I'm not sure I want you to try this at home, but I want to tell you about a cooking technique that worked for me, and it is one I will use again, maybe with one modification.
It started with four big country-style pork ribs, but you could also use pork shoulder or baby back ribs. Any other cut would be too lean. I seasoned the country-style ribs with salt and pepper, put them in an 11-inch cast iron skillet, and baked them for three hours in a 250-degree oven. They came out tender, crunchy and delicious.
I put the skillet on the range and didn't think about it until the next day. I was about to wash it when I saw quite a bit of nice fat and jellied juices in the skillet. That evening, I heated the skillet on the range, just above medium. I had two leftover ribs. I cut each into two pieces and fried them in the leftover fat. They came out better than the original ribs, crunchy and redolent, true carnivore candy.
"Hmmm," I said. Karen, who might have balked at this sort of idea, was out of town for a few days. So I decided to leave the skillet on the range, covered, for another day. The next day I fried bacon in the fat. Delicious. In the evening, I fried a couple of slices of pork loin in the fat. Delicious. On Sunday, I cut a thick chunk of sirloin into two thinner slices (thus doubling the area for the crunch effect) and fried them in the fat and had them with some black-eyed peas. Delicious.
It reminded me of bakers and their sourdough starters. You can keep a sourdough starter around for years. Why couldn't you keep a black skillet of pork fat around for years? Or at least weeks. Or days. At this point, I would remind health officials that in the first paragraph, I said I wasn't sure I would want anyone to try this at home. I certainly, however, plan to do it again, this time starting with some of that great CostCo pork shoulder.
The modification: I'll keep the skillet of fat in the refrigerator, covered with foil, between uses. I am seriously considering dedicating one of my black skillets to this theme full-time. If Karen will let me.
I know I have not blogged in awhile. I am going to start again, but with different material. I had hoped to grow readership with the old format, which I put in place last spring. But it didn't happen. Starting next week, I'll be posting columns written during my 20 years at The San Diego Union, plus some graynation material as it materializes, and of course the various cooking adventures.
I will use the available time to write novels. This is the time to learn to write novels, and write one, before I die. I have a couple under way, including one that has really focused my attention. I hope someday it will focus yours.
Showing posts with label Stretch Cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stretch Cooking. Show all posts
November 12, 2009
October 23, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Seeing "Pasta Pronto" again
Somewhere along the way, I got separated from one of my favorite cookbooks, "Pasta Pronto." Then, lately, Karen has been whipping up a very mean Spaghetti Carbonara, and it reminded me of my old friend, and inspired me to look for it at Amazon. The book is out of print, but I bought a used one from an Amazon dealer for $5.95.
Italians have been masters of stretch cooking for hundreds of years, and "Pasta Pronto" follows that theme, with a twist. The author, William E. Massee, focuses on recipes that require little or no cooking, other than boiling the pasta, and that can be ready pronto, many in 10 minutes or less. "You just dump everything in a bowl," writes Massee. "You can do it all while the water boils."
In the book, the carbonara recipe is called "Trenette alla Carbonara," or, in English, "Noodles, Woodcutter's Way." What could sound better? That is one of two recipes I had remembered specifically over the years, with "Spaghetti a la Mode de Grand Mere," or "Spaghetti, Grandmother's Style." I was also partial to "Spaghetti alla Salsa di Tonno," or "Spaghetti with Tuna Sauce," which is really good, if you haven't tried it, and "Spaghettini alla Funghi," or "Spaghettini with Mushrooms: Fine spaghetti with mushroom sauce that includes bacon, garlic, cream, cheese, and parsley."
For Noodles, Woodcutter's Way, put on 6 quarts of water to boil, with a tablespoon of salt. Dice 4 ounces of lean salt pork, or 6 slices of lean, thick bacon. Melt half a cup of butter in a small skillet and lightly brown the salt pork or bacon. Dump one pound of trenette, or linguini, into the water and cook 5-6 minutes, until done but still firm. Have ready 2 eggs, lightly beaten, and 4 ounces (about a cup) of Pecorino Romano or Parmesan. Drain the pasta and dump into a warm bowl. Add the eggs and toss to coat the pasta. Add the butter and bacon and toss again. Add half the cheese and toss thoroughly. Add a few twists of freshly ground pepper and the rest of the cheese and toss once more.
I may like Spaghetti, Grandmother's Style, even better. Put the salted water on to boil (Massee estimates this will take a half-hour). Dice 2 slices of thick, lean bacon and 6 ounces of cooked ham in half-inch cubes. In a large skillet, slowly cook the bacon with the ham, until the bacon is crisp. Remove the meats and drain on paper towels. Cut three slices of French bread into half-inch cubes. To the bacon fat in the skillet, add a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil. Add the bread cubes and stir until slightly brown on all sides. Drain on paper towels. Cook spaghetti 8-9 minutes until done but still firm. Drain, and dump it into a warm bowl. Toss with 4 tablespoons butter and a quarter-teaspoon black pepper. Add bacon, ham and croutons and toss. Serve grated Parmesan on the side.
Besides the "pronto" recipes, Massee includes recipes for things like "Roman Beef Stew," "Chicken Tetrazzini," "Lasagne," "Veal Marsala," and several slow-cooked red sauces. Now all we need is some fall weather.
Italians have been masters of stretch cooking for hundreds of years, and "Pasta Pronto" follows that theme, with a twist. The author, William E. Massee, focuses on recipes that require little or no cooking, other than boiling the pasta, and that can be ready pronto, many in 10 minutes or less. "You just dump everything in a bowl," writes Massee. "You can do it all while the water boils."
In the book, the carbonara recipe is called "Trenette alla Carbonara," or, in English, "Noodles, Woodcutter's Way." What could sound better? That is one of two recipes I had remembered specifically over the years, with "Spaghetti a la Mode de Grand Mere," or "Spaghetti, Grandmother's Style." I was also partial to "Spaghetti alla Salsa di Tonno," or "Spaghetti with Tuna Sauce," which is really good, if you haven't tried it, and "Spaghettini alla Funghi," or "Spaghettini with Mushrooms: Fine spaghetti with mushroom sauce that includes bacon, garlic, cream, cheese, and parsley."
For Noodles, Woodcutter's Way, put on 6 quarts of water to boil, with a tablespoon of salt. Dice 4 ounces of lean salt pork, or 6 slices of lean, thick bacon. Melt half a cup of butter in a small skillet and lightly brown the salt pork or bacon. Dump one pound of trenette, or linguini, into the water and cook 5-6 minutes, until done but still firm. Have ready 2 eggs, lightly beaten, and 4 ounces (about a cup) of Pecorino Romano or Parmesan. Drain the pasta and dump into a warm bowl. Add the eggs and toss to coat the pasta. Add the butter and bacon and toss again. Add half the cheese and toss thoroughly. Add a few twists of freshly ground pepper and the rest of the cheese and toss once more.
I may like Spaghetti, Grandmother's Style, even better. Put the salted water on to boil (Massee estimates this will take a half-hour). Dice 2 slices of thick, lean bacon and 6 ounces of cooked ham in half-inch cubes. In a large skillet, slowly cook the bacon with the ham, until the bacon is crisp. Remove the meats and drain on paper towels. Cut three slices of French bread into half-inch cubes. To the bacon fat in the skillet, add a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil. Add the bread cubes and stir until slightly brown on all sides. Drain on paper towels. Cook spaghetti 8-9 minutes until done but still firm. Drain, and dump it into a warm bowl. Toss with 4 tablespoons butter and a quarter-teaspoon black pepper. Add bacon, ham and croutons and toss. Serve grated Parmesan on the side.
Besides the "pronto" recipes, Massee includes recipes for things like "Roman Beef Stew," "Chicken Tetrazzini," "Lasagne," "Veal Marsala," and several slow-cooked red sauces. Now all we need is some fall weather.
October 15, 2009
Stretch Cooking: a comfort food mood
We actually had a little cool snap around here recently. Temperatures dropping into the 50s. I’m not kidding. No rain, but some nice clouds and brisk winds. It all clicked on my comfort food switch.
There are tons of comfort food recipes that take some preparation, time, and effort. There are others that can be baking in the oven in 10 minutes. These are the recipes I like when you walk in the door after work on a blustery afternoon with hunger pangs and a thirst for Scotch.
You just need to have a few basics on hand. In the freezer, a stack of Porkyland corn tortillas. In the cupboard, a can of Hormel chili (no beans), a can of refried beans, a can of green chile enchilada sauce, and a bottle of Trader Joe’s red enchilada sauce.
In the refrigerator, you will have grated cheese such as the Mexican Blend variety from CostCo, a jar of salsa, and a package of Porkyland’s 10-inch flour tortillas. Wherever you keep them, you will have onions and tomatoes.
Last night I poured a Scotch and snapped off three corn tortillas from the Porkyland’s stack in the freezer. They really do just sort of snap off, very easily, one by one, when you place the tip of a dinner knife just between the edges of the top and second tortilla, and twist. I let these thaw while I opened the Hormel’s, got the cheese and Trader Joe’s red sauce, chopped a quarter of a medium onion, and pulled out a shallow, 8-inch Corningware baking dish.
I heated a skillet and poured a teaspoon of olive oil in the baking dish. I painted the tortillas on both sides with the oil, then softened them one by one in the skillet. I scattered some chopped onion in the dish, laid a tortilla in, smeared it with a big tablespoon of chili, then generously scattered onion and cheese over. I repeated the layer and finished the stack with the third tortilla. Over this, and down the sides, I poured the red sauce and scattered more cheese on top. I finished my Scotch while this baked for 30 minutes at 350, then chopped a tomato and dressed it with some salsa. I lifted the steaming tortilla stack onto a plate and scattered the tomatoes alongside.
Last Friday, getting home late, I took two of the Porkyland’s flour tortillas, warmed them in a skillet (no oil), and zapped some frozen chicken strips. I rolled the chicken, cheese and chopped onion into the tortillas, burrito-style, nestled them into that same 8-inch baking dish, poured green chile sauce over them, sprinkled cheese on top, and baked them, foil-covered, at 350 for 25 minutes.
Today, all the makings are sitting in their places, waiting for the next comfort mood to strike. Shouldn’t be long, but now it is the weekend, and I will probably cook. Maybe Spanish Porkchops tomorrow night. One of my favorites.
There are tons of comfort food recipes that take some preparation, time, and effort. There are others that can be baking in the oven in 10 minutes. These are the recipes I like when you walk in the door after work on a blustery afternoon with hunger pangs and a thirst for Scotch.
You just need to have a few basics on hand. In the freezer, a stack of Porkyland corn tortillas. In the cupboard, a can of Hormel chili (no beans), a can of refried beans, a can of green chile enchilada sauce, and a bottle of Trader Joe’s red enchilada sauce.
In the refrigerator, you will have grated cheese such as the Mexican Blend variety from CostCo, a jar of salsa, and a package of Porkyland’s 10-inch flour tortillas. Wherever you keep them, you will have onions and tomatoes.
Last night I poured a Scotch and snapped off three corn tortillas from the Porkyland’s stack in the freezer. They really do just sort of snap off, very easily, one by one, when you place the tip of a dinner knife just between the edges of the top and second tortilla, and twist. I let these thaw while I opened the Hormel’s, got the cheese and Trader Joe’s red sauce, chopped a quarter of a medium onion, and pulled out a shallow, 8-inch Corningware baking dish.
I heated a skillet and poured a teaspoon of olive oil in the baking dish. I painted the tortillas on both sides with the oil, then softened them one by one in the skillet. I scattered some chopped onion in the dish, laid a tortilla in, smeared it with a big tablespoon of chili, then generously scattered onion and cheese over. I repeated the layer and finished the stack with the third tortilla. Over this, and down the sides, I poured the red sauce and scattered more cheese on top. I finished my Scotch while this baked for 30 minutes at 350, then chopped a tomato and dressed it with some salsa. I lifted the steaming tortilla stack onto a plate and scattered the tomatoes alongside.
Last Friday, getting home late, I took two of the Porkyland’s flour tortillas, warmed them in a skillet (no oil), and zapped some frozen chicken strips. I rolled the chicken, cheese and chopped onion into the tortillas, burrito-style, nestled them into that same 8-inch baking dish, poured green chile sauce over them, sprinkled cheese on top, and baked them, foil-covered, at 350 for 25 minutes.
Today, all the makings are sitting in their places, waiting for the next comfort mood to strike. Shouldn’t be long, but now it is the weekend, and I will probably cook. Maybe Spanish Porkchops tomorrow night. One of my favorites.
October 08, 2009
Stretch Cooking: losing Gourmet
Hearing of the demise of Gourmet magazine delivers the same sense of loss as hearing of the death of Fred Astaire.
People who like to eat look at the pages of Gourmet Magazine the way that people who like to pretend look at Brad Pitt and Juliette Binoche on the screen. Movies let us experience star-studded stories bigger than ourselves, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes for escapism.
Gourmet, for one more month, at least, is that way. People who like to eat, also like to eat with their eyes, and Gourmet offered beautiful plates of that fare. It was stuff we might never prepare at home, but it was satisfying to look at the pictures, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes for escapism. The economy being what it is these days, and that effect on home dinner tables, establishes the mood for monthly Gourmet escapism, just as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and those dazzling sets and silly plots provided a couple of hours of visual happiness to people trapped in the Great Depression.
Some critics discount Gourmet as elitist, yet I find evidence the magazine is tuned in to the times. I picked up the April issue this morning, the one with the strawberry tart on the cover that I wouldn’t attempt at home but was a great treat for hungry eyes. The very first recipe, on the “Contents” page, was “Ham and Rice Croquettes,” deep-fried nuggets whose purpose is to help use up leftover ham, which is a very stretch-cooking thing to do (the “Joy of Cooking” famously defined “eternity” as “a ham and two people”), and something I would cook at home in a heartbeat.
Editor Ruth Reichl’s column that month assumed a “renewal” theme, of spring goodness to soothe the sting of a hard winter “as dispiriting as the one we’ve just endured,” that collapsed on us from the skies and from Wall Street. She spoke of ham as “reassuring,” and of lemon and egg desserts as “spectacular (and inexpensive).”
There is also a reference to a Gourmet online feature called “Extreme Frugality,” a blog written by W. Hodding Carter of his experiences feeding a family of six for $550 a month. One of his first moves was to acquire some chickens, for eggs and occasionally for the table. I don’t know if Carter dispatches the chickens with a broom handle, as my grandmother Susie did, but it goes to show, with stretch cooking, some things never change.
In the meantime, I keep flipping back to the “Contents” page and looking again at the Ham and Rice Croquettes, which also incorporate parmesan cheese. I feel an impulse growing to go buy a ham, planning for a near-future brunch of Ham and Rice croquettes, soft-scrambled eggs, asparagus, and orange-beet salad with cilantro and feta cheese.
Speaking of ham, I was a visitor in a Southern household some years ago, and was privileged to a plate of the best baked ham I ever ate. My host said it was from a Southern cookbooks. She gave me the name, but I have never been able to find it. Is anyone out there familiar with a recipe that calls for baking a ham by starting it in a 500-degree oven for half an hour?
People who like to eat look at the pages of Gourmet Magazine the way that people who like to pretend look at Brad Pitt and Juliette Binoche on the screen. Movies let us experience star-studded stories bigger than ourselves, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes for escapism.
Gourmet, for one more month, at least, is that way. People who like to eat, also like to eat with their eyes, and Gourmet offered beautiful plates of that fare. It was stuff we might never prepare at home, but it was satisfying to look at the pictures, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes for escapism. The economy being what it is these days, and that effect on home dinner tables, establishes the mood for monthly Gourmet escapism, just as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and those dazzling sets and silly plots provided a couple of hours of visual happiness to people trapped in the Great Depression.
Some critics discount Gourmet as elitist, yet I find evidence the magazine is tuned in to the times. I picked up the April issue this morning, the one with the strawberry tart on the cover that I wouldn’t attempt at home but was a great treat for hungry eyes. The very first recipe, on the “Contents” page, was “Ham and Rice Croquettes,” deep-fried nuggets whose purpose is to help use up leftover ham, which is a very stretch-cooking thing to do (the “Joy of Cooking” famously defined “eternity” as “a ham and two people”), and something I would cook at home in a heartbeat.
Editor Ruth Reichl’s column that month assumed a “renewal” theme, of spring goodness to soothe the sting of a hard winter “as dispiriting as the one we’ve just endured,” that collapsed on us from the skies and from Wall Street. She spoke of ham as “reassuring,” and of lemon and egg desserts as “spectacular (and inexpensive).”
There is also a reference to a Gourmet online feature called “Extreme Frugality,” a blog written by W. Hodding Carter of his experiences feeding a family of six for $550 a month. One of his first moves was to acquire some chickens, for eggs and occasionally for the table. I don’t know if Carter dispatches the chickens with a broom handle, as my grandmother Susie did, but it goes to show, with stretch cooking, some things never change.
In the meantime, I keep flipping back to the “Contents” page and looking again at the Ham and Rice Croquettes, which also incorporate parmesan cheese. I feel an impulse growing to go buy a ham, planning for a near-future brunch of Ham and Rice croquettes, soft-scrambled eggs, asparagus, and orange-beet salad with cilantro and feta cheese.
Speaking of ham, I was a visitor in a Southern household some years ago, and was privileged to a plate of the best baked ham I ever ate. My host said it was from a Southern cookbooks. She gave me the name, but I have never been able to find it. Is anyone out there familiar with a recipe that calls for baking a ham by starting it in a 500-degree oven for half an hour?
October 01, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Chicken Fried Steak
Some places you swear you’ll never forget, but I have. I can’t remember the name of the café in Cross Plains, Texas, where the chicken fried steak was so good. Cross Plains was 45 miles southeast of my home town, Abilene, and we would make the drive regularly to Cross Plains for chicken fried steak at this place.
There was one trip in particular. I was alone, except for a decent thunderstorm, which stayed about five miles behind me as I drove at moseying speed on Highway 36 out of Abilene toward Cross Plains. The country turns hilly down that way, green clumps of mesquite and red swatches of clay, intensified when there are storm clouds around.
Every few miles I would pull off on the highway’s wide shoulder – state highways in Texas are designed as linear viewing points – and drink in the color and texture, congratulating the random cattle for this fine home they had. Five miles ahead of a Texas thunderstorm is always a still, warm, zone, no wind, no sound, into which low thunder rolls from the dark cloud wall to the north. Heavenly. I would watch until the first fresh gusts arrived, running just ahead of the cold rain. Then I would get back in the car and drive on, five more miles, then stop again.
In this way I would reach Cross Plains, and the Café of the Forgotten Name so that I was just sitting and opening the typed menu when the thunder rose from rolling to roaring, the lightning and rain crashed, and the café became a cave where some of the best chicken fried steak in Texas was served. It was one of the luckier noontimes of my life. And now I can’t remember the name of the place.
Wait a minute. It was the White Castle. I would almost swear. I know, White Castles are tiny steamed hamburgers famed in the East. Besides, why would somebody in Cross Plains, Texas, name their place the White Castle? I couldn’t say, but I know there was a White Elephant in Eastland, up on I-20, and it had pretty good chicken fried steak too. And in Abilene, we had the Dixie Pig. Massey’s, in Fort Worth. Threadgill’s in Austin. The Alamo Café in San Antonio. Chicken fried steaks as big as dinner plates, covered in cream gravy.
People like me, with memories like those, don’t go too long without making chicken fried steak at home. I put the recipe in my cookbook, which is a collection of recipes I developed after I moved to California so I could eat, whenever I wanted to, like I was in Texas. My Texas pal Ray just last month sent off for the book, and now it has arrived, and it was so nostalgic for him because it’s all the recipes his mom cooked. He also, he said, was inspired by the chicken-fried steak recipe to head for Massey’s. Lucky duck.
If you have chicken fried steak at my house, you start with a round steak, about a pound and a half, three-quarters of an inch thick. Trim the fat and cut the steak into four pieces. Tenderize the pieces with a meat mallet. You can buy round steak pieces already tenderized, if you’d rather. Salt and pepper the meat, and give it a dusting of garlic powder.
Have ready a pie pan with flour in it, and another pie pan in which you have beaten two eggs and half a cup of milk. Heat a half-inch of oil (lard, Crisco, peanut oil) in a large black skillet on medium-high heat. Dredge the meat pieces in flour, then in the wet mixture, swishing it around on both sides, then back in the flour to coat. Fry the pieces until golden brown, about five minutes per side. Turn down the heat if the oil gets too hot. Drain the pieces on newspaper.
Gravy: Pour off almost all the oil, leaving a sheen of it across three-quarters of the bottom of the skillet. Set the heat at medium-high. Add three level tablespoons flour and stir constantly until the flour loses its raw smell. If the flour mixture is dry and crumbly, add a little more oil. When the flour is smooth and cooked, add two cups milk and stir constantly until the gravy thickens. Season with salt and generous pepper, and serve on the side. Choose your own side dishes. At my house, it might be mashed potatoes and green beans.
There was one trip in particular. I was alone, except for a decent thunderstorm, which stayed about five miles behind me as I drove at moseying speed on Highway 36 out of Abilene toward Cross Plains. The country turns hilly down that way, green clumps of mesquite and red swatches of clay, intensified when there are storm clouds around.
Every few miles I would pull off on the highway’s wide shoulder – state highways in Texas are designed as linear viewing points – and drink in the color and texture, congratulating the random cattle for this fine home they had. Five miles ahead of a Texas thunderstorm is always a still, warm, zone, no wind, no sound, into which low thunder rolls from the dark cloud wall to the north. Heavenly. I would watch until the first fresh gusts arrived, running just ahead of the cold rain. Then I would get back in the car and drive on, five more miles, then stop again.
In this way I would reach Cross Plains, and the Café of the Forgotten Name so that I was just sitting and opening the typed menu when the thunder rose from rolling to roaring, the lightning and rain crashed, and the café became a cave where some of the best chicken fried steak in Texas was served. It was one of the luckier noontimes of my life. And now I can’t remember the name of the place.
Wait a minute. It was the White Castle. I would almost swear. I know, White Castles are tiny steamed hamburgers famed in the East. Besides, why would somebody in Cross Plains, Texas, name their place the White Castle? I couldn’t say, but I know there was a White Elephant in Eastland, up on I-20, and it had pretty good chicken fried steak too. And in Abilene, we had the Dixie Pig. Massey’s, in Fort Worth. Threadgill’s in Austin. The Alamo Café in San Antonio. Chicken fried steaks as big as dinner plates, covered in cream gravy.
People like me, with memories like those, don’t go too long without making chicken fried steak at home. I put the recipe in my cookbook, which is a collection of recipes I developed after I moved to California so I could eat, whenever I wanted to, like I was in Texas. My Texas pal Ray just last month sent off for the book, and now it has arrived, and it was so nostalgic for him because it’s all the recipes his mom cooked. He also, he said, was inspired by the chicken-fried steak recipe to head for Massey’s. Lucky duck.
If you have chicken fried steak at my house, you start with a round steak, about a pound and a half, three-quarters of an inch thick. Trim the fat and cut the steak into four pieces. Tenderize the pieces with a meat mallet. You can buy round steak pieces already tenderized, if you’d rather. Salt and pepper the meat, and give it a dusting of garlic powder.
Have ready a pie pan with flour in it, and another pie pan in which you have beaten two eggs and half a cup of milk. Heat a half-inch of oil (lard, Crisco, peanut oil) in a large black skillet on medium-high heat. Dredge the meat pieces in flour, then in the wet mixture, swishing it around on both sides, then back in the flour to coat. Fry the pieces until golden brown, about five minutes per side. Turn down the heat if the oil gets too hot. Drain the pieces on newspaper.
Gravy: Pour off almost all the oil, leaving a sheen of it across three-quarters of the bottom of the skillet. Set the heat at medium-high. Add three level tablespoons flour and stir constantly until the flour loses its raw smell. If the flour mixture is dry and crumbly, add a little more oil. When the flour is smooth and cooked, add two cups milk and stir constantly until the gravy thickens. Season with salt and generous pepper, and serve on the side. Choose your own side dishes. At my house, it might be mashed potatoes and green beans.
September 24, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Some late, lamented freezer space
For several years, we have had two refrigerators in the house, one in the kitchen and one on the back porch, which is enclosed but not air conditioned. The BPIB (back porch icebox) was an older model, with exposed coils. When we looked for ways to cut our electric bill, our eyes fell almost automatically, and sorrowfully, on the BPIB. Last week, the men came to take it away.
It puts a dent in stretch cooking strategies. I have lost half my freezer space. The back freezer is where I held the meats I bought at CostCo, sliced into cooking sizes, and wrapped for freezing. In there, for example, were 17 wrapped packages each containing two half-inch slices of pork loin from a whole loin I bought for $17.65, a dozen half-pound packages of hamburger, and some sirloin steaks. Not to mention a six-dozen package of Porkyland’s tortillas, which freeze beautifully.
How Karen got all that stuff into the kitchen freezer, I do not know. But it was FULL. Excavation is now required to find everyday meal items like frozen slices of Trader Joe’s sourdough. But we will adjust. Freezer items we tend to use every day – bread, fruit, black-eyes, green beans, etc. – will gravitate toward the front.
The vegetables are already cooked and frozen in plastic containers. They get eaten before freezer burn can start. I hate those containers, by the way. I hate washing them, they are hard to store, and they have a built-in bounce that drives me nuts. I tolerate them, though, because of the facility with which they keep black-eyes and other stretch goodies in the freezer until you’re ready to eat them.
Many people cook everything first, then freeze it. Many people belong to that part of the stretch culture that does once-a-month cooking. I am not among those. I do quite a bit of once-a-week cooking, and freeze half of it, if it is what I call freezable. You can freeze chili, for example, but not barbecue, either beef or pork. I would no more put barbecued pork shoulder in the freezer than I would throw it in the dirt outside.
So I freeze a goodly amount of fresh meat. I avoid freezer burn by wrapping the meat tightly in foil and placing the packages in gallon-sized Ziploc freezer bags. It is air, of course, that causes freezer burn. If you have any question at all about freezer burn, by the way, go here. Or to any other of the 370,000 results that Google shows for “freezer burn.” I tell you, there’s not an adjective astonishing enough to describe the Internet as a repository of information.
It puts a dent in stretch cooking strategies. I have lost half my freezer space. The back freezer is where I held the meats I bought at CostCo, sliced into cooking sizes, and wrapped for freezing. In there, for example, were 17 wrapped packages each containing two half-inch slices of pork loin from a whole loin I bought for $17.65, a dozen half-pound packages of hamburger, and some sirloin steaks. Not to mention a six-dozen package of Porkyland’s tortillas, which freeze beautifully.
How Karen got all that stuff into the kitchen freezer, I do not know. But it was FULL. Excavation is now required to find everyday meal items like frozen slices of Trader Joe’s sourdough. But we will adjust. Freezer items we tend to use every day – bread, fruit, black-eyes, green beans, etc. – will gravitate toward the front.
The vegetables are already cooked and frozen in plastic containers. They get eaten before freezer burn can start. I hate those containers, by the way. I hate washing them, they are hard to store, and they have a built-in bounce that drives me nuts. I tolerate them, though, because of the facility with which they keep black-eyes and other stretch goodies in the freezer until you’re ready to eat them.
Many people cook everything first, then freeze it. Many people belong to that part of the stretch culture that does once-a-month cooking. I am not among those. I do quite a bit of once-a-week cooking, and freeze half of it, if it is what I call freezable. You can freeze chili, for example, but not barbecue, either beef or pork. I would no more put barbecued pork shoulder in the freezer than I would throw it in the dirt outside.
So I freeze a goodly amount of fresh meat. I avoid freezer burn by wrapping the meat tightly in foil and placing the packages in gallon-sized Ziploc freezer bags. It is air, of course, that causes freezer burn. If you have any question at all about freezer burn, by the way, go here. Or to any other of the 370,000 results that Google shows for “freezer burn.” I tell you, there’s not an adjective astonishing enough to describe the Internet as a repository of information.
September 17, 2009
Stretch Cooking: nothing standard about Green Enchiladas
September is traditionally one of our hottest months in Southern California; in fact next week the weather bureau is looking for temperatures in the 90s or 100s in the inland valleys of San Diego, where we live.
That’s not to say it’s not the right time for Green Enchiladas. There is no unright time for Green Enchiladas, which is one of the most reliable comfort foods known to man. There are certain days, though, that issue a particular call for comfort food, and many of them are associated with cooler temperatures.
I am thinking specifically of the day that Daylight Savings Time ends. Spring forward, fall back. On Nov. 1, a Sunday, we will turn our clocks back one hour. On Monday night, we will suddenly be driving home from work in the dark. I hate that. And on Nov. 2, even in Southern California, it’s likely to be cool, maybe even rainy. Monday, Nov. 2, is the date I have circled for Green Enchiladas.
You want to make them on Sunday, then Monday night just pull them out and run them into a 350 oven for 30 or 40 minutes, until they’re steamy-hot all the way through.
The smallest batch you should make, even for two people – or even one person, for that matter, in which case you may REALLY need Green Enchiladas – is that which will fill a 9 by 13 Pyrex baking dish.
Brown a pound and a half of hamburger in a black skillet, seasoning to taste with salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin and a scant teaspoon of Gebhardt’s Chile Powder. Put it aside to cool.
Make the sauce. In a large saucepan, melt two tablespoons of butter. Over medium-high heat, add three tablespoons of flour and stir with the butter to make a roux. Cook the roux just long enough to take off the raw flour taste. Add two cups of milk and stir constantly until the sauce thickens. Turn down the heat. Add two medium cans of diced green chiles and three-quarters of a pound of cubed Velveeta. Keep stirring until the Velveeta is melted and the sauce is smooth. Take the pan off the heat.
Have ready chopped onion and grated cheese. Prepare the tortillas. You need good corn tortillas. I recommend Porkyland’s, which you can mail-order, but if you have a good tortilleria near you, go for it. You will need 9 or 10. Paint both sides of the tortillas with oil. In a dry skillet, heat tortillas one by one and make a layer in the bottom of the baking dish. I like to cut one tortilla in half and snug the straight edges up to the ends of the pan. Make a layer of hamburger, chopped onion, and grated cheese. Be generous with the grated cheese. Repeat the tortilla layer, then repeat the hamburger etc. layer. Put on a top layer of tortillas. Then pour the chile-Velveeta sauce over all, getting it into all the seams and corners. Sprinkle the top with grated cheese.
Bake in a 350 oven for 40 minutes. Or cover with foil and refrigerate, as I am going to do on Nov. 1, in anticipation of Nov. 2. When it is ready, cut it into six sections with a spatula. Make a salad of shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, and good salsa, all mixed together, and serve on the plate with a section of Green Enchiladas. The only thing standard at your table on Nov. 2 will be the time.
That’s not to say it’s not the right time for Green Enchiladas. There is no unright time for Green Enchiladas, which is one of the most reliable comfort foods known to man. There are certain days, though, that issue a particular call for comfort food, and many of them are associated with cooler temperatures.
I am thinking specifically of the day that Daylight Savings Time ends. Spring forward, fall back. On Nov. 1, a Sunday, we will turn our clocks back one hour. On Monday night, we will suddenly be driving home from work in the dark. I hate that. And on Nov. 2, even in Southern California, it’s likely to be cool, maybe even rainy. Monday, Nov. 2, is the date I have circled for Green Enchiladas.
You want to make them on Sunday, then Monday night just pull them out and run them into a 350 oven for 30 or 40 minutes, until they’re steamy-hot all the way through.
The smallest batch you should make, even for two people – or even one person, for that matter, in which case you may REALLY need Green Enchiladas – is that which will fill a 9 by 13 Pyrex baking dish.
Brown a pound and a half of hamburger in a black skillet, seasoning to taste with salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin and a scant teaspoon of Gebhardt’s Chile Powder. Put it aside to cool.
Make the sauce. In a large saucepan, melt two tablespoons of butter. Over medium-high heat, add three tablespoons of flour and stir with the butter to make a roux. Cook the roux just long enough to take off the raw flour taste. Add two cups of milk and stir constantly until the sauce thickens. Turn down the heat. Add two medium cans of diced green chiles and three-quarters of a pound of cubed Velveeta. Keep stirring until the Velveeta is melted and the sauce is smooth. Take the pan off the heat.
Have ready chopped onion and grated cheese. Prepare the tortillas. You need good corn tortillas. I recommend Porkyland’s, which you can mail-order, but if you have a good tortilleria near you, go for it. You will need 9 or 10. Paint both sides of the tortillas with oil. In a dry skillet, heat tortillas one by one and make a layer in the bottom of the baking dish. I like to cut one tortilla in half and snug the straight edges up to the ends of the pan. Make a layer of hamburger, chopped onion, and grated cheese. Be generous with the grated cheese. Repeat the tortilla layer, then repeat the hamburger etc. layer. Put on a top layer of tortillas. Then pour the chile-Velveeta sauce over all, getting it into all the seams and corners. Sprinkle the top with grated cheese.
Bake in a 350 oven for 40 minutes. Or cover with foil and refrigerate, as I am going to do on Nov. 1, in anticipation of Nov. 2. When it is ready, cut it into six sections with a spatula. Make a salad of shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, and good salsa, all mixed together, and serve on the plate with a section of Green Enchiladas. The only thing standard at your table on Nov. 2 will be the time.
September 10, 2009
Stretch Cooking: a hundred-dollar book
If I had to guess why Amazon.com is selling a copy of my cookbook for $122.24, I would have to say it was the pecan pie.
Yes, I said $122.24. Check it out. Go to amazon.com, search “Books” for “Michael Grant’s Cookbook – Hearty Fare From a Country Kitchen,” and you will find seven available, “Used and New.” Click on that link, and there they are, offered by different booksellers across the country.
The new, never used, unopened, book is the $122.24 item. A “Used – Very Good” copy is selling for $80.94. Other used copies are available for $24.95, $24.94, and $14.74. I am grateful to my Texas associate Ray for bringing these to my attention. In his email, he said, “Better get all the extra copies out of the closet.”
I wish I could, but I’m down to one. I am studying it now, looking for clues to what would fuel the prices shown at Amazon.
As I say, the $122.24 must be the pecan pie. In addition to the eggs, dark Karo, brown sugar, and vanilla, I use butter, a square of dark baker’s chocolate and three cups of pecan halves in mine. A pecan pie CAN have too many pecans in it, but it’s a close call. I hate pecan pies that have spaces of filling between the pecans. So in my pecan pie, I make the filling work hard for an identity. I put in enough pecans so the topmost ones acquire a lightly roasted edge in the baking. With the price of pecans, you couldn’t call this a stretch recipe, although at $122.24, I couldn’t call it a stretch cookbook, either.
In the last one I made, I added, out of necessity, a new wrinkle that was well-received. When I went to add the vanilla, I discovered we were out. Instead, I used a half-teaspoon of almond extract, and a half-teaspoon of rum extract. You can’t go wrong with three cups of pecans (some lightly roasted along the edges), dark chocolate, brown sugar, butter, and rum extract, when you are baking a pie.
The $80.94 copy must be for the Texas-style brisket, though it isn’t so much a recipe as a technique. And this one IS a stretch recipe. You can make a lot of people feel happily fed with a 10-pound whole brisket-in-the-bag at $1.79 a pound, rubbed with salt and pepper and held for 12-14 hours in the slow heat and smoke of smouldering mesquite. I do mine on a Weber 22-inch kettle that I bought 35 years ago for $45. The price has gone up since then, but it’s still terrific bang for the buck, when it comes to making people happy. Don’t forget to catch the drippings to add to the sauce.
The $24.95 book is going, I figure, for the barbecue chili recipe, which starts calling to me in the cool first days of November, until I go out and smoke chuck roast and pork shoulder for several hours, then dice the meats and, with it, and the drippings, simply make chili: onion, chiles, a big can of tomatoes, cumin, chile powder and water.
You can pair barbecue chili nicely with Jim Price’s Cornbread, which I suspect must be the reason for the $24.94 copy. I admit, in the book, that it is not my recipe, but was given to me by Jim Price, a native of Childress, Texas. Take cornmeal, salt, eggs, buttermilk, cans of creamed corn, and a third of a cup of melted lard, and bake the mixture for half an hour in a black (cast-iron) skillet. It is the best corn bread I ever had.
I can’t decide about the $14.74 copy. It could be pinto beans, black-eyed peas, or green beans with bacon and potatoes. Or it could be Corn Bread Thangs! If I didn’t have my own copy, I might pay $14.74 to be able to say I served Corn Bread Thangs to company. What I really should do is dig out my copyright document, revise this book, and get back out there in the market.
Yes, I said $122.24. Check it out. Go to amazon.com, search “Books” for “Michael Grant’s Cookbook – Hearty Fare From a Country Kitchen,” and you will find seven available, “Used and New.” Click on that link, and there they are, offered by different booksellers across the country.
The new, never used, unopened, book is the $122.24 item. A “Used – Very Good” copy is selling for $80.94. Other used copies are available for $24.95, $24.94, and $14.74. I am grateful to my Texas associate Ray for bringing these to my attention. In his email, he said, “Better get all the extra copies out of the closet.”
I wish I could, but I’m down to one. I am studying it now, looking for clues to what would fuel the prices shown at Amazon.
As I say, the $122.24 must be the pecan pie. In addition to the eggs, dark Karo, brown sugar, and vanilla, I use butter, a square of dark baker’s chocolate and three cups of pecan halves in mine. A pecan pie CAN have too many pecans in it, but it’s a close call. I hate pecan pies that have spaces of filling between the pecans. So in my pecan pie, I make the filling work hard for an identity. I put in enough pecans so the topmost ones acquire a lightly roasted edge in the baking. With the price of pecans, you couldn’t call this a stretch recipe, although at $122.24, I couldn’t call it a stretch cookbook, either.
In the last one I made, I added, out of necessity, a new wrinkle that was well-received. When I went to add the vanilla, I discovered we were out. Instead, I used a half-teaspoon of almond extract, and a half-teaspoon of rum extract. You can’t go wrong with three cups of pecans (some lightly roasted along the edges), dark chocolate, brown sugar, butter, and rum extract, when you are baking a pie.
The $80.94 copy must be for the Texas-style brisket, though it isn’t so much a recipe as a technique. And this one IS a stretch recipe. You can make a lot of people feel happily fed with a 10-pound whole brisket-in-the-bag at $1.79 a pound, rubbed with salt and pepper and held for 12-14 hours in the slow heat and smoke of smouldering mesquite. I do mine on a Weber 22-inch kettle that I bought 35 years ago for $45. The price has gone up since then, but it’s still terrific bang for the buck, when it comes to making people happy. Don’t forget to catch the drippings to add to the sauce.
The $24.95 book is going, I figure, for the barbecue chili recipe, which starts calling to me in the cool first days of November, until I go out and smoke chuck roast and pork shoulder for several hours, then dice the meats and, with it, and the drippings, simply make chili: onion, chiles, a big can of tomatoes, cumin, chile powder and water.
You can pair barbecue chili nicely with Jim Price’s Cornbread, which I suspect must be the reason for the $24.94 copy. I admit, in the book, that it is not my recipe, but was given to me by Jim Price, a native of Childress, Texas. Take cornmeal, salt, eggs, buttermilk, cans of creamed corn, and a third of a cup of melted lard, and bake the mixture for half an hour in a black (cast-iron) skillet. It is the best corn bread I ever had.
I can’t decide about the $14.74 copy. It could be pinto beans, black-eyed peas, or green beans with bacon and potatoes. Or it could be Corn Bread Thangs! If I didn’t have my own copy, I might pay $14.74 to be able to say I served Corn Bread Thangs to company. What I really should do is dig out my copyright document, revise this book, and get back out there in the market.
September 03, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Mush, ham and red-eye gravy
Several years ago, the world was overrun by a polenta craze. It was on the lips of all who spoke or wrote about food. Finally, one evening in a nice Italian restaurant, having read so much about the trendy re-discovery of this old Italian staple, I ordered a dish that featured polenta.
I was amused. Polenta was only a smoothed-out version of corn meal mush, with butter or cheese whirled in. As a kid, I ate a ton of corn meal mush, without the butter or cheese. I liked it lumpy, which was good, because that’s the only way my grandmother would make it. We ate it mostly for breakfast, with milk or syrup or bacon sprinkled over. Nothing was better, on mornings when the blue north wind railed at the window seams and sleet froze the screen doors shut. In later years, I found that mush went with almost anything, at any meal, any time of the day, as long as it was hot. When it cooled, it ceased to be mush, and could not be restored to mush.
What you could do with it then, was cut the cold mush into squares, and fry it. Note: This is not how you make a corn bread thang. This method would yield only squares of browned, hard mush, which weren’t bad, but offered neither the flavor or the texture of a corn bread thang, which is fried hot, not cold, mush.
Its filling power, its flexibility, and its ingredients – corn meal, salt, and hot water – make mush a classic in stretch cooking lore. I assume it existed in Italy all this time, but I never heard the word, “polenta,” until I was into my 50s. When I learned what polenta was, I was glad mush had hit the big time. If “mush” were introduced into the Italian consciousness as the trendy new “polenta,” it might acquire some cache there. It’s all in the marketing. “Mush: the New Polenta.” I can see it now.
I am craving mush right now because my old friend Ray, who can rattle silverware with the best of them, sent me an email yesterday asking about red-eye gravy. He thought I had once published a recipe for red-eye gravy, which is true. It is on page 13 of “Michael Grant’s Cookbook.”
Like mush, red-eye gravy isn’t a recipe so much as a technique. It is best to start with half-inch slices of ham with some fat on the edges. Trim the fat, and in a black skillet render the fat to produce a tablespoon or so of melted fat in the skillet. Or, if the ham is totally trimmed, use olive oil, just enough to give the ham a moist, not dry, surface to touch. Brown the slices on both sides over medium heat. In the best of all worlds, you will be cooking the famous, salty, country ham from the South, but plain old ham slices from CostCo work, too. While the ham is cooking, brew a pot of coffee.
When the ham is well-browned, set it aside and add to the skillet half a cup of the coffee and half a cup of water. Purists argue that strong black coffee, straight, is the only way to prepare red-eye gravy. But I don’t think the coffee should dominate the gravy. I like a balance between the coffee’s aromatic richness and the ham’s salty bite. In fact, I lean a little bit toward the salty bite. Stir the coffee and water to bring up the browned bits in the skillet. Increase the heat and cook the gravy until it bubbles. Lower the heat, return the ham to the skillet, and simmer the slices in the gravy for five minutes.
Here’s where the mush comes in. Red-eye gravy is great on biscuits and on grits, but spooning it onto hot mush, with the ham alongside, makes it hard not to go look for your Davy Crockett cap. Boil 3 cups of water, add a teaspoon of salt, and stir in a cup and a quarter of yellow corn meal. Turn the heat to low and stir the mush until it is thick and big heat bubbles rise and “plup” through the surface.
You should also try this mush with any braised meats, stews, chili, seafood stews, black-eyes and turnip greens. My God, what time is it?
I was amused. Polenta was only a smoothed-out version of corn meal mush, with butter or cheese whirled in. As a kid, I ate a ton of corn meal mush, without the butter or cheese. I liked it lumpy, which was good, because that’s the only way my grandmother would make it. We ate it mostly for breakfast, with milk or syrup or bacon sprinkled over. Nothing was better, on mornings when the blue north wind railed at the window seams and sleet froze the screen doors shut. In later years, I found that mush went with almost anything, at any meal, any time of the day, as long as it was hot. When it cooled, it ceased to be mush, and could not be restored to mush.
What you could do with it then, was cut the cold mush into squares, and fry it. Note: This is not how you make a corn bread thang. This method would yield only squares of browned, hard mush, which weren’t bad, but offered neither the flavor or the texture of a corn bread thang, which is fried hot, not cold, mush.
Its filling power, its flexibility, and its ingredients – corn meal, salt, and hot water – make mush a classic in stretch cooking lore. I assume it existed in Italy all this time, but I never heard the word, “polenta,” until I was into my 50s. When I learned what polenta was, I was glad mush had hit the big time. If “mush” were introduced into the Italian consciousness as the trendy new “polenta,” it might acquire some cache there. It’s all in the marketing. “Mush: the New Polenta.” I can see it now.
I am craving mush right now because my old friend Ray, who can rattle silverware with the best of them, sent me an email yesterday asking about red-eye gravy. He thought I had once published a recipe for red-eye gravy, which is true. It is on page 13 of “Michael Grant’s Cookbook.”
Like mush, red-eye gravy isn’t a recipe so much as a technique. It is best to start with half-inch slices of ham with some fat on the edges. Trim the fat, and in a black skillet render the fat to produce a tablespoon or so of melted fat in the skillet. Or, if the ham is totally trimmed, use olive oil, just enough to give the ham a moist, not dry, surface to touch. Brown the slices on both sides over medium heat. In the best of all worlds, you will be cooking the famous, salty, country ham from the South, but plain old ham slices from CostCo work, too. While the ham is cooking, brew a pot of coffee.
When the ham is well-browned, set it aside and add to the skillet half a cup of the coffee and half a cup of water. Purists argue that strong black coffee, straight, is the only way to prepare red-eye gravy. But I don’t think the coffee should dominate the gravy. I like a balance between the coffee’s aromatic richness and the ham’s salty bite. In fact, I lean a little bit toward the salty bite. Stir the coffee and water to bring up the browned bits in the skillet. Increase the heat and cook the gravy until it bubbles. Lower the heat, return the ham to the skillet, and simmer the slices in the gravy for five minutes.
Here’s where the mush comes in. Red-eye gravy is great on biscuits and on grits, but spooning it onto hot mush, with the ham alongside, makes it hard not to go look for your Davy Crockett cap. Boil 3 cups of water, add a teaspoon of salt, and stir in a cup and a quarter of yellow corn meal. Turn the heat to low and stir the mush until it is thick and big heat bubbles rise and “plup” through the surface.
You should also try this mush with any braised meats, stews, chili, seafood stews, black-eyes and turnip greens. My God, what time is it?
August 27, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Tuna casserole, eventually
There was a time, before I was married or knew how to cook, that I ate a lot of chili with rice. It was pretty simple. Boil a cup of rice – I learned how to do that – and when it was ready, open a can of chili (preferably Wolf Brand, no beans), and dump it in the pan with the rice, add a handful of chopped onion, stir it all together, and let it heat until the chili was steaming.
It was good, it was cheap, it was easy, and it was filling. I am starting to crave some right now. I haven’t had it in years. It carries a whiff of kid stigma, like slicing up hotdogs in macaroni and cheese, as my son Tyler used to do. Maybe still does. But then if somebody asks him, “What did you have for dinner last night,” and he says, “Hot dogs sliced into macaroni and cheese,” the person will say, “What are you, a college kid?”
Same way with chili and rice. It’s just not something a grown man would naturally do. “What did you have for dinner last night?” “Chili and rice.” “And you can get a woman to live with you?” On the other hand, if I say, “Frito Pie,” the person may say, “Oh, how interesting.” So I’m interesting if I mix together a bag of Fritos, a can of chili, and some onions, and heat that until the chips are nice and mushy, and eat that, whereas if it’s rice, I’m a slob. Such is the unaccountability of stigma.
It must be the rice. When I announce that I am going to make tuna casserole, and 10 people hear me, eight of them will think I am going to make it with egg noodles. Rice needs a council or something, to lobby for its status. Maybe it’s because of all the instant rice on the shelves, a Rice-a-Roni onus. I happen to like most Rice-a-Ronis, but I would never make chili and rice with it. Nor would I make chili and rice with noodles. The flavors that rice picks up (and, with its chewiness, incorporates into every bite) just slide off of noodles.
But I’m not here to talk about rice stigma; I’m here to talk about the merits of tuna casserole in a stretch cooking repertoire. Tuna casserole has established itself as the best way to stretch cans of tuna and bags of potato chips. Typically, in the chip drawer, a day will come when there are a couple of bags of potato chips, each down to their last handful, which are sort of stale. That is the time to make tuna casserole.
Following instructions on the bag, boil a cup (dry) of rice. In a large saucepan, heat together a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of cream of chicken soup. Add to the soup a small can of button mushrooms, a small can of tiny green peas, and two cans of light tuna. You can use albacore, but that is like putting tenderloin in Hamburger Helper, if you are one who likes Hamburger Helper.
Add the cooked rice to the soup. Season to taste with black pepper and garlic powder. Stir until the ingredients are mixed, then pour the mixture into a casserole dish that has been lightly oiled. Some people like a deep dish, others a shallow one; I favor the shallow because there’s more acreage for the potato chips. Sprinkle the casserole with grated cheddar. Roll up the bags tight to crush the chips, then sprinkle them on top. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.
Next day, if asked what you had for dinner, say, “Tuna Casserole.” And if you can’t resist, add, “With rice.”
It was good, it was cheap, it was easy, and it was filling. I am starting to crave some right now. I haven’t had it in years. It carries a whiff of kid stigma, like slicing up hotdogs in macaroni and cheese, as my son Tyler used to do. Maybe still does. But then if somebody asks him, “What did you have for dinner last night,” and he says, “Hot dogs sliced into macaroni and cheese,” the person will say, “What are you, a college kid?”
Same way with chili and rice. It’s just not something a grown man would naturally do. “What did you have for dinner last night?” “Chili and rice.” “And you can get a woman to live with you?” On the other hand, if I say, “Frito Pie,” the person may say, “Oh, how interesting.” So I’m interesting if I mix together a bag of Fritos, a can of chili, and some onions, and heat that until the chips are nice and mushy, and eat that, whereas if it’s rice, I’m a slob. Such is the unaccountability of stigma.
It must be the rice. When I announce that I am going to make tuna casserole, and 10 people hear me, eight of them will think I am going to make it with egg noodles. Rice needs a council or something, to lobby for its status. Maybe it’s because of all the instant rice on the shelves, a Rice-a-Roni onus. I happen to like most Rice-a-Ronis, but I would never make chili and rice with it. Nor would I make chili and rice with noodles. The flavors that rice picks up (and, with its chewiness, incorporates into every bite) just slide off of noodles.
But I’m not here to talk about rice stigma; I’m here to talk about the merits of tuna casserole in a stretch cooking repertoire. Tuna casserole has established itself as the best way to stretch cans of tuna and bags of potato chips. Typically, in the chip drawer, a day will come when there are a couple of bags of potato chips, each down to their last handful, which are sort of stale. That is the time to make tuna casserole.
Following instructions on the bag, boil a cup (dry) of rice. In a large saucepan, heat together a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of cream of chicken soup. Add to the soup a small can of button mushrooms, a small can of tiny green peas, and two cans of light tuna. You can use albacore, but that is like putting tenderloin in Hamburger Helper, if you are one who likes Hamburger Helper.
Add the cooked rice to the soup. Season to taste with black pepper and garlic powder. Stir until the ingredients are mixed, then pour the mixture into a casserole dish that has been lightly oiled. Some people like a deep dish, others a shallow one; I favor the shallow because there’s more acreage for the potato chips. Sprinkle the casserole with grated cheddar. Roll up the bags tight to crush the chips, then sprinkle them on top. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.
Next day, if asked what you had for dinner, say, “Tuna Casserole.” And if you can’t resist, add, “With rice.”
August 20, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Why they call them Home Fries
The one kitchen item I have always coveted, just as at the same time I was so grateful I didn't own one, is the deep-fat fryer.
Coveted, of course, because of french fries, fish and chips, onion rings, etc. You can fry any of these in a skillet, but they aren't the same. After half a dozen tries, and five fool-proof techniques, including "pre-frying" the fries, I quit altogether, trying to fry french fries at home.
Onion rings, I tried once, and before they were anywhere near going into the skillet, they had become more trouble than they are worth. As a general statement, I think you can say that about all fried foods. It's a testament to the desirability of fried foods that, by God, no matter how big the mess gets, in prep, in clean-up, and in your arteries, people keep trying to fry them at home.
That general statement is the reason I am grateful not to own a deep-fat fryer. If I did, I know where I would find it: at the back of the bottom cabinet, with webby spider civilizations thriving in the dark corners. More trouble than it's worth. Actually, a big addition to the trouble. So you've pulled out half your hair trying to batter onion rings, then you pop these rings into the deep-fat fryer, and three-quarters of the batter slips right off the rings and sticks to something else. When you are finished, what do you do with two quarts of oil and half a pound of bonded-to-the-basket batter? I pour all my used oil into coffee cans, but we can't drink coffee fast enough to deal with the oil that Emeril LaGasse goes through in half an hour. And I won't follow any recipe calling for a basket, or a grate, like pork chops baked on a grate over a drip pan. Cleaning that grate just isn't worth it.
So I save the rings, fries, fish, calamari, for the cafes, and do home fries in the skillet. That's why they call them "home fries." They bear not the slightest resemblance to french fries, but they are potatoes fried at home, and the name acknowledges the difference. Home fries also re-heat nicely, which is not something you can say about the french kind. As I write this, Word keeps capitalizing "french" (don't you hate it when Word corrects you, or even tries to help you?), and I keep going back and overriding the capitalization because they aren't French fries. In France, they're pommes frites. I mean no disrespect here, because the French really know their way around pommes frites, in the cafes, at least.
For a big batch of home fries (and I always make enough for two, sometimes three, meals), pre-heat a 13-inch black (cast-iron) skillet over medium heat. Wash and cut into one-inch dice, four medium baking potatoes. You can peel them, but I like to leave the skins on. Chop one large onion and a medium green bell pepper. Place these in a mixing bowl, add salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste (and paprika for tang and color, if you like), and add about three tablespoons of olive oil, so that stirring coats everything nicely.
Add the mix to the skillet and stir around. Cover the skillet, to help cook the potatoes. Stir every five minutes until the potatoes are softening. You should not rush the cooking process. You want the potatoes golden, not black, around the edges. When you can easily cut through a potato piece with the spatula, leave the cover off, turn the heat up a couple of numbers above medium, and cook until the potatoes are nicely browned, stirring frequently.
These go great with steaks, pork, chicken, hamburgers, sausage, eggs and bacon, and they don't lose a thing in re-heating. And clean-up is a snap.
Coveted, of course, because of french fries, fish and chips, onion rings, etc. You can fry any of these in a skillet, but they aren't the same. After half a dozen tries, and five fool-proof techniques, including "pre-frying" the fries, I quit altogether, trying to fry french fries at home.
Onion rings, I tried once, and before they were anywhere near going into the skillet, they had become more trouble than they are worth. As a general statement, I think you can say that about all fried foods. It's a testament to the desirability of fried foods that, by God, no matter how big the mess gets, in prep, in clean-up, and in your arteries, people keep trying to fry them at home.
That general statement is the reason I am grateful not to own a deep-fat fryer. If I did, I know where I would find it: at the back of the bottom cabinet, with webby spider civilizations thriving in the dark corners. More trouble than it's worth. Actually, a big addition to the trouble. So you've pulled out half your hair trying to batter onion rings, then you pop these rings into the deep-fat fryer, and three-quarters of the batter slips right off the rings and sticks to something else. When you are finished, what do you do with two quarts of oil and half a pound of bonded-to-the-basket batter? I pour all my used oil into coffee cans, but we can't drink coffee fast enough to deal with the oil that Emeril LaGasse goes through in half an hour. And I won't follow any recipe calling for a basket, or a grate, like pork chops baked on a grate over a drip pan. Cleaning that grate just isn't worth it.
So I save the rings, fries, fish, calamari, for the cafes, and do home fries in the skillet. That's why they call them "home fries." They bear not the slightest resemblance to french fries, but they are potatoes fried at home, and the name acknowledges the difference. Home fries also re-heat nicely, which is not something you can say about the french kind. As I write this, Word keeps capitalizing "french" (don't you hate it when Word corrects you, or even tries to help you?), and I keep going back and overriding the capitalization because they aren't French fries. In France, they're pommes frites. I mean no disrespect here, because the French really know their way around pommes frites, in the cafes, at least.
For a big batch of home fries (and I always make enough for two, sometimes three, meals), pre-heat a 13-inch black (cast-iron) skillet over medium heat. Wash and cut into one-inch dice, four medium baking potatoes. You can peel them, but I like to leave the skins on. Chop one large onion and a medium green bell pepper. Place these in a mixing bowl, add salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste (and paprika for tang and color, if you like), and add about three tablespoons of olive oil, so that stirring coats everything nicely.
Add the mix to the skillet and stir around. Cover the skillet, to help cook the potatoes. Stir every five minutes until the potatoes are softening. You should not rush the cooking process. You want the potatoes golden, not black, around the edges. When you can easily cut through a potato piece with the spatula, leave the cover off, turn the heat up a couple of numbers above medium, and cook until the potatoes are nicely browned, stirring frequently.
These go great with steaks, pork, chicken, hamburgers, sausage, eggs and bacon, and they don't lose a thing in re-heating. And clean-up is a snap.
August 15, 2009
Stretch Cooking: little burritos, fat chimichangas
I always keep flour tortillas on hand, because they make quick and easy lunches, and because they are a great way to stretch things in a pinch.
Say a couple of friends call at 4 in the afternoon. They are in the neighborhood and wonder if they could stop by for a drink. There is nothing more fun than that, particularly when they bring the wine.
So you're into the wine (or margaritas or whatever), and 5 p.m. becomes 6, and at the patio table, somebody's stomach growls. Doesn't matter whose. The host says, uh-oh, I'd better offer up something to eat. But all I have in the icebox are a couple of bits of leftover braised pork. Not enough for four. Hmmm. I'll chop those up, with the onions they braised with, which with some cheese rolled into flour tortillas will make eight mini- burritos, two each.
These tortillas are the eight-inch size, which you can heat to soften, then roll into them grated cheese and salsa (or chili or leftover veggies or whatever, put in the oven for 10 minutes, and make the easiest, cleanest, fastest lunch in the west. Or the fastest patio snacks for unexpected friends. The larger sizes, 14 inches (or larger, for the "burrito grande") are for making the kinds of burritos you get from take-out places. These I like to feed a passel of family, which includes kids, all of whom would never turn their backs on a hot chimichanga, with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole.
A chimichanga is basically a burrito, fried in oil to a golden brown. Arizonans claim the chimichanga originated in Tucson, specifically at the El Charro Café, where, accidentally, a burrito was dropped into a deep-fat fryer.
Get two packages of flour tortillas, the 12- or 14-ounce size, that come eight or 10 to the package. (You might as well make a lot of them; they freeze nicely.) Brown two chorizo sausages, one pound each, in a large skillet, then add two large cans of refried beans. Blend these well. If you want leaner chimis, you can use a pound and a half of hamburger, seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, a pince of cumin and a couple tablespoons of chile powder. But the chorizo variety is better.
In a hot, dry skillet, soften the tortillas, one at a time. Place the tortilla on a carving board and drop half a cup of the chorizo mixture onto the half of the tortilla nearest you. Flip the sides of the tortilla inward, then roll the tortilla from the bottom to make a cylinder. Keep the burritos on a cooking sheet until you are ready to eat.
Heat half an inch of corn oil or peanut oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat. CAREFULLY place the burritos into the oil, three at a time. Let brown on the bottom, then flip to brown the other side. Drain on newspapers or paper towels and keep warm in the oven until serving. The ones you don't fry, put in a freezer bag and freeze.
Say a couple of friends call at 4 in the afternoon. They are in the neighborhood and wonder if they could stop by for a drink. There is nothing more fun than that, particularly when they bring the wine.
So you're into the wine (or margaritas or whatever), and 5 p.m. becomes 6, and at the patio table, somebody's stomach growls. Doesn't matter whose. The host says, uh-oh, I'd better offer up something to eat. But all I have in the icebox are a couple of bits of leftover braised pork. Not enough for four. Hmmm. I'll chop those up, with the onions they braised with, which with some cheese rolled into flour tortillas will make eight mini- burritos, two each.
These tortillas are the eight-inch size, which you can heat to soften, then roll into them grated cheese and salsa (or chili or leftover veggies or whatever, put in the oven for 10 minutes, and make the easiest, cleanest, fastest lunch in the west. Or the fastest patio snacks for unexpected friends. The larger sizes, 14 inches (or larger, for the "burrito grande") are for making the kinds of burritos you get from take-out places. These I like to feed a passel of family, which includes kids, all of whom would never turn their backs on a hot chimichanga, with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole.
A chimichanga is basically a burrito, fried in oil to a golden brown. Arizonans claim the chimichanga originated in Tucson, specifically at the El Charro Café, where, accidentally, a burrito was dropped into a deep-fat fryer.
Get two packages of flour tortillas, the 12- or 14-ounce size, that come eight or 10 to the package. (You might as well make a lot of them; they freeze nicely.) Brown two chorizo sausages, one pound each, in a large skillet, then add two large cans of refried beans. Blend these well. If you want leaner chimis, you can use a pound and a half of hamburger, seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, a pince of cumin and a couple tablespoons of chile powder. But the chorizo variety is better.
In a hot, dry skillet, soften the tortillas, one at a time. Place the tortilla on a carving board and drop half a cup of the chorizo mixture onto the half of the tortilla nearest you. Flip the sides of the tortilla inward, then roll the tortilla from the bottom to make a cylinder. Keep the burritos on a cooking sheet until you are ready to eat.
Heat half an inch of corn oil or peanut oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat. CAREFULLY place the burritos into the oil, three at a time. Let brown on the bottom, then flip to brown the other side. Drain on newspapers or paper towels and keep warm in the oven until serving. The ones you don't fry, put in a freezer bag and freeze.
August 06, 2009
Stretch Cooking: The "Joy" of it
Of course the champion stretch-cooking cookbook of all time is the good old "Joy of Cooking," whose first copyright was recorded in 1931, just as the Great Depression was beginning to seriously ravage the land. Yes, you can find many high-tone recipes in "Joy," such as Beef Wellington, but you will also find this caveat preceding the recipe:
"If time is no object and your aim is to out-Jones the Joneses, you can serve this twice-roasted but rare beef tenderloin encased in puff paste – but don't quote us as devotees."
I am actually an unabashed fan of Beef Wellington, since I was introduced to it in, of all places, Abilene, Texas, in the early 1970s. I was a sports writer at The Abilene Reporter-News, and my then-wife Lynn, the mother of our children, worked in the nutrition department at Hendrick Memorial Hospital, headed at that time by Milla Perry, who today is the sister of the sitting Texas governor.
On evenings when the Hendrick board met, Lynn would bring home with her whopping slices of Beef Wellington left over from the board dinner. Were such extravagant habits already embedded in the health care culture, contributing to today's crisis? I couldn't say, but the Beef Wellington sure was good. It was a whole beef tenderloin, quickly roasted in a hot oven, smeared with pate de foie gras, rolled up into puff pastry, then baked to a golden brown. The beef was still rare in the middle. I wouldn't mind a slice right now.
Where was I? Oh, yes. I was saying that "Joy of Cooking" reminds us that stretch cooking embodies practices that today may be considered haute cuisine, but whose origins were absolutely basic. Take stock, for example. It has not been all that long, really, since all recipes began with harvesting or killing something you had cultivated, found, herded, or hunted. Cooking, shelter, and finding water were the original hard work, and those cooks learned to use everything, and make it go a long way. I have absolutely no attribution for this – it just popped into my head – but the first "gourmet" cuisine probably evolved as the human class system evolved, and the privileged class developed privileged tastes because they had the lower class doing all the work out there in the kitchen, the fields, and the pasture. Part of liking Beef Wellington so much was that they didn't have to make it themselves.
The same holds true today. I would like to know if any members in the history of the Hendrick Memorial Hospital Board ever made Beef Wellington for themselves. Daily, I am sure, their recipes are the original lower class, modified by our present, astonishing, ease of procurement. A frightening number of Americans can't even cut up a chicken for themselves, even though whole chickens can be bought for a fraction of the price of cut-up ones, and the gizzards, hearts, necks and backs, used for – that's right – stock.
To make a piece of meat go a long way, buy a big piece of meat with the bones in, learn what to do with it, and use all of it. It's all right there in "Joy of Cooking." On the very same page as the Beef Wellington recipe is text and illustrations showing how to cut up a whole sirloin into tenderloins, T-bones, ribeyes and porterhouses. If there are bones, there are five pages on preparing stocks, which can be frozen and show up in hundreds of stretch recipes, in soups, in gravies, in braising.
Outside of the slaughtering, the head, and the hide (you don’t want to go too retro here), with "Joy" you could essentially raise your own steer, butcher it, and use all of it, for some minuscule fraction of the cost of buying all those parts through a middle-man. There are some recipes in the book that I wouldn't eat, ("Beef Tongue with Raisin Sauce" is one), but "Joy" is the essential stretch cookbook. It doesn't throw anything away.
"If time is no object and your aim is to out-Jones the Joneses, you can serve this twice-roasted but rare beef tenderloin encased in puff paste – but don't quote us as devotees."
I am actually an unabashed fan of Beef Wellington, since I was introduced to it in, of all places, Abilene, Texas, in the early 1970s. I was a sports writer at The Abilene Reporter-News, and my then-wife Lynn, the mother of our children, worked in the nutrition department at Hendrick Memorial Hospital, headed at that time by Milla Perry, who today is the sister of the sitting Texas governor.
On evenings when the Hendrick board met, Lynn would bring home with her whopping slices of Beef Wellington left over from the board dinner. Were such extravagant habits already embedded in the health care culture, contributing to today's crisis? I couldn't say, but the Beef Wellington sure was good. It was a whole beef tenderloin, quickly roasted in a hot oven, smeared with pate de foie gras, rolled up into puff pastry, then baked to a golden brown. The beef was still rare in the middle. I wouldn't mind a slice right now.
Where was I? Oh, yes. I was saying that "Joy of Cooking" reminds us that stretch cooking embodies practices that today may be considered haute cuisine, but whose origins were absolutely basic. Take stock, for example. It has not been all that long, really, since all recipes began with harvesting or killing something you had cultivated, found, herded, or hunted. Cooking, shelter, and finding water were the original hard work, and those cooks learned to use everything, and make it go a long way. I have absolutely no attribution for this – it just popped into my head – but the first "gourmet" cuisine probably evolved as the human class system evolved, and the privileged class developed privileged tastes because they had the lower class doing all the work out there in the kitchen, the fields, and the pasture. Part of liking Beef Wellington so much was that they didn't have to make it themselves.
The same holds true today. I would like to know if any members in the history of the Hendrick Memorial Hospital Board ever made Beef Wellington for themselves. Daily, I am sure, their recipes are the original lower class, modified by our present, astonishing, ease of procurement. A frightening number of Americans can't even cut up a chicken for themselves, even though whole chickens can be bought for a fraction of the price of cut-up ones, and the gizzards, hearts, necks and backs, used for – that's right – stock.
To make a piece of meat go a long way, buy a big piece of meat with the bones in, learn what to do with it, and use all of it. It's all right there in "Joy of Cooking." On the very same page as the Beef Wellington recipe is text and illustrations showing how to cut up a whole sirloin into tenderloins, T-bones, ribeyes and porterhouses. If there are bones, there are five pages on preparing stocks, which can be frozen and show up in hundreds of stretch recipes, in soups, in gravies, in braising.
Outside of the slaughtering, the head, and the hide (you don’t want to go too retro here), with "Joy" you could essentially raise your own steer, butcher it, and use all of it, for some minuscule fraction of the cost of buying all those parts through a middle-man. There are some recipes in the book that I wouldn't eat, ("Beef Tongue with Raisin Sauce" is one), but "Joy" is the essential stretch cookbook. It doesn't throw anything away.
July 30, 2009
Stretch Cooking: An apology to corn
I was fiddling with what I thought would become a very interesting recipe last week when I made a discovery: corn is like hamburger. We all know that no matter what you do to hamburger, it remains hamburger. Same thing with corn, it turns out.
This is not a bad thing. The best way to eat corn is fresh, hot, and straight off the cob. No butter, no salt, nothing. You can swirl it in a stick of butter, nothing wrong with that, and you think you've got buttered corn. In fact, what you have is corned butter. It's the butter that changes, in the relationship.
So why, if corn is so perfect all by itself, would someone try to modify it? Good question. It must have something to do with the human brain. Every human brain has a superiority complex. The song from "Annie Get Your Gun": "Anything you can do, I can do better." Potato chip manufacturers: "New! Improved!" boast the bags of their latest flavored chips, when they understand in their heart of hearts that there is no improving on the original product, a thin slice of plain potato fried in hot oil.
Yet it's because of the brain's superiority complex that potato chip people make insane profits off the flavored chips. It's called demographics: a "demographic group" is people banding together to insist that their choice is superior to all others. Once Lay's discovered there was a "Barbecue Flavored" superiority out there, the age of potato chip innocence was over. It's so easy for Americans to believe that they are No. 1. Before the season starts, football fans on 100 college campuses will all be brandishing index fingers, insisting, "We're No. 1!" They will still be doing that in November, when their team is 3 and 5.
I am guilty. I thought I could create America's No. 1 recipe for Southwestern Corn Salad. The secret would be freshness, and subtlety. I chopped half a large onion and diced three bell peppers: green, red and yellow. These I placed in a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet, over low heat. The idea was to let the ingredients cook very slowly, so they would soften and weep out their natural flavors without any intrusion of the browning effect. Surgical, eh?
After 20 minutes, I added one large zucchini, diced, and four diced tomatillos, for that distinctive tomatillo flavor. I added some salt and fresh-ground pepper. I shucked four ears of corn and cut the kernels off the cobs, and scraped the cobs, to collect the flavorful pips and a bit of pulp. After 20 minutes, I added these to the skillet and let the completed mixture gently simmer another 20 minutes.
When it was finished, I spooned up a bite and thought I would be blasted by primal goodness. It was not bad, by any means, but I had had a vision of guests, tasting this, to burst spontaneously into "America, the Beautiful," and I knew that was not going to happen, and I was disappointed. It tasted like corn.
Of course I will make Southwestern Corn Salad again. I will go to Trader Joe's for bags of frozen white corn and mixed peppers, already chopped. I will sauté the peppers and onion over medium heat, toss in the zucchini and eight (this time) diced tomatillos, and finally the corn. It will be done in 20 minutes, and it will be colorful, and good. It will taste like corn. Can't go wrong.
This is not a bad thing. The best way to eat corn is fresh, hot, and straight off the cob. No butter, no salt, nothing. You can swirl it in a stick of butter, nothing wrong with that, and you think you've got buttered corn. In fact, what you have is corned butter. It's the butter that changes, in the relationship.
So why, if corn is so perfect all by itself, would someone try to modify it? Good question. It must have something to do with the human brain. Every human brain has a superiority complex. The song from "Annie Get Your Gun": "Anything you can do, I can do better." Potato chip manufacturers: "New! Improved!" boast the bags of their latest flavored chips, when they understand in their heart of hearts that there is no improving on the original product, a thin slice of plain potato fried in hot oil.
Yet it's because of the brain's superiority complex that potato chip people make insane profits off the flavored chips. It's called demographics: a "demographic group" is people banding together to insist that their choice is superior to all others. Once Lay's discovered there was a "Barbecue Flavored" superiority out there, the age of potato chip innocence was over. It's so easy for Americans to believe that they are No. 1. Before the season starts, football fans on 100 college campuses will all be brandishing index fingers, insisting, "We're No. 1!" They will still be doing that in November, when their team is 3 and 5.
I am guilty. I thought I could create America's No. 1 recipe for Southwestern Corn Salad. The secret would be freshness, and subtlety. I chopped half a large onion and diced three bell peppers: green, red and yellow. These I placed in a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet, over low heat. The idea was to let the ingredients cook very slowly, so they would soften and weep out their natural flavors without any intrusion of the browning effect. Surgical, eh?
After 20 minutes, I added one large zucchini, diced, and four diced tomatillos, for that distinctive tomatillo flavor. I added some salt and fresh-ground pepper. I shucked four ears of corn and cut the kernels off the cobs, and scraped the cobs, to collect the flavorful pips and a bit of pulp. After 20 minutes, I added these to the skillet and let the completed mixture gently simmer another 20 minutes.
When it was finished, I spooned up a bite and thought I would be blasted by primal goodness. It was not bad, by any means, but I had had a vision of guests, tasting this, to burst spontaneously into "America, the Beautiful," and I knew that was not going to happen, and I was disappointed. It tasted like corn.
Of course I will make Southwestern Corn Salad again. I will go to Trader Joe's for bags of frozen white corn and mixed peppers, already chopped. I will sauté the peppers and onion over medium heat, toss in the zucchini and eight (this time) diced tomatillos, and finally the corn. It will be done in 20 minutes, and it will be colorful, and good. It will taste like corn. Can't go wrong.
July 23, 2009
Stretch Cooking: a dish of spontaneity
The real fun of cooking is not (necessarily) the fancy stuff and trusted recipes, but instead just knowing principles that empower options.
I was in the supermarket and spied a piece of round steak, between a half and three-quarters of a pound, half an inch thick, and shaped like the lower half of Florida. With my club card, it was $3.74. I never buy "steak" steaks at the supermarket, but, at $3.74, I bonded with this unassuming standard-grade "Rancher's Reserve" bit of round steak. I was going to have it for dinner.
In my head, I had been thinking about one of my favorites, searing a steak in a black skillet, and sautéing some onions, mushrooms and fresh spinach in the same skillet. But this steak wasn't thick enough for that.
I thought about pounding it, breading it, and making a chicken-fried steak sandwich, which in Texas in the old days, we just called a "steak sandwich." In those days, you ordered a steak sandwich in any café, and you got a piece of chicken-fried steak open-faced on thick toast with cream gravy and fries on the side. My, my. In 2009, in many Texas cafes, you order a steak sandwich and you don't know what you'll get.
There would be enough of my $3.74 round steak to make two steak sandwiches, but I decided against it because we're staying mostly away from fried meats and gravy. I could make smothered steak, which involves less fat and healthier gravy, and as I was considering that, I wondered if there was a way I could make a kind of smothered steak in which a combination of meat and onions produced the gravy, without using any fat at all.
Well, I did use a scant tablespoon of olive oil, in a black skillet, to get things going. A black, cast-iron skillet is one of those cooking principles I mentioned above. If you understand a black skillet, you can get it to do some wonderful stuff with heat. A black skillet soaks up heat like a sponge, holds it evenly, and distributes it slowly, like there is a timer built into all the skillet molecules. It probably has something to do with quantum physics, but you don't need to understand the principle, just know it's there. (I was teaching a class once, making chicken-fried steak and gravy, and as I was making the gravy, a guy asked, "Why does it thicken?" "I don't know," I said, and everybody laughed.)
I got my nine-inch black skillet and put it on medium-high (7, on your electric-range dials) to take on a heat load. I splashed salt, pepper and garlic powder on the steak and put it in to sear, immediately turning the heat down to 5. I browned it for two or three minutes, checking underneath, and then flipped it over. After a couple of minutes I added a medium onion, chunked, around the sides of the steak, turned the heat down to 2, and covered the skillet.
Five minutes later I stirred the onions, which were already sweating their own juices and starting to caramelize. This is another principle. I covered it again and turned the heat down to 1. Ten minutes later I checked for dryness and added half a cup of water. Covered it again and left it for an hour. The onions were caramelized, the pan juices – the "gravy" – were dark and rich, and you could cut the steak with a fork. I love that kind of kitchen spontaneity.
I was in the supermarket and spied a piece of round steak, between a half and three-quarters of a pound, half an inch thick, and shaped like the lower half of Florida. With my club card, it was $3.74. I never buy "steak" steaks at the supermarket, but, at $3.74, I bonded with this unassuming standard-grade "Rancher's Reserve" bit of round steak. I was going to have it for dinner.
In my head, I had been thinking about one of my favorites, searing a steak in a black skillet, and sautéing some onions, mushrooms and fresh spinach in the same skillet. But this steak wasn't thick enough for that.
I thought about pounding it, breading it, and making a chicken-fried steak sandwich, which in Texas in the old days, we just called a "steak sandwich." In those days, you ordered a steak sandwich in any café, and you got a piece of chicken-fried steak open-faced on thick toast with cream gravy and fries on the side. My, my. In 2009, in many Texas cafes, you order a steak sandwich and you don't know what you'll get.
There would be enough of my $3.74 round steak to make two steak sandwiches, but I decided against it because we're staying mostly away from fried meats and gravy. I could make smothered steak, which involves less fat and healthier gravy, and as I was considering that, I wondered if there was a way I could make a kind of smothered steak in which a combination of meat and onions produced the gravy, without using any fat at all.
Well, I did use a scant tablespoon of olive oil, in a black skillet, to get things going. A black, cast-iron skillet is one of those cooking principles I mentioned above. If you understand a black skillet, you can get it to do some wonderful stuff with heat. A black skillet soaks up heat like a sponge, holds it evenly, and distributes it slowly, like there is a timer built into all the skillet molecules. It probably has something to do with quantum physics, but you don't need to understand the principle, just know it's there. (I was teaching a class once, making chicken-fried steak and gravy, and as I was making the gravy, a guy asked, "Why does it thicken?" "I don't know," I said, and everybody laughed.)
I got my nine-inch black skillet and put it on medium-high (7, on your electric-range dials) to take on a heat load. I splashed salt, pepper and garlic powder on the steak and put it in to sear, immediately turning the heat down to 5. I browned it for two or three minutes, checking underneath, and then flipped it over. After a couple of minutes I added a medium onion, chunked, around the sides of the steak, turned the heat down to 2, and covered the skillet.
Five minutes later I stirred the onions, which were already sweating their own juices and starting to caramelize. This is another principle. I covered it again and turned the heat down to 1. Ten minutes later I checked for dryness and added half a cup of water. Covered it again and left it for an hour. The onions were caramelized, the pan juices – the "gravy" – were dark and rich, and you could cut the steak with a fork. I love that kind of kitchen spontaneity.
July 16, 2009
Stretch Cooking: remembering the Baum's No. 4
This is more a reminiscence than a recipe, and you can blame – and ultimately thank – Ann Whitaker for it. Ann was an Abilene High classmate – a year behind me – and when she contacted me via Facebook, she flashed a huge credential: "My aunt and uncle owned Baum's."
Immediately, with those words, there appeared a complete memory of a Baum's No. 4. Baum's was a drive-in hamburger joint on South 7th, complete with carhops, at the corner of Ross or Meander, one of the streets in that stretch. This was in the era of 1957-61. The Baum's No. 4 was a hamburger with chili and cheese. The flat bun was six inches across and the meat was pressed flat and broiled. The complete name of the place was Baum's Broiled Burgers. Memory tells me that before it was Baum's, it was Buck's. But memory, half a century later, can be tricky. The No. 4 may in fact have been the one with barbecue sauce and thin-sliced onion. Which means the No. 1 would have been the chili and cheese. I ordered both, regularly.
You may have picked up on the adjectives "flat" and "thin-sliced" as signatures of stretch cooking. Profit margins being what they were – and are – you don't have to go any farther than a McDonald's or Burger King to see the principles at work. And they did work, at Baum's, or I wouldn't have this holographic vision, complete with aroma, of a No. 4, a hamburger I last ate in the Kennedy Administration.
At home, to this day, I always get flat, wide buns (my present bun of choice is the Orowheat Onion bun, eight to the package, and they freeze wonderfully) and 80 percent lean beef, pressed into flat patties. I slice the onions very thin, more for reasons of nuance than parsimony, and for chiliburgers and chili dogs, I use canned chili, no beans, Hormel or Wolf (the best, available online). You should never use homemade chili on hamburgers, hot dogs, or waffles. Canned has far the better generic texture and taste for mixed use.
The same holds with the barbecue burger. Homemade barbecue sauce is far too sophisticated to spoon onto a hamburger. The redder and cheaper the better. Smash the patty flat, season with salt and pepper, and either fry them in a skillet or grill them outside. It is a good idea to toast the bun, not for flavor so much as strength. These things can get soggy. Put some mustard on the bottom bun, then the patty, then chili (not TOO much) and then grated cheese, and also onion if you like. For the barbecue burger, you can use mustard or sauce on the bottom bun (Baum's always used sauce), then the patty, then some more sauce, then the thin-sliced onion.
Sorry, this recipe comes without carhops and real French fries, or 15-cent gas. In the Baum's days, four guys could chip in a quarter each for gas and we could cruise all night.
Immediately, with those words, there appeared a complete memory of a Baum's No. 4. Baum's was a drive-in hamburger joint on South 7th, complete with carhops, at the corner of Ross or Meander, one of the streets in that stretch. This was in the era of 1957-61. The Baum's No. 4 was a hamburger with chili and cheese. The flat bun was six inches across and the meat was pressed flat and broiled. The complete name of the place was Baum's Broiled Burgers. Memory tells me that before it was Baum's, it was Buck's. But memory, half a century later, can be tricky. The No. 4 may in fact have been the one with barbecue sauce and thin-sliced onion. Which means the No. 1 would have been the chili and cheese. I ordered both, regularly.
You may have picked up on the adjectives "flat" and "thin-sliced" as signatures of stretch cooking. Profit margins being what they were – and are – you don't have to go any farther than a McDonald's or Burger King to see the principles at work. And they did work, at Baum's, or I wouldn't have this holographic vision, complete with aroma, of a No. 4, a hamburger I last ate in the Kennedy Administration.
At home, to this day, I always get flat, wide buns (my present bun of choice is the Orowheat Onion bun, eight to the package, and they freeze wonderfully) and 80 percent lean beef, pressed into flat patties. I slice the onions very thin, more for reasons of nuance than parsimony, and for chiliburgers and chili dogs, I use canned chili, no beans, Hormel or Wolf (the best, available online). You should never use homemade chili on hamburgers, hot dogs, or waffles. Canned has far the better generic texture and taste for mixed use.
The same holds with the barbecue burger. Homemade barbecue sauce is far too sophisticated to spoon onto a hamburger. The redder and cheaper the better. Smash the patty flat, season with salt and pepper, and either fry them in a skillet or grill them outside. It is a good idea to toast the bun, not for flavor so much as strength. These things can get soggy. Put some mustard on the bottom bun, then the patty, then chili (not TOO much) and then grated cheese, and also onion if you like. For the barbecue burger, you can use mustard or sauce on the bottom bun (Baum's always used sauce), then the patty, then some more sauce, then the thin-sliced onion.
Sorry, this recipe comes without carhops and real French fries, or 15-cent gas. In the Baum's days, four guys could chip in a quarter each for gas and we could cruise all night.
July 12, 2009
Sunday morning extra: basted eggs
I grew up on basted eggs for breakfast. I have always called them ann-eggs, because Susie, my grandmother, would say every morning, "Do you want an egg?" "Yes," I would reply, and what she brought to the table was a basted egg, or two.
A classic basted egg is created by cracking an egg into a skillet with enough fat in it, either bacon or sausage, to spoon over the top of the egg. The hot fat cooked the raw white around the yolk and put a pale-pink, sexual sheen over the yolk, while leaving the yolk runny underneath.
You could always tell a plain diner from a great diner by the way it responded to your order for basted eggs. True basted would come out with that pink sheen over the yolks. Lazy basted would come out with yellow yolks, as if you had ordered them sunny-side up. If the yolks were runny and the white cooked, fine. Too often, the white would be cooked, but the yolks hard. That is because the diner cook put a pan lid over the eggs, clamped it right down on the griddle, so steam developing underneath would do the cooking. With this method, it didn't take any time at all for the yolks to get hard.
At home, I have always preferred basted eggs, but the tradeoff is frying enough bacon or sausage to accumulate the necessary fat for basting. Then you have to eat that bacon or sausage, which was not a bad thing 50 years ago in your outdoor years, but it is something I have moved away from in my mature years. For a long time, I have settled for over-easy, because there has been no way to do runny-yolk sunny-side-up without leaving some white uncooked.
But there IS a way to do that, and it involves a pan lid. Break the eggs into a medium-low skillet, let the whites cook a bit around the edges, then take a large pan lid and hold it a couple of inches over the eggs, for a count of 10. Then peek, and if the yolks look firm, the eggs are done. If not, give it another five seconds. The difference from the old, lazy, diner cooks, who would clamp the lid over the eggs and read a chapter of "Superman," is finesse. You hold the lid a couple of inches OVER the eggs, just long enough for heat, not steam, to collect, and cook the whites. The yolks remain yellow, without the alluring pink sheen, but they are runny, which is the point. You're welcome.
A classic basted egg is created by cracking an egg into a skillet with enough fat in it, either bacon or sausage, to spoon over the top of the egg. The hot fat cooked the raw white around the yolk and put a pale-pink, sexual sheen over the yolk, while leaving the yolk runny underneath.
You could always tell a plain diner from a great diner by the way it responded to your order for basted eggs. True basted would come out with that pink sheen over the yolks. Lazy basted would come out with yellow yolks, as if you had ordered them sunny-side up. If the yolks were runny and the white cooked, fine. Too often, the white would be cooked, but the yolks hard. That is because the diner cook put a pan lid over the eggs, clamped it right down on the griddle, so steam developing underneath would do the cooking. With this method, it didn't take any time at all for the yolks to get hard.
At home, I have always preferred basted eggs, but the tradeoff is frying enough bacon or sausage to accumulate the necessary fat for basting. Then you have to eat that bacon or sausage, which was not a bad thing 50 years ago in your outdoor years, but it is something I have moved away from in my mature years. For a long time, I have settled for over-easy, because there has been no way to do runny-yolk sunny-side-up without leaving some white uncooked.
But there IS a way to do that, and it involves a pan lid. Break the eggs into a medium-low skillet, let the whites cook a bit around the edges, then take a large pan lid and hold it a couple of inches over the eggs, for a count of 10. Then peek, and if the yolks look firm, the eggs are done. If not, give it another five seconds. The difference from the old, lazy, diner cooks, who would clamp the lid over the eggs and read a chapter of "Superman," is finesse. You hold the lid a couple of inches OVER the eggs, just long enough for heat, not steam, to collect, and cook the whites. The yolks remain yellow, without the alluring pink sheen, but they are runny, which is the point. You're welcome.
July 09, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Potato salad and still more Perini
This is the only Mashed Potato Salad recipe that I know of. I always believed it was unique to Underwood's a chain of West Texas barbecue restaurants in the 1950s and '60s. Then, in the late '80s, when I was working on a cookbook about Texas cooking, a friend named Gene Ainsworth, a transplanted Texan living in California, gave me the recipe that I am using here. It looked like and tasted like the Underwood's salad.
The featured technique is the mashed potatoes, but the featured ingredient is yellow mustard. It has to do with barbecue. Potato salad is a classic side dish for Texas barbecue, particularly brisket, and most Texas potato salads have a good dollop of mustard in them, and also chopped sweet pickles. The sweet snap of the pickles and the mustard's tart bite (sounds like the rocket's red glare), stirred into the creamy potatoes work to complement the brisket's signature, smoked-savory goodness in what must have been, the first time, an accidental way. You couldn't have planned a partnership so agreeable.
As you eat, a little of the potato salad always gets swirled into the brisket juices and barbecue sauce in the bottom of the plate. I always finish everything else first, leaving a couple of bites of brisket with which to mop up this fabulous liquor.
8 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
Milk
Butter
1 medium purple onion, chopped
5 small sweet pickles, chopped
1 ½ tablespoons vinegar
5 or 6 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste
Boil the potatoes until tender and mash them in the usual way, with enough milk and butter to make them creamy. Fold in the other ingredients. The salad should be a creamy yellow. If you need to, add more mustard. Refrigerate overnight, and let the salad come back to room temperature before serving.
Late add: Tom Perini was on the "Today" show this morning, competing with two other guys in a hamburger cookoff. All three were named by The Food Network for making the best, and most unusual, hamburgers in their state. It was interesting. One guy wrapped his burger inside pizza dough and grilled that. The second guy breaded his burger and deep-fried it. Perini's burger was routine by comparison: a half-pound of Angus beef, grilled, topped with cheese, mushrooms and onions, and served on a sourdough bun. The "Today" panel voted his hamburger the best. It would go great with Mashed Potato Salad.
The featured technique is the mashed potatoes, but the featured ingredient is yellow mustard. It has to do with barbecue. Potato salad is a classic side dish for Texas barbecue, particularly brisket, and most Texas potato salads have a good dollop of mustard in them, and also chopped sweet pickles. The sweet snap of the pickles and the mustard's tart bite (sounds like the rocket's red glare), stirred into the creamy potatoes work to complement the brisket's signature, smoked-savory goodness in what must have been, the first time, an accidental way. You couldn't have planned a partnership so agreeable.
As you eat, a little of the potato salad always gets swirled into the brisket juices and barbecue sauce in the bottom of the plate. I always finish everything else first, leaving a couple of bites of brisket with which to mop up this fabulous liquor.
8 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
Milk
Butter
1 medium purple onion, chopped
5 small sweet pickles, chopped
1 ½ tablespoons vinegar
5 or 6 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste
Boil the potatoes until tender and mash them in the usual way, with enough milk and butter to make them creamy. Fold in the other ingredients. The salad should be a creamy yellow. If you need to, add more mustard. Refrigerate overnight, and let the salad come back to room temperature before serving.
Late add: Tom Perini was on the "Today" show this morning, competing with two other guys in a hamburger cookoff. All three were named by The Food Network for making the best, and most unusual, hamburgers in their state. It was interesting. One guy wrapped his burger inside pizza dough and grilled that. The second guy breaded his burger and deep-fried it. Perini's burger was routine by comparison: a half-pound of Angus beef, grilled, topped with cheese, mushrooms and onions, and served on a sourdough bun. The "Today" panel voted his hamburger the best. It would go great with Mashed Potato Salad.
July 02, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Caramelized carnivore candy, and greens
I had a finger and spoon lunch yesterday that I immediately ranked in the Stretch Cooking Top 10 for bang for the buck, measured by the value of the experience against the cost of the preparation.
It was a chunk of leftover barbecued pork shoulder (the finger food) and a bowl of leftover greens (mustard, turnip, spinach, collards) with bacon and turnips (the spoon part). I heated both in a toaster oven at 325 for 20 minutes. The pork was pure carnivore candy. I broke it apart with my fingers and consumed it deliberately, one caramelized, tender, redolent, morsel at a time, a few of them with crispy bits of fat attached. The greens were perfectly cooked to death, Texas style, with a bacon spike, sweet bites of turnip, and peppery pot liquor, and a flavor depth that only four days of refrigerator time could provide. I used a couple of warm, tightly rolled flour tortillas to mop things up.
This pork was the very last chunk of a 12-pound package of boneless pork shoulder I bought at CostCo in May for $17.46. I made "Braised Pork Carnitas" with the first six pounds, for a dinner party. The next three pounds were an experiment, based on a recipe from the "Homesick Texan" blog of Lisa Fain, who has figured out a way to make genuine carnitas at home by letting them render their own fat, and then fry in it.
Last Saturday, I thawed the last three pounds and barbecued them the same way I barbecue ribs. Stack a fire of thirty mesquite charcoal briquets and a handful of hardwood mesquite charcoal, on one side of the Weber kettle. A drip pan on the other side of the grate, just to keep fat out of the kettle bowl. Season three one-pound chunks of pork shoulder with salt and pepper and place them on the grill over the drip pan. Place the lid on the kettle so the vent is over the meat. Every 45 minutes, flip the meat over and place the opposite side toward the fire, and add six or seven briquets. They will be done in 3 ½ hours. Don't bother with sauce; you can't catch enough drippings for the job, and the pork doesn't need it anyway.
You can use a rub on these, but I prefer just salt and pepper. The fattiness in the pork shoulder bastes the meat as it smokes, leaving a signature flavor that you really shouldn't mess with.
I got the mixed greens in a huge bag at Trader Joe's, plus three turnips from the supermarket. Trim and dice the turnips and cook in water just to cover until they are tender. Dice six slices of bacon and place in a large (8-quart) pot with water to cover and place over high heat until the water boils off and the bacon starts to fry. Add one medium chopped onion, cook over high until tender and a brown glaze is forming on the bottom of the pan. Add the turnips and their cooking water and use a spatula to scrap the glaze off the bottom. Turn heat to low, heap the greens into the pot, cover, and let simmer for an hour or more. After 30 minutes, when the greens have shrunk, stir the bacon, onion and turnips into them.
The turnips act like a sweetener. For the longest time, I tried to cook greens like my grandmother Susie used to, and they came out way sharper than I remembered, even bitter. Finally I figured out adding turnips to the greens, and that did the trick. The greens still have a strong flavor, but the turnips cut the sharpness. I think Susie mashed the turnips into the greens, which is why I didn't remember them.
It was a chunk of leftover barbecued pork shoulder (the finger food) and a bowl of leftover greens (mustard, turnip, spinach, collards) with bacon and turnips (the spoon part). I heated both in a toaster oven at 325 for 20 minutes. The pork was pure carnivore candy. I broke it apart with my fingers and consumed it deliberately, one caramelized, tender, redolent, morsel at a time, a few of them with crispy bits of fat attached. The greens were perfectly cooked to death, Texas style, with a bacon spike, sweet bites of turnip, and peppery pot liquor, and a flavor depth that only four days of refrigerator time could provide. I used a couple of warm, tightly rolled flour tortillas to mop things up.
This pork was the very last chunk of a 12-pound package of boneless pork shoulder I bought at CostCo in May for $17.46. I made "Braised Pork Carnitas" with the first six pounds, for a dinner party. The next three pounds were an experiment, based on a recipe from the "Homesick Texan" blog of Lisa Fain, who has figured out a way to make genuine carnitas at home by letting them render their own fat, and then fry in it.
Last Saturday, I thawed the last three pounds and barbecued them the same way I barbecue ribs. Stack a fire of thirty mesquite charcoal briquets and a handful of hardwood mesquite charcoal, on one side of the Weber kettle. A drip pan on the other side of the grate, just to keep fat out of the kettle bowl. Season three one-pound chunks of pork shoulder with salt and pepper and place them on the grill over the drip pan. Place the lid on the kettle so the vent is over the meat. Every 45 minutes, flip the meat over and place the opposite side toward the fire, and add six or seven briquets. They will be done in 3 ½ hours. Don't bother with sauce; you can't catch enough drippings for the job, and the pork doesn't need it anyway.
You can use a rub on these, but I prefer just salt and pepper. The fattiness in the pork shoulder bastes the meat as it smokes, leaving a signature flavor that you really shouldn't mess with.
I got the mixed greens in a huge bag at Trader Joe's, plus three turnips from the supermarket. Trim and dice the turnips and cook in water just to cover until they are tender. Dice six slices of bacon and place in a large (8-quart) pot with water to cover and place over high heat until the water boils off and the bacon starts to fry. Add one medium chopped onion, cook over high until tender and a brown glaze is forming on the bottom of the pan. Add the turnips and their cooking water and use a spatula to scrap the glaze off the bottom. Turn heat to low, heap the greens into the pot, cover, and let simmer for an hour or more. After 30 minutes, when the greens have shrunk, stir the bacon, onion and turnips into them.
The turnips act like a sweetener. For the longest time, I tried to cook greens like my grandmother Susie used to, and they came out way sharper than I remembered, even bitter. Finally I figured out adding turnips to the greens, and that did the trick. The greens still have a strong flavor, but the turnips cut the sharpness. I think Susie mashed the turnips into the greens, which is why I didn't remember them.
June 25, 2009
Stretch Cooking: A meat-and-three to slim the wallet
In most meat-and-three establishments, you can expect the bill for two to run about $20. At Art Smith's place in Chicago, the bill for two was $200.
Smith was Oprah's personal chef for some time, then two years ago, he opened his own place, Table 52, on Elm St. just off State. It is not your classic meat-and-three; the setting is comfortable but refined, and the menu is definitely upscale and features entrees like Pistachio-Crusted Chicken Breast and Ancho Chili-Crusted Berkshire Pork Chop.
But there is an unmistakable meat-and-three presence in the place, as if Art Smith, a native Southerner, put it there so people could see it, if they knew what to look for. Reading the menu, I had the feeling that Smith put it there on some kind of a personal dare that went something like, "I bet I can open a Chicago restaurant where I can sell catfish and three sides for $26."
In fact that is where my eye stopped, on the menu, and would go no farther. I read: "Cornmeal Crusted Catfish with Cheese Grits, Bacon-Braised Collard Greens, Hush Puppy and Crispy Okra - $26." Art, my man, you did it. I will gladly go back any time to Table 52 and pay $26 for the catfish and three. The only thing missing was the muddiness of a river-caught catfish, which is impossible to find anymore; catfish are all farm-raised now. Art Smith, of course, would know this, and regret it; his biographical material says he grew up in northern Florida and learned to cook from an African-American woman who was his baby-sitter. If she is alive, she will roll her eyes at her protégé serving up farm-raised catfish, but there are some things in the modern world that you can't do much about.
Karen and I also shared fried green tomatoes ($9), gussied up and served as a starter: ""Fried Green Tomato Napoleon with Goat Cheese, Local Greens, Applewood-Smoked Bacon & Olive & Sun-Dried Tomato Tapenades." It was a cute stack of the fried tomatoes and the other stuff in between, which was tasty and didn't get in the way of the fried tomatoes.
Then, with our entrees (Karen departed the Southern mood with fresh Alaskan halibut, simply grilled), we shared a side of macaroni and cheese, which was $9 and worth it. We had seen another patron being served a large bowl with cheese crusted on the top and spilling over the sides, and we thought it was onion soup. It was macaroni and cheese, filled to overflowing, then finished off in a pizza oven that turned the overflow dribbles brown and crusty. If we had a pizza oven, I would try this at home, one or two nights a week.
I was chipping greedily at the cheese crust when a waiter passed our table with a slice of a towering, heavily frosted, three-layer cake, invoking visions of the Membership Luncheon of the Atlanta Woman's Club. This, we learned, was Hummingbird Cake, which we could neither pass up, nor finish. We took the last of it with us and stumbled out the door into a driving rain and a cab back to our hotel.
The bill would have been lower without glasses of champagne and a bottle of wine, but what the heck. You don't just drink iced tea at Art Smith's kind of meat-and-three.
Smith was Oprah's personal chef for some time, then two years ago, he opened his own place, Table 52, on Elm St. just off State. It is not your classic meat-and-three; the setting is comfortable but refined, and the menu is definitely upscale and features entrees like Pistachio-Crusted Chicken Breast and Ancho Chili-Crusted Berkshire Pork Chop.
But there is an unmistakable meat-and-three presence in the place, as if Art Smith, a native Southerner, put it there so people could see it, if they knew what to look for. Reading the menu, I had the feeling that Smith put it there on some kind of a personal dare that went something like, "I bet I can open a Chicago restaurant where I can sell catfish and three sides for $26."
In fact that is where my eye stopped, on the menu, and would go no farther. I read: "Cornmeal Crusted Catfish with Cheese Grits, Bacon-Braised Collard Greens, Hush Puppy and Crispy Okra - $26." Art, my man, you did it. I will gladly go back any time to Table 52 and pay $26 for the catfish and three. The only thing missing was the muddiness of a river-caught catfish, which is impossible to find anymore; catfish are all farm-raised now. Art Smith, of course, would know this, and regret it; his biographical material says he grew up in northern Florida and learned to cook from an African-American woman who was his baby-sitter. If she is alive, she will roll her eyes at her protégé serving up farm-raised catfish, but there are some things in the modern world that you can't do much about.
Karen and I also shared fried green tomatoes ($9), gussied up and served as a starter: ""Fried Green Tomato Napoleon with Goat Cheese, Local Greens, Applewood-Smoked Bacon & Olive & Sun-Dried Tomato Tapenades." It was a cute stack of the fried tomatoes and the other stuff in between, which was tasty and didn't get in the way of the fried tomatoes.
Then, with our entrees (Karen departed the Southern mood with fresh Alaskan halibut, simply grilled), we shared a side of macaroni and cheese, which was $9 and worth it. We had seen another patron being served a large bowl with cheese crusted on the top and spilling over the sides, and we thought it was onion soup. It was macaroni and cheese, filled to overflowing, then finished off in a pizza oven that turned the overflow dribbles brown and crusty. If we had a pizza oven, I would try this at home, one or two nights a week.
I was chipping greedily at the cheese crust when a waiter passed our table with a slice of a towering, heavily frosted, three-layer cake, invoking visions of the Membership Luncheon of the Atlanta Woman's Club. This, we learned, was Hummingbird Cake, which we could neither pass up, nor finish. We took the last of it with us and stumbled out the door into a driving rain and a cab back to our hotel.
The bill would have been lower without glasses of champagne and a bottle of wine, but what the heck. You don't just drink iced tea at Art Smith's kind of meat-and-three.
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