analog me

Just finished--Thanksgiving Cranberry ChutneyRelish

It's that time of year again. I make grocery lists, buy hundreds of dollars of groceries, go home start cooking, realize I am missing some ingredients, make a new list, go shopping, start cooking, miss something, go shopping, cook some more, etc. etc. until all the grocery stores close or Thanksgiving dinner is actually on the table and being eaten. As the big meal gets closer, the cycle speeds up. (Now I've gone from 12 to 6 hours.) I started the cycle a few days ago, and expect to be back at the coop grocery every few hours for another day.

Meanwhile, I made this and it is so good I almost cried.

You should make it too.  My cooking is pretty messy--I don't actually measure, so you don't have to either--but these are some guidelines.

Cranberry Chutney Relish

Start by heating in a pot:

• 4 Apples peeled and diced
• 2 1/2 Cups cranberries
• 1 stick cinnamon
• juice of 1-2 lemons
• 1/3 Cup vinegar

As this heats up add:

• 2/3 Cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Juice of 1/2 Pomegranate (break in chunks and squeeze juice out with a potato ricer)
• Sections and juice from 1/2 grapefruit 
• 1-2" (2.5-5 cm) ginger root peeled and grated (or 2T ginger jam)
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

When this gets a nice, thick, jammy look (5 min. or so) add:

• 2 cloves garlic pressed

Adding garlic always feels weird, but I make myself do it because it gives the chutney a little zing that makes it that much more delicious.

Now turn off the heat and taste it. It should be zesty, spicy, piquant, and fruity. Add more sugar, acid or spice to taste, and put it in a glass bowl.

You may wonder how I can write this up if I don't measure. I do something like forensic recipe reconstruction by carefully observing the evidence at the scene of the crime.

It's an ugly job, but I do it for you, dear readers.

Any other special recipes out there I should know about before my next shopping trip???

Hands on Pantry Salad

I have been trying to get back to an old goal of having some salad on the table for every meal. After I do my big weekly shopping, this is pretty easy. But, as the week wears on, the greens wilt and my salads start to taste fatigued. For awhile I began shopping a couple times a week to have fresh greens, but then my grocery bill seemed to double--and just for salad (and a couple other things I needed to pick up).  

So, the other night I tried to come up with a salad made from stuff that hadn't gone sad and I often stand a chance of having on hand throughout the week. The result sort of reminds me of the old Waldorf Salad, but it is a bit lighter and Springier. This salad also fits with my resolution to try not and make things so complicated. And I am avoiding the whole weights and measures issue that seems to plague me by using vegetable units (such as 1 stalk) or amounts that might feel good to your own hand (or mouth!) 

Anyway, I present to you Celery Salad.

Time to make: 5 min or so 

Ingredients:

• Celery stalks (1 per person)
• Walnuts (1 tiny handful for 1 person, a large handful for 4 or thereabouts)
• Green Onion (1 or so per person)
• Grapefruit (about 1/4 per person)
• Olive oil
• Pepper
• Salt 

1. Start by putting a heavy pan on low heat and putting a handful of walnuts in. 
2. While they are toasting, slice the celery very thinly by cutting diagonally across it into ribbon-like shreds. Pull out the annoying stringy bits. If you have the heart, (the celery heart) chop it up too. Spread the celery on a plate. 
3. Chop up the onion and scatter atop. 
4. With a spoon, scoop out grapefruit segments and arrange on top. 
5. Now, remove the walnuts from the heat and break them over the top of the salad with your hands while removing some of the crisp, dark skin that hides in the nut crevices. 
6. Liberally, drizzle some olive oil on top, then pour juice left in the grapefruit over it. A pinch of salt an a few grinds of pepper finish it off.

I'm often the best cook when I am enjoying the whole tactile experience and trying to make the food fit with how I want it to feel in my mouth. When I have to stop and take measurements, that process feels interrupted. But I am wondering: Do you find this kind of recipe liberating--or frustratingly vague in its lack of standardized measures? 

Keeping Count

I have made bread off and on over the years. I sometimes become enamored with a method or recipe for awhile carefully following the proportions and procedures with great results. One time it was the salt-rising bread from the 1946 Joy of Cooking. Another time, inspired by the slow-rise breads of the French, I obsessively created a time-consuming, multi-day approach that yielded beautiful results. 

But then, at a certain point, the thrill starts to fade, I become annoyed by the amount of time to make a loaf. The process doesn't keep my full attention and, as my mind wanders, I start to make mistakes. The bread begins to undergo a sea change and doesn't taste the same. I keep losing my engagement ring, which I have to remove to knead the bread or spend hours de-crusting. Then one day, the love affair is over, I cast the recipe aside and start buying bread again--until that moment when an interesting new recipe peeks at me, I experience the thrill of a new crush, and run out for a big bag of flour.

So, when everyone got excited about Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, I was a bit suspicious. I had been there before, had matured, and I didn't think I had the time to fall in love with a whole book. Besides, I usually go for recipes where perfect results are difficult to attain. My mom told me about it, friends recommended it--even French people who know good bread! When my French friend started to feed me the bread, I caved and the next thing I knew I had the book and a bag of flour too.

At first it was great. There were no empty promises: this bread really is good and it is easy. Best of all--it is not messy and I do not have to remove (and then misplace) my rings. This alone, would be reason enough to fall hard for any yeasted bread. I made some good bread using the 3 cups water to 6 1/2 cups water. But at these proportions, the bread is gone too fast for a family with two growing boys--it wasn't really a 5 minutes a day affair. Plus, it got a bit predictable and boring--sort of like doing the laundry.

I decided to deepen my commitment and go for the 13 cups of flour recipe--with a greater proportion of whole wheat. Now something that had always been difficult for me became an outright struggle: counting. With six-and-a-half cups of flour (and under the influence of Seasonal Ineffective disorder) it goes like this: 

I stand at counter with measuring cup, flour and bowl. I scoop, level, and calmly say,"One." 

Scoop, level, say with conviction "Two." 

Scoop, level, "uhh, THREE!" 

Scoop, (mind wanders), level, (ineffective brain activity) look at flour in bowl, think, "uhh four, did I do four yet? No, This must be four." "FOUR." 

Scoop, remind myself to concentrate on the next number which will be five, level, (mind wanders). Stand with cup of flour over bowl and wonder if I said five or just reminded myself to say five. No it really is five. "FIVE."

I think you get the idea. If there is a real distraction, I usually have to remove the flour in the bowl cup by cup and attempt to count them, and then add what I think I need to arrive at the total making more opportunities for error.

So I knew counting to 13 would be an impossibility and created a tally system. Scoop, level, dump, set down cup, find pencil and make tic mark, pick cup back up. This simple step added an extra three motions, and thus, many extra opportunities to make a mistake. I made it to 9 or 10 before running out of flour. I will never know if it was 9 or 10, because when I returned from the store the wet dough had risen over the top of the bowl and flowed Pompei-like over the surrounding counter and my paper with the tic marks. 

After the big clean up. 

I convinced myself had already added 9 cups of flour and added 4 more resulting in a hard, dry bread, so there must have been 10. Oh yes, I also forgot the salt, so it was bland too. Fortunately, this bread is forgiving and I was able to knead in a fair bit of water and some salt and then sprinkle some salt on top. By this time, with the trip to the store and the extra kneading, the bread had become labor-intensive, messy, and I forgot my rings on the counter. But it was good, very good.

So I am starting a new batch today. I'm going to try to mix it up with my old salt-rising technique, plus a mixing technique from another old flame to spice this relationship up a bit. But, what I really need is a method for keeping count. Any ideas out there? 

Remedies

First off, I feel a bit uncomfortable continuing in my self-centered trajectory while the people of Haiti are experiencing the devastation of the earthquake there. I'm guessing that if you read this you might be a maker of things. Whether it is knitting, sewing, woodworking, writing or dinner, every one of your creations is built stitch by stitch, ingredient by ingredient, nut to bolt, word by word. In a similar incremental, dollar by dollar way Americans now give over 300 billion dollars a year to charities; that's roughly 2% of our GNP and many countries are not so far behind! (Except France, at 0.15 %.)  So here are two remedies to consider. First, the Selfish Seamstress is sponsoring a fundraiser for the Red Cross in Haiti through her "amusing butcherings of a beautiful Japanese Art form."  Second, If you give to Doctor's Without Borders, consider sending the Yarn Harlot a note, letting her know how much closer you brought her to her goal of Tricoteuses Sans Frontières or Knitters Without Borders raising 1 million dollars.   

Now, back to me. I know I have been a bit quiet lately. I am finally getting over a nasty cold, double inner/outer ear infection that made me pretty boring--at times even unbearable. It wasn't pretty and you didn't want to read anything I had to say.

I smelled a bit odd too, as I was trying a lot of natural remedies for an earache-- apple cider vinegar with natural enzymes, onion and garlic-infused olive oil, hot salt in a sack. Sounds like something from the menu of an Italian country cookbook doesn't it? But the smells of a Tuscan kitchen are not so appealing when dripping out your ear. 

The only decent thing about being sick is lemon tea.

This remedy comes from my parents, and I have made it for myself and others ever since I left home. The original had one tablespoon Southern Comfort, which, as I remember, really did induce sleep, kill pain and stop coughing.

Lemon Tea

Put the juice of one half a lemon and 1 Tablespoon honey in a mug. Pour in 1 cup boiling water and add a tiny pinch of salt. Miserable adults may add 1 Tablespoon alcoholic spirits-- for medicinal uses only.

Drink. Not for otic use.

Cranberry-Pomegranate-Grapefruit Jam/Marmalade Close-up

I have been having one of those weeks when things just don't work. Finally I decided damn it, I will just drop everything that is difficult  and recreate that cranberry-pomegranate jam I ate in Vermont. Of course, it's a little hard to recreate the actual taste, so I decided to just go for the general idea using whatever I had on hand. Did you know that one pomegranate yields very little juice? About 2 tablespoons. Scarcity being the mother of improvisation, I turned to grapefruit, which are very juicy and pulpy. Grapefruit pulp seemed to beg for a little orange peel and thus my jam turned into:

 Cranberry-Pomegranate-Grapefruit Jam/Marmalade Improvisation

(yeild: much less than you would expect, about three of those little jam jars) 

• 1 pint cranberries
• 1 pomegranate juiced ( a few tablespoons)
• Pulp of 2 large Rio Star grapefruits-approx. 1 cup
• peel of one organic orange
• 2 Cups sugar
• 1 Tablespoon honey (If you have some nearby)

Juice the pomegranate by whirring the seeds in a blender and then straining the juice. (Or just buy some juice.) Scoop the grape fruit sections out into a measuring cup. Use a vegetable peeler to remove orange part of the peel and then chop finely. Put all the ingredients into a heavy, wide pan with the two cups of sugar and slowly bring to a boil. (A dutch oven is ideal.)  

Clean off your counter and find some jars and lids. You won't need to process this jam because you will be eating or giving it all away within one short week. I swear! Start another pot of water to boil with the jars submerged. Put a cutting board next to the jam pan, and get out a ladle.

The jam will transform from this: 
 to this:

 When it starts to look like jam, use a thermometer to check the temperature. It should get to 218 to 220 degrees Farenheit. If it doesn't get that hot even after boiling for awhile, add some sugar: about 2 Tablespoons at a time. Science Tip: This creates a denser solution that can hold more heat/energy. If you don't feel like being scientific or live at a higher altitude, use the wrinkle test. There is a lot of pectin in these ingredients so, it should jell pretty easily. Once the jam is ready, sterilize your ladle and lids by putting them in the boiling water, remove the jars and fill them with the jam. Done!

 If you ever read books on canning, they always stress the importance of cleanliness. A lot. This is partly because of germs, but also because once you are in the process of lifting jars out from boiling water, ladling scalding hot liquids, and applying sterilized lids, you don't want to be searching under old toast for your lid lifter.  I thought I had done a pretty good job, but this is what my counter looked like. (I'm not sure why I needed butter or olive oil) I do find that an an old glove finger stretcher ( on cutting board) is the best tool for holding a thermometer over boiling water, but you may need to substitute.
For years, I have been reading craft and cooking blogs and wonder how those amazing women managed to be so creative, raise healthy children, have perfect looking homes, and have time to blog about it. Now, I have unlocked the secret: macro-photography and photo-cropping. Instead of including shots like that directly above, you zoom in very close, past the mess, to the creation.

    It may be deceiving but my cooking now does look much better since I know to zoom in past the dog bed with son's shoes, past the tattered place mat and right into that jar of jam. 

I am currently trying to apply this method to my outlook of the house in general.