Kitchen Time

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen the last ten days or so. I tried my hand at the classic beef with burgandy, and that soaked up most of an entire day but the results were amazing-- I simply didn't expect that it could have been worth the time and effort and cost, but it was worth all and then some. The family met the dish and said Amen.
Then came the Dinner For Those Who Forswear Meat, which meant a long afternoon making a spinach lasagna. Though I've made this recipe perhaps half a dozen times, I have yet to find a way to make it in anything less than four hours, using all the bowls, mixing bowls, pots, dutch ovens, spoons and so forth in the kitchen. Yet the result was, as with the prior dish, met with gladsome noises and enthusiasm, and so the payoff was in the end worth the effort.
And finally, the ethnic holiday of the paternal line came 'round, and so I had a whack at a traditional lamb stew, and though this too took several hours to produce, it didn't inflict as much damage to the kitchen, and when the time to dine arrived and the offspring and wife and company admitted to hunger, the Guinness flowed and the humongous pot of onion and shallot and potatoes and lamb was reduced to mere dribbles of leftovers. Faith and begob!
It's for certain that such a level of cookery, maintained on a daily basis would begin to pale and wear on one, but for now and then, it can be great fun, a real treat, both the making and the eating.

When Making Lunch...

WHEN making lunch, it's good to have an array of extra stuff just sitting around. Case in point, today's request from the youngest boyo for a tuna sandwich. If I hadn't glanced counterward, yon tuna salad might not have had tarragon or ziran (carraway seeds) and would have been jut your basic tuna-mayo-celery mix. Instead, the ordinary and boring was nowhere to be seen, and when the luncheon gong sounded, the kitchen saw an excess of happy humming and other exclamations of gastrohappiness.

The same holds true for something as dirt-plain as an omlette or mashed potatoes. The former gets a healthy sprinkle of freshly ground nutmeg and a pinch of cardomom, while the eggs get a healthy dose of freshly microplaned imported parm as well as an assortment of fragrant stuff from San Remo and the spice jars adjacent. And the wife, she likes the addition of some colorfulSwiss Chard in her eggs. Yum!

It's not a matter of having a great cookbook at hand-- who takes the time to look when there are howls and groans of impatience and hunger coming from the other side of the counter? But having what Steve of ice cream fame called mix-ins handy helps ensure that the mundane is not to be found.

And remember, once you've added Basil, you probably need More Basil.

The Indian Invasion

Since we live in Maine, you might think I could be talking about MicMacs or some other tribe of native Americans. But no, I mean from-India Indians.
It's because of Reny's, actually. Reny's is a chain-- a small chain, about 14 stores-of small stores that in another time and place might have been called dime stores. They sell clothes-- good work clothes, casual clothes, seasonal stuff like waterproof boots and snowshoes when that time comes around. And they sell all the other stuff you'd expect in a dime store-- pots and pans and cloth and needles and decorations and sundries, as in all and sundry. A bit of this and a bit of that. And they sell food.
They don't sell the sort of food you'd find in a grocery store. That is, you might find cereal or you might not. Soup, for sure, but you never know what kind. Chips and snacks, but you couldn't predict which ones. Years ago, we bought a box of Bugles, a corn chip snack product that I would have thought was extinct. But no, Reny's had it, but it was packaged for the Middle East-- all the writing was in Arabic. O-kay....
So, I was in Reny's a few weeks ago, and looking around in the food section, saw that good old stand-by, Alu-Mutter. For those of you unacquainted with Alu-Mutter, let me tell you it is an Indian dish, made chiefly of potatoes and peas, in a sort of curry sauce. Your typical, standard, New England fare.
Well, boggled though the mind was, I picked one up, and a couple of packages of adjacent Other Indian Stuff. And came the day when Inspiration lacked, I made some rice and heated up the pre-cooked, ready to eat pouches in the microwave, and voila, Instant Dinner.
It turned out not only to be cheap, at $2 a pop, but the kids and I all liked it. We have Alu-Mutter in the pantry, and in addition Dal Fry, Navratan Kurma (mixed vegetable stuff), Dal Makhani (curried black lentils) and several other varieties of insta-food.
It's pretty hard to argue with this stuff-- the kids like it, we like it, it's vegetarian, free of noxious ingredients and cheap. The only mystery is how it came to rest on the shelves of Reny's in Bath, Maine. I am certain there is a great reason, but it's not a reason anyone has seen fit to share with me-- and I've asked. No one at the store will admit to knowing the crooked path that led to these MREs sitting on these old shelves, but hey, it's like Lola-- it's a crazy, mixed-up world. And for that, and MTR's well made offerings, we are eternally grateful.

BOILED

It's summer, so you might think that a vast kettle of boiling water in the kitchen is something we would avoid. But no. For the last few days the main method of dinner making has been to fill my birthday present (no, not a ring that turns the wearer invisible: a 12 quart stainless steel stockpot) with Brita water, and turn on the gas fire underneath. Then when the water is roiling, boiling, shimmering and steaming, we dump in Something From The Freezer-- Jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), Ravioli, Tortellini, Pierogi and so forth (not all at once, mind you) and poof: Dinner. This means we don't have to stand in a hot kitchen over a hot stove for ages dripping sweat into the cooking food, generally considered a god thing. (The not dripping of sweat into food, I mean.)
We still have August to get through, but then September will come, and with it, a return to more time-consuming, less instant food. For now, though, it's what will be we boiling tonight?

Julia Comes To Visit

Inspiration comes from sources likely and not. A truly awful book connected in some slight way to Julia Child got me to thinking about the woman whose voice we still hear now and again, channeled through the minds behind Prairie Home Companion, a voice usually enjoining the listener to add more butter.
I had gotten for the shelves both volumes of Mastering The Art, so I went looking in the New Book Pile and rooted out Volume One. A daunting volume in size, the writing is clear and the recipes are well organized. It made quite enjoyable bedtime reading for a number of days, and then one day, knowing that I would be grilling for dinner, I reached for the book to try out a recipe or two.
I noted the instructions that were relevant for grilling, and with those in mind, I looked at the directions for garlic potatoes. Both ingredients are a favorite of mine, and combined and prepared a la Julia, the results were staggeringly marvelous. The accompanying grill and steamed artichokes made for an altogether lovely dinner, albeit one that had soaked up half an afternoon in preparation, as well as a staggering quantity of butter.
In the days that followed, I turned to Julia now and again for guidance, though not for an entire meal. And then we went to the Land Of Many Subgum, a land where Julia is not an option, at least not in a traditional Chinese kitchen, which ours is.
However, when Thanksgiving rolls around, which it shall again soon, and we know we'll be spending the whole day in the kitchen, I suspect I shall revisit those glorious pages for inspiration and guidance to add a soupcon of French cuisine to our American groaning board.

Dan In The Kitchen

The other day I had to go to Sears (whatever happened to Roebuck and the others? A Mystery for a different page, I guess....) for something manly and toolish (a chainsaw I think it was) and I passed by the Home Electronic Gizmo Section. Among the endless rows of televisions, DVD players and stereo equipment of dubious fidelity and durability, there were a handful of Kitchen Electronic Whatsits.
I don't know what made up name they go by, but these things are affixed to the underside of upper kitchen cabinets, and are usually outfitted with a clock/timer/alarm, a radio with either a tape or cd player, sometimes a light to illumine the counter below and now... televisions.
They're not cheap, running up towards $800, with little flat screens that swing down and which can be pivoted and tilted to suit the would be viewer's needs.
It's just that I can't figure out how such a thing could ever possibly be aligned in the right way for me. I'm either at the sink, the fridge, looking down at a cutting board in a frivolous attempt to see what I'm cutting so that I don't slice off any of my fingers, bending over to fill the dishwasher, looking across the huge built-in table I built back in more ambitious days while I talk to someone on the other side, rummaging in the pantry for something in the ingredient world or in a cupboard for dishes, cups, pots, pans or utensils. I do not stand still in the kitchen for a very long time looking at a spot just under the cabinet that holds the small glass plates, above the counter where I keep the large jars of FUS (frequently used spices) and bottles of various cooking oils. I imagine that I look at that space now and then, but in terms of continuity, watching a tv program in the kitchen would be an experience similar to reading a paragraph of a book every 15 or 20 pages. Hardly enough to remember what narrative I'm reading, never mind actually keeping up with the plot.
So who buys these? Do they stand in the kitchen watching them? Why aren't they watching a much larger screen in a room with a chair? I'm all for multitasking, within reason, but I can't imagine preparing so much as a bowl of cereal while watching the tube without sloshing milk from here to there. As for anything more haute than that, all I can foresee is a room with raw ingredients strewn about ala Mr Magoo without his glasses, flames leaping and smoke billowing from burning ingredients on the stove and the likelihood of broken bones, lacerations and bruises. Is my imagination too limited? Is there a way to cook in the kitchen while soaking in the Simpsons and nodding at the news?
If there were a way to spend quality time with a television, something I have considerable doubt about, I think I would take the dough one of these things cost and buy something large and sharp and put it in a room with some comfortable sitting devices, fairly removed from the hustle and bustle, crash and tumult of the food preparation area.
But that's just me. Maybe one of you need one of these. If you get one, let me know how it works out.

Cooking Mistakes, Take One

Brownies from a box. What could be easier? Follow directions a three-year-old can read, add heat over time, and poof, they're done.
Ah, but if you FORGET one of those ingredients, say, for instance, "vegetable oil" then the brownies don't look quite right, don't cook quite right and are not really fit for serving.
On the plus side, they taste fine. And have far less oil in them than regular brownies.