the orange.  I do this on a plate so all the juice is caught there, therefore,  I’m definitely NOT using my big knife!  Save those ends; they’re fun to scrape with your top teeth, and the bottom one is the sweetest, so save it for yourself.

Place a flat edge of the orange on the plate, and cut down vertically right through the center of the orange, being sure you cut through that white dot in the center, even if it isn’t in the center of the orange.

Now, leaving the resulting half an orange on the same flat edge, cut down through its center again, again being sure you’re cutting through that white center dot.  Do the same with the other half.  Now, you have four wedges.

This step is where it really pays to keep your knives sharp!  You’re going to cut off the narrowest part of each wedge, keeping each wedge standing vertically.  Doing so guarantees that you’ll take all the seeds with you, but it will be messy, so keep up your courage and vow to sharpen your knife before the next time you cut an orange this way.

Now, cut the neatly-clean, de-seeded wedges in half horizontally, and you’ll have little trapezoid shapes of orange that you can stick in your mouth, orange flesh first, just between your front teeth. Grin, so that only the outside of the orange shows.  Try it; it looks crazy, and the kids will LOVE it.

#7 - A Second Vegetable

“Life’s a looming battle to be faced and fought,” exhorts Mr. Banks, the papa in Mary Poppins, while Julie Andrews waits calmly for him to finish yelling.  He might as well have been the family cook, because that’s the way preparing Supper can feel, even in its hunting and gathering phase.  I hike the first pair of grocery sacks in from the car, and even before I dash out for the second set, I unpack the items which need to go in the freezer and the fridge.  I drag in the second set, losing both enthusiasm and energy now, and I always wish at this point that I had someone who did this FOR me!  I remind myself that I no longer have a car-seated baby or a toddler stopped in the doorway, stranding me on the steps with a badly-packed paper grocery sack threatening to break in each hand and my purse handle between my teeth, but grocery shopping still seems unnecessarily hard. 

It WAS hard in the days when my daughter was an infant, and I remember one dark winter Friday night bursting into tears behind the wheel of the car because I hadn’t found her formula at either the warehouse or the grocery stores.  She was with me, just seven months old, her car seat in the front passenger seat—this being the days before we knew all the statistics about children and car accidents-- and her little eyes widened at this new development, a visibly crazy mother, crying.  Thankfully, I don’t think she was scarred.

But I did that marathon Friday night shopping because I was at school during the week, and getting that sort of errand done on Friday night gave me my best shot at a Saturday spent blissfully at home with no interruptions except the ones we chose, like watching Sesame Street.

It was a similar decision, giving a problem my best shot as my solution, which gave rise to my Second Vegetable on the Supper Plate rule.  Back some 30 years ago when I developed my ideas for setting up housekeeping and training myself to eat in a healthy fashion, I could feel the nutrition experts wagging their fingers at me behind my back, mostly because I wouldn’t eat oatmeal for breakfast, couldn’t survive eating fish without that crunchy accompanying “stick,” and screwed up my face in horror at any preparation of spinach. Fixing and eating a second vegetable for Supper was, then, my attempt to do the best I could, and it’s been a part of my routine ever since.           

It ain’t easy, however, to think of one that doesn’t break one of my cardinal meal preparation rules, i.e., using as few cooking vessels as possible or keeping preparations simple.  This is where I am forced to use great ingenuity OR make something which lasts for more than one meal—gasp. . .  a leftover!  I’m including a recipe in this entry for a red cabbage slaw which could be used for two meals, and its lovely flourish of toasted pecans could be fixed each night, thereby making it seem as though it were fresh each night.

For a source of continuing inspiration, however, check out Everyday Food magazine: http://www.marthastewart.com/everyday-food?src=footer    It’s that little magazine at the check stand with the big color block FOOD on it.   It’s published by Martha Stewart’s company, comes out monthly, and uses as its basic tenets that food should be simply and quickly prepared.  One of its current sections is called “On The Side,” and there are usually 3-4 suggestions with great pictures.  The issue’s contents show up as programs in the PBS series:  http://www.pbs.org/everydayfood/  or even on Martha’s daily show. 

I don’t remember the source of the recipe for the red cabbage slaw, but it’s a go-to for me several times in a month.  First, it’s extremely healthy, as are all things brightly colored, except Skittles.  Second, it’s easy preparation, and it makes you keep your knives sharp.  Finally, it’s a good venue for experimenting with a new vinegar or nut oil, say pecan oil.  You can also change out the nuts, substituting walnuts, for example, and wouldn’t that be the perfect time to use the walnut oil languishing on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator door?  Indeed!  If you’ve never toasted nuts, here’s a nice explanation of how to do it:  http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/tips-techniques/cooking-basics-how-to-toast-nuts-and-why-062462  And if you really don’t want to do the “salt cure” technique the recipe describes, you don’t have to, but it produces an entirely different texture of cabbage shred, so it’s worth it, and your chicken breast will be done roasting in 30 minutes, anyway!

Next time: The Fruit Course

The recipe:

Pecan Cabbage Slaw

Ingredients:  red cabbage, kosher salt, pecan halves, vinegar (red wine or other specialty vinegar, like sherry vinegar), oil (olive or other nut oil, such as pecan oil), freshly ground black pepper

Sharpen your chef’s knife, and cut slices from a head of red cabbage as thinly as possible.  As you are doing so, picture how much you could eat at one sitting (maybe 1/2 cup), and cut that amount for every person at the table.  You can sort out the thick pieces as you do the next step, but when you finish cutting, you want thin shreds of red cabbage about 2-3 inches long.

Place the cabbage, a layer at a time, in a strainer, sprinkling each layer with a very generous amount of kosher salt.  Let the cabbage stand in the strainer at room temperature for 30 minutes.  It will give off some liquid as it sits, so place the strainer over a bowl to protect your counter or sink from the cabbage’s purple stains.

Toast some pecans, using your toaster oven or the dry skillet method, 5 pecan halves for each serving of red cabbage you’ve planned.

After the allotted standing time for the cabbage, rinse the cabbage well and dry it so that it will take the dressing.  In the serving bowl you plan to use for the salad, pour a scant quarter teaspoon of vinegar for each serving of cabbage; take your whisk in hand, and gradually whisk in the same amount of oil.  Once the vinegar and oil have blended, give the dressing a taste to see if you’d like more oil, but be careful.  Less is more in this case. Grind in several grinds of black pepper, and turn the cabbage in the dressing lightly.  You won’t need salt, because the cabbage has “salt-cured.”

If I’ve made too much dressing, I cut some leaves of romaine lettuce to make a bed for the salad, and mixing the cabbage and lettuce together will absorb the extra vinegar and oil, as well as add another dimension of green to the plate.

Sprinkle on the pecans and serve.