how I learned to stop worrying and love the loaf

We've spoken of the meatloaf before.

I have since acquired a new baking dish, and tackled the meatloaf once again.

This evening, as a matter of fact. And though I'm not, as a rule, much of a meat eater, I've found that it's quite as good as I remember it.

Even without the shards of glass.

Georgia's Meatloaf

1 lb of lean, twice-ground round steak the great "meatloaf mix" that they serve up at the City Meat Market down the street -- which I think is a trifectorate of beef, ethically-vile veal, and some pork

1/2 cup of soft breadcrumbs from homemade whole wheat bread I had a little challah that I cubed and froze around Thanksgiving -- so I used that for my crumbs

2 garlic cloves, minced

4-5 leaves fresh lovage, finely chopped
4-5 fresh celery leaves, finely chopped (not much of a celery lover, so I left these out)

1/2 onion, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon herb sea salt

1 egg, slightly beaten

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup home-canned tomato sauce, or high-quality commercial sauce (yeah: guess which one I opted for ;)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, combine the meat with all the dry ingredients so that they are distributed evenly. Next, lightly beat the egg in a small bowl and mix it into the meat mixture. Finally, add the milk and blend into the meat mixture. Shape the mix into a loaf and place it in a greased baking pan. Pour the tomato sauce on the top of the meatloaf. Bake for 1 hour. Slice the loaf and serve on warmed plates.

Serves 6. Or 2 & one begging cat, over two nights. Provided one of the two does not carelessly & excessively heat the loaf pan and then transfer to a cold(er) surface.

Provided that, you should do just fine.

Adopted freely once again from, you guessed it, A Painter's Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O'Keefe (girl knew how to eat)

time to eat.

Pomegranate
Originally uploaded by dalaka.

I was feeling a little plaintive and dull-witted yesterday, given internal and external pressures, so I did the thing that I generally do when the dull-witted demon strikes: I ate. And insisted that those in my immediate periphery eat along with me.

Dressed up a creamy tomato basil sauce with a shot of tequila and served it over gnocchi, then paired the potato dumplings with this gentle mâche & pomegranate salad -- because it seems true that no matter how plaintive your mood, there is something eternally optimistic about the brilliant pomegranate.

Mâche Salad with Blood Oranges, Pistachios and Pomegranate from Epicurious.com

2 tablespoons fresh blood orange juice or regular orange juice (went with the reg)
1 tablespoon unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1/2 teaspoon honey
3 tablespoons pistachio olive oil (sorry -- not that snooty)

2 blood oranges or regular oranges
1 4-ounce package mâche
1/4 cup shelled natural pistachios, toasted
1/4 cup pomegranate seeds or dried cranberries

Whisk orange juice, vinegar, shallot, and honey in small bowl. Gradually whisk in pistachio olive oil. Season dressing to taste with salt and pepper.

Using small sharp knife, cut off peel and white pith from oranges. Working over small bowl, cut between membranes to release orange segments. Divide mâche among 4 plates. Divide orange segments, pistachios, and pomegranate seeds among plates. Drizzle dressing over salad and serve.

Makes 4 servings.

all that and a bag of chips

There are absolutely no dangerous confusions.

Danish chef Claus Meyer, speaking of Chanterelle mushrooms.

Is there anything sexier than a man who cooks? Anyone who handles potatoes with that kind of care and attention...

Crushing madly on Claus Meyer who just now (through the miracle of television) made the most extraordinary salad dressing -- the recipe for which is nowhere to be found on the site supporting his show, New Scandinavian Cooking, so I'm going to have to pluck this one from memory. It went something like:

• 1 bit of honeycomb (plucked right from the hive of endangered brown bees, of course)
• dijon mustard, about 2 tsp
• shallots, 2 raw
• a splash of apple cider vinegar in which he had marinated something for 14 days (exactly what escapes me)
• little bit of grape seed oil

Blend it all up and then toss it with:

• 1 head of baby romaine
• a sprinkling of flowers (the edible kind)
• a handful of sliced shallots which you've roasted whole and pushed from their papery skins
• a sprinkling of fried new potatoes (just like kettle chips) procured from a little island off Finland and flash fired before my eyes

I'm off to find me a honeycomb and a bag of chips. At my local grocery, unfortunately.

My life is full of such compromises.

tortino for enyasi

Bette à carde
Originally uploaded by Choui-Pok.

My friend enyasi is a brilliant gardener. She’s been doing it for years, and she has that cryptic knowledge of all things green and growing that would have gotten her a dunk in the drink hundreds of years ago – it’s almost witch-like. It leaves me in awe.

She rips up whole hedges and transplants them great distances; touches a plot of bare brown earth and green things bloom beneath her; recognizes tiny baby sprouts for the utterly unique creatures they will become.

I asked her once for her secret, and she paused for only a moment – not like she was looking for the answer, but like she was considering whether she should give the secret away – and then she said: “You can’t be afraid to kill things.”

Reasonable advice from a gardener, who sees the cycles more acutely than the rest of us – the coming and going of the season, the inimitable ability of the earth to give it up again after a long time of lying quiet, fallow, unproductive. Faith that the unseen will bloom up again, with or without our intervention.

Good advice, and not entirely limited to the garden.

Stopped by to see her new digs while I was in Seattle, was blown away by the very beginnings of what she’s laid down in her surroundings, and promised to share my favorite Swiss chard recipe in anticipation of the harvest that will soon enough spring up from the earth.

So here it is.

Swiss Chard Tortino
Tortino di Bietole

Serves 4 to 6.

1-2 oz porcini mushrooms I usually sub- in a couple of portabellos
2 bunches Swiss chard
4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 med onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
3 eggs, lightly beaten
4 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan cheese
6 tbsp bread crumbs, divided
1 tbsp chopped Italian parsley
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Unsalted butter

If you’re using porcini’s, soak them in warm water for about 20 minutes. Then rinse under cool water to remove all the grit and cut into strips.

Wash the chard well, Strip the leaves from the stalks. (Reserve them for soup if you’re feeling ambitious.) Place the leaves in a large pan, braising them in the water that clings to them after washing. When tender (about 5 minutes in) drain and gently press out excess water with the back of a wooden spoon.

At this point I generally set the leaves in a colander over the sink to drain, quickly clean the pan with the swipe of a paper towel, and proceed to sauté the onions and mushrooms and garlic in the olive oil, for about 3 to 4 minutes. When all is tender and well, add the chard, stir, and cook for another 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a bowl beat together the eggs, grated Parmesan, 2 tbsp bread crumbs, parsley, nutmeg, salt [1] and fresh-cracked pepper to taste. Mix in the chard.

Butter a medium-sized round baking dish or a 9-inch springform pan (I use a ceramic pie dish). Sprinkle with 2 tbsp of breadcrumbs. Add the chard mixture and smooth the top. Sprinkle the top with the remaining breadcrumbs and bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 30 minutes, or until the tortino is golden.

Freely adopted from Viana La Place’s Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style

[1] We’ve talked about this, right? Sea salt. Big, coarse granules. You won’t be sorry.

georgia's cabbage salad

red cabbage
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

I’ve been moping around since my Green Earth fresh veggie supply dried up and I had to go back to the flaccid line up in the grocery store.

It’s not so much that it’s bad produce – it’s just not the same kind of growing green and alive produce that showed up every couple of weeks during the summer. The Green Earth stuff was so fresh that it would off-gas in my crisper drawer – I’d find condensation droplets collected on the glass roof of the bin.

I thought maybe the problem was my own lack of imagination – maybe I was caught in a broccoli rut. The trip to Guatemala only compounded the problem, because of course the only produce served down there was seasonal and grown locally -- my first encounter with a Chicago winterized tomato nearly spun me into a depression. So this last week I went digging for something uniquely winter-like -- and came up with something that just might get me through to Spring.

Not too complicated, maybe so simple that you’ve seen it before -- this one did the trick for me last night. It’s like all the recipes from A Painter’s Kitchen -- a compilation of the recipes that Georgia O’Keefe served up at Ghost Ranch -- very few ingredients are required -- what matters most is careful attention to the details of its preparation.

Cabbage Salad with Apple and Walnuts Pecans

½ small green or red cabbage (I used green)
1 small apple with a sweet and tart flavor
½ cup walnuts pecans (I don’t like walnuts so much)
Herb salad dressing The recipe for the mustard-based dressing shows up earlier in the book, but you could use your favorite and it would work well here. I followed the advice of the intro accompanying the recipe and threw in a little Greek yogurt instead.

Halve and core the cabbage half. Slice into fine shreds – no wider than 1/8 inch and no longer than 2 inches. Slice the apple into chunks about ¼ inch thick and a ½ inch square. (If the apple isn’t organic you may want to skin that bitter peel off first.) Break the pecans up so they’re about the same size as the apple pieces.

Toss the cabbage, apple and pecan pieces together. In a side dish, mix together the yogurt – best if it’s Greek and whole fat (I used FAGE Total Classic) with a splash of lemon juice.

Once that’s where you like it, mix it in with that perky eat-me-now-I’m-so-crisp-and-lovely sliced goodness that you mixed up in the other bowl.

Serves 4 to 6.

Freely adapted from A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the kitchen of Georgia O’Keefe

chill until firm

Jello didn’t figure into my childhood much at all. Sure, there were the school lunches – those glistening green squares arrayed in Pepto-Bismol pink finger bowls. But my stepmother was a secular Jewish hippie who subscribed to her own unique dietary laws: Mostly vegetarian, mostly locally produced (the Co-op was big around our house – things weren’t called organic back then, but they pretty much were), and if it was meat it was kosher, by G-d.

And Jello, that middle American staple derived from the hooves of, well, hoofed animals, was not kosher.

Which is not to say we didn’t talk about Jello around our house. My stepmom made sure we understood just how heinous it really was, and we then floated that information to the kids at school when the lunch ladies brought out the jiggling squares. This information was met with the same incredulous horror and circulated with the same glee that greeted the rumor that Bubble Yum was made of spiders’ eggs. Which is to say: It had no impact on the consumption of Jello at Slavens Elementary School at all.

Despite my early programming, Jello has always intrigued me as the stuff of wonder and legend, but that’s not to say that I ever developed a taste for it – I never have.

With one exception: That would be Thanksgiving.

It has long been a tradition, among the descendants of the house of Gooch (my maternal line), to partake of foodstuffs that not one of us would ever serve up at any other time of the year. This includes green bean casserole, cranberry sauce still bearing the ridge marks of the can that bore it, and yams topped with blackened marshmallows -- not to mention a 12 pound frickin’ turkey.

Queen of all these seasonal delicacies is The Jello. Nini’s Cherry Jello, to be precise.

Unique among Jellos for the requirement that it be dissolved in boiled Coca-Cola, Nini’s Cherry Jello was most certainly culled from one of those swank company cookbooks of the 1950s. But its provenance is uncertain, if only because I’ve never asked. Once I came of age I merely received Nini’s Cherry Jello recipe with due reverence and awe, invested forthwith in a shiny new Jello mold -- and then I made the Jello.

Because there are some things you don’t mess with -- and tradition is one of those things.

Nini’s Cherry Jello
1 small package of cherry jello
3 oz. of Philly cream cheese
16 oz dark sweet pitted cherries
9 oz crushed pineapple
1 bottle of Coca-Cola
fistful of pecans -- maybe two

Strain fruit syrups into measuring cup and add enough Coke to equal 2 cups.
Boil.
Dissolve Jello within the boiling liquid.
Remove from heat.
Sprinkle in cream cheese chunks.
Cool until liquid is the consistency of unbeaten egg whites.
Fold in cherries and pecans and pineapple.
Chill until the guests arrive.

speaking of croutons

Mikkel at Shädy Äcres has asked that we talk about something else – quite explicitly, he’s asked that we speak of croutons.

Fair enough. I'll speak of mine sautéed in bubbling bacon, because they’re really the best way to eat croutons that I know of, and if you only do it every once in a while you’ll only be slightly closer to that eminent myocardial infarction.

Salade á l’ail
2 tablespoons Dijon
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt
½ cup peanut oil (olive oil will work fine too)
6 cups tasty mixed salad greens – all your favorites – if you’re in the U.S. throw in some spinach from Salinas because that market needs a kick in the pants and the World’s Best Engineer (he of the spinach harvester) will thank you for your trouble
4 oz. slab bacon, rind removed, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 large slabs of crusty bread cut into cubes
2 fat garlic cloves, minced

Create the dressing by mixing together the mustard, vinegar, oil and salt. It should be viscous: almost like mayo.

Place the bacon in a large skillet and cook, stirring frequently, over medium heat until the bacon begins to sweat off its saturated goodness. Add the bread cubes and continue to cook, stirring from time to time until both the bacon and bread cubes are browned to a crisp, about five minutes or more.

Toss the greens (which you have lovingly washed and placed in a large salad bowl) with the dressing and then top with the bacon, croutons and garlic. Serve with a few more slices of that good bread and a nice red wine (but not too much – for god’s sake we don’t want to start crying into our cup again).

Make sure that everyone in the household has a little bit of this, because that minced garlic will linger for a little while. Best to make sure everyone smells of the same stinking rose.

Freely adopted from Patricia Wells’ Bistro Cooking

easy like sunday morning

baked goods
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

I can’t bake bread to save my life. Won’t rise. I think it was all those years at high altitude that did me in. You think I could shake it off now that I live oh-so-sea-levelish flatlands, but no doing. (Maybe that’s not entirely fair: we’re about 600 ft above sea level, give or take a few. Maybe I'm just an idiot.)

But this I can do (and have done, recently even – there’s one last frozen piece in my freezer): A chocolate cake with a French pedigree that’s no trickier than a big ol’ brownie.

Or a piece of cake:

Mon Gâteau au Chocolat
12 oz (360 g) bittersweet chocolate (Wells recommends Lindt or Tobler – if you're stateside Ghirardelli will do the trick)
2/3 cup (150 g) unsalted butter
3/4 cup (160 g) granulated sugar
5 large eggs, separated
1/3 cup (45 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
About 2 tsp powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease up a 9 ½ inch springform pan with some buttery goodness.

Pull out the double boiler and melt the chocolate, granulated sugar and butter into a globular mess that you’ll be tempted to lick off the spatula. (No double boiler? A metal boil over a boiling pot just might get you there.)

Whisk the egg yolks into the tasty chocolate mess after it’s cooled a bit.

Beat the egg whites just until they start to form peaks – go easy, don’t over beat. Add one-third of the egg-whites to the chocolate batter and mix vigorously. Then slow it down for the last two thirds -- gently fold in the whites until the mixture is well blended and no streaks of white remain.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until the cake is firm and springy, 35 to 40 minutes.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar after it’s cooled.

Adapted freely from Patricia Well’s Bistro Cooking

and now, for dessert

itty bitty baby pear
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

This is the clafoutis that I meant to make when I bought the itty bitty pears. But that was before they seduced me into eating them all, one by one.

I have no idea if the recipe is any good, but Patricia Wells’ Fig Clafoutis is killer, so I suspect if you do up this one you’ll be all right.

Patricia Wells’ Clafoutis aux Poires
½ cup pear eau-de-vie or brandy
6 Anjou pears (or if they’re itty bitty pears pick up ~ 2 lbs. or 1 kg.)
6 large eggs
½ cup vanilla sugar (this is the sugar that you set apart in a jar with that vanilla bean that you rescued from the crème brûlée.) (What do you mean you mean you threw the bean away?! Okay, that's cool -- just use regular sugar and throw in a splash of vanilla.)
¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
½ cup crème fraîche or heavy cream
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

Pick your bowl – make sure it’s big enough to hold all the pears before you’re done. Pour in the brandy and then peel and cut the pears – placing the slices in the bowl as you finish each one, stirring to coat. When they’re all in there give them one last gentle toss. Marinate 1 hour. (Turn them once in a while so that they don’t darken.)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees; butter and sugar a 10 ½ porcelain baking dish.

Combine the eggs and vanilla sugar in a bowl and froth them up good. Slowly beat in the flour, cream and salt. Add the marinade that the pears have been soaking in. Mix until well blended.

Arrange the pear slices in the bottom of the baking dish. Wells recommends a spiral: I say follow your muse. Pour batter over the pears.

Place the dish in the center of the oven and bake until the batter is firm and the top is golden, about 25 minutes. Remove, cool, and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Serve while still warm. (Room temp’s okay too.)

Adapted from Patricia Wells’ Bistro Cooking

fig lover

With figs you’re either all in or all out. There’s no half way.

You must bite right through the blue flesh that bleeds milky white when it’s just ripe; into the honey-colored fruit inside that glistens and aches to be eaten. There's no way around it.

Once I served a platter of figs and prosciutto to a guest who insisted on eating out the heart of the fruit and leaving the skins on his plate.

He wasn’t asked back.

Fresh Fig Salad
12 ripe Mission figs
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp orange juice
1 tsp honey
a fistful of raw walnut halves
a clutch of fresh mint leaves
freshly ground black pepper

Cut the figs into quarters and place on a platter. Combine oil, juices and honey in a small bowl: beat lightly.

Drizzle dressing over the figs as they lie belly up on the platter; toss gently. Crush the walnuts, tear the mint; sprinkle on top with a crack of fresh pepper.

Serve to guests and politely field questions about the "little eggplants."

Freely interpreted from Viana LaPlace’s « Unplugged Kitchen »

[Photo credit: Figs for Lunch by Xerones]

veggin' out

Tonight’s Green Earth haul inspired a some balsamic braised fennel with halibut, and a tasty batch of beets and beet green salad which the darlin’ companion immediately pegged as “yuck”. (Important to note that the judgement was made without ever tasting the salad. Our man of the meat and potatoes also opted for fish & chips while I downed my halibut. Oh well: It’s quick, it’s cheap, and it keeps the peace.)

Big batch of kale to dispose of too – which means I'll be pulling out the Kale and White Bean soup recipe that got us through the last batch. (No yuck on that one -- the kielbasa eased the way.)

Beet and Beet Greens Salad adopted from Viana La Place’s Verdura

1 bunch of small beets of equal size, with fresh, leafy green tops
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped
Extra-virgin olive oil
Fresh lemon juice

Viana La Place wrote up a beautiful recipe with telling details and instructions on how to serve this salad in a lovely way – complete with lemon slices on a large platter. But I’m tired from all that beet boiling, so here’s a quick recap:

Boil a big pot of water. Salt it.

Drop in the beet greens for a quick parboil – before you do that be sure to strip out the stems. And wash them, of course. The beets too, while you’re at it.

Pull the beet greens out with tongs just as soon as they go limp. Drain in a colander.

Drop the unpeeled beets in the boiling water and simmer until tender – about 15 to 25 minutes, depending on their size. (This is when your husband walks into the kitchen and says: “Smells like dirt.” ‘Cause they do, a little bit, while they’re cooking, if they’re fresh. Or maybe I didn’t wash them well enough. But that’s cool: it’s boiling water anyway.)

When they’re tender (test them with a fork) drain, rinse under cold water, and peel. (At this point you can slip the peels off with your fingers -- they're slippery and ready to give. Of course, that'll leave your fingertips pink for a little while.)

Slice them the way you like them (I like wedges) and chop the greens a bit. Toss with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and garlic to taste.

If you’re like me (ravenous omnivore) eat it right out the bowl. Otherwise serve it up nice, just like La Place would like, garnished with lemon slices.