Sometimes Every Dish Hits the Fan

Today is Memorial Day, the unofficial first day of summer. 
The day that the grill gets its first test drive around the block. Who doesn't love to grill? It's virtually foolproof! 

Until it's not.

Let's start with the grill. I know there's a raging debate in America (no, not that one!). Gas vs. charcoal. They both have their merits. Charcoal certainly provides great flavor, and the ritual associated with its preparation is worthy of anyone's attention. But gas is so convenient. And what about smoking? (No, that one!)  I usually smoke a pork shoulder at least once a year, but that requires getting up early on a weekend. Otherwise, your guests are doing the 10:30 p.m. Continental dinner thing. 

At with least grilling on the back deck, with copious amounts of beer, there is a wide margin for error  One reason most red-blooded American males love to grill. A mere 15 feet and you're in the kitchen where, of course, it can all go so wrong, so horribly wrong, so easily.

Everyone who loves to cook and cooks often will, at some point, make something that is simply wretched. Something just plain awful and which looks nothing like the dish in that glossy photograph in the cookbook. For example, I recall one morning when I had this burning desire to make hash browns. After a cursory glance at a recipe, even before I had my morning coffee (big mistake!), I made something that only barely resembled hash browns—but if only hash browns were GREY!

Though I doubt she ever made grey hash browns, Julia Child recounts a similar event in her memoir, My Life in France, which involved eggs Florentine for a friend she had invited over for lunch:  

I suppose I had gotten a little too self-confident for my own good: rather than measure out the flour, I had guessed at the proportions, and the result was a goopy sauce Mornay. Unable to find spinach at the market, I’d bought chicory instead; it, too, was horrid. We ate the lunch with painful politeness and avoided discussing its taste. I made sure not to apologize for it. This was a rule of mine. I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one’s hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as “Oh, I don’t know how to cook . . . ,” or “Poor little me . . . ,” or “This may taste awful . . . ,” it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one’s shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, “Yes, you’re right, this really is an awful meal!” Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed— eh bien, tant pis!

My Life in France, pp. 89-90. 

I think this is valuable advice for amateur cooks everywhere. We cannot be perfect. Besides, us mere kitchen mortals should take comfort in the fact even the great Julia Child made a dish which she described as “vile.”  This pressure to be perfect in the kitchen has become worse in our media-saturated age. As Melissa Clark of the New York Times once pointed out in her column, A Good Appetite, “food porn” in foodie magazines and T.V. shows has created a “cult of foodie perfectionism.” (Melissa Clark, No Apologies Necessary When a Dish Goes Awry, New York Times, p. D1, Oct. 10, 2012) So, we should all fight the urge to stress out about the meals we make and by all means, don’t apologize. It’s probably not as bad as you think. But, if it really is that bad, then just order a pizza!  

Splitting Rails and Grinding Corn

It had to be done. It couldn’t wait any longer. 

Yard work. 

The two foulest words that any homeowner can utter.

Last summer I got off easy because of the drought here in Alabama. Not once did I mow the back forty because even the weeds wouldn’t grow. This year, things were different. A wet spring and the backyard was in full weedy bloom. I dragged out the lawnmower a few weeks ago, sufficiently motivated to tackle the fecund jungle that is my back yard. After 15 minutes of pulling the cord to no avail, my arm sore, and realizing that my neighbors were likely tired of hearing me curse on a Sunday morning, I gave up.

Fast forward two weeks. I really needed to get my lawnmower fixed. And then my next-door neighbor came to my rescue. 

“Sounds like it could be your carburetor.” 

I looked at him blankly, trying to remember my high school German. I quickly recovered. 

“Oh yeah, that’s got to be it. Damn modern exhaust systems!”

“You have no idea what a carburetor is do you?”

Sadly, I didn’t.

About an hour later, my lawn mower was ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

I then realized that before I could mow the “lawn,” I had to remove the branches and sticks that had fallen from the many trees in my yard since last spring. I then  also realized that I still had not removed the tree that had fallen during a recent storm and thankfully just missed my neighbors’ house by a mere five feet. This required the use of my chain saw and, after two  hours of hauling tree parts to the street, I could finally mow. After this came the weed-whacking. I had some weeds that actually required the use of the aforementioned chainsaw—I’m not kidding! Jurassic Park indeed!. 

So, after three hours of yard work I was done. I was not just done. I was spent. I was exhausted. My best-laid plans of a nice grilled Mahi-Mahi on the back deck were a delirious memory.

How did the heck did the pioneers do it? These people cleared entire forests without the benefit of chainsaws. They grew crops without the benefit of modern fertilizers. They did all this without Home Depot! Granted they didn’t have the IRS, the EPA, or the Kardashians on Bravo (or is it A&E?)

Thankfully, they had plenty to eat. 

They ate what was available and abundant, live beavertail and cod (the former has fallen out of favor thankfully and the latter sadly suffering from popularity). What they brought with them from Europe they quickly combined with what they found here and what came from the Caribbean and Africa, a rich culinary traditions that tragically arrived on the backs of slaves.

And then there was maize, a/k/a corn. The motherlode.

Unlike wheat, corn requires very little manual labor. And the pre-Columbian peoples living in North and Central America devised a creative way to use corn to lend a helping hand in growing their other two main crops: beans and squash. With the addition of corn, this trifecta was called the “Three Sisters.”

The three crops benefited from each other. Corn stalks provided a structure for the beans to climb so there was no need for poles, which had to be made—did I mention there were no Home Depots back then? The beans added nitrogen to the soil. The squash leaves spread along the ground, blocking the sunlight, preventing the establishment of weeds—there was no Round-Up back then either.

* * *

After three hours of yard work, I had closed all three rings on my Apple Watch. I headed inside to my air-conditioned home and took a long, warm shower.  I dried off in clean towels just pulled from the drier. I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and grabbed my iPhone.

I’m ordering a pizza for delivery. 

Now just think what Davy Crockett would have done with that!

Tis Hatched and Shall Be So

Easter and Passover are behind us—the  expectancy of summer is sure to follow. 

Passover and Easter are troubled cousins who sometimes refuse to recognize their patrimony. They both celebrate life or rebirth. Passover celebrates the liberation of the Jews from slavery in Egypt—a rebirth. Easter celebrates the literal rebirth—life from death—of Jesus. Both have strong food traditions associated with them, though my Jewish friends tell me I’m not missing much (think gefilte fish and matzo). 

Both holidays, however, also embrace death as a foundational premise.  In Exodus, God helps the Children of Israel escape their slavery in Egypt by inflicting ten plagues upon the ancient Egyptians. The tenth and worst of the plagues was the death of the Egyptian first-born. For protection, God instructed the Israelites to mark the doorposts of their homes with the blood of a slaughtered spring lamb and, upon seeing this, the spirit of the Lord knew to pass over the first-born in these homes—hence the English name for the holiday. And for Christians, there’s the Crucifixion. This was a form of execution long used in the ancient world that resulted in a slow, painful death that lasted for hours, if not days, until the victim died of exhaustion or suffocation. I don’t recommend one read Exodus or the New Testament just before bedtime. 

What many of us (both sides of the Old/New Testament divide) often forget are the similarities between the two faiths. It’s no coincidence that both Easter and Passover occur during the same time of the year. They also share a common food: the egg. 

One of the items on the Seder plate (a special plate containing symbolic foods that retell  of the story of the Exodus from Egypt), is beitzah, a hard-boiled egg. This symbolizes the festival sacrifice offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, that was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.

Now that sounds pretty familiar to us Gentiles—the Easter egg—a symbol of fertility and rebirth.

Of course, in celebrating Easter (whether secular or not), the Easter egg would be nothing without the Easter egg hunt—a brutal competition to collect more eggs than your sibling. Now that’s the true meaning of Easter for the under-10 age demographic!

But I grew up as an only child, so I missed out on the joy and pain of sibling Easter egg hunts. So I improvised. I employed my competitive desires in other ways: finding all of the two-dozen easter eggs hidden by my mother in record time (record: 10 mins, 15 secs.). There was also the great Sunday School Easter Egg Competition of 1980, weaving together the pagan and the sacred in one spectacular afternoon.

Change was in the air. Ronald Regan was challenging Jimmy Carter. Maybe all of us back then could sense the competitive go-go Eighties lurking just around the corner. And perhaps because of this, my Sunday school class decided to hold a contest for the best decorated Easter egg. Game on bro! 

I was determined to win this thing. This was my year! I convinced my mom to buy an expensive store-bought egg decorating kit (a rule-breaker for sure, as we were a food-dye-and-vinegar family) that involved Day-Glo powder and a Ziploc bag—a shake-n-bake approach to Easter. I even glued tiny gold leaves and silver beads onto that blue egg until it looked like a bona fide Fabergé egg! And yes, I did win in a landslide.

As I mentioned earlier, we were old school when it came to dying Easter eggs. Eggs were dyed the Saturday evening before Easter Sunday, using nothing more than vinegar and food coloring. I’m not sure about the brand, but I remember these teardrop shaped bottles. You carefully put several drops in coffee cups filled with hot water and vinegar. There were only four colors: red, blue, green, and yellow. Anything more sophisticated required the guide on the back of the box: two drops of red + one drop of blue = purple; two drops of yellow + one drop of red = orange. You get the picture. To this day, the smell of vinegar takes me back to the spring days of my childhood. It is my Proustean Madeleine.  

The day’s newspaper covered the table so as not to stain it, though I’m sure I did. We rested the freshly died eggs on plain, white paper plates to dry, leaving a light-colored spot where the dye ran, which  didn’t matter because we would place them in the basket in such a way that you wouldn't see the spot. And of course the basket contained green, plastic grass that lingers like death and taxes,  showing up obscure corners of the house months later. The next morning, I was rewarded with chocolate, including a large chocolate bunny proudly displayed in the middle of my Easter basket. 

After taking a few bites of that chocolate bunny (always start with the ears), the Easter egg hunt would promptly commence. We used the real eggs we dyed the night before. My mother took great pride in finding clever ways to hide the eggs, while leaving a few in pretty obvious locations lest I get too discouraged. After I had found them all, then it was my turn. I tried my best to be clever in how I hide the eggs, though my mother lovingly made it seem they were impossible to find. We held these kind of hunts even when it rained, which seemed a rather frequent Easter occurrence now that I think about it. And the hiding places were no less clever when the hunt was indoors sometimes too much so. One year, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t find that 24th egg. We did eventually—sometime in June. Ugh.

And then the Easter eggs that I had so carefully made and so carefully hidden were now ready for their final role: deviled eggs. 

I looked forward to deviled eggs at Easter as much as the chocolate bunny in my basket. 

My mother kept to the traditional side of things when it came to food. This was no less true when it came to deviled eggs, nothing more that eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, salt, and pepper. From there, the debate will never cease. Relish or not. Paprika or not. My mother was  pro-relish and pro-paprika. I am as well. 

I still love deviled eggs. I still make them. I still make them like my Mother did with a bit of paprika sprinkled on top. Anything else would be sacrilegious – as even the Easter Bunny would agree, I’m sure.

Don't Mess with the Classics

“Why don’t you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?” 

—Robert Benchley

Last month we traveled to New York for my birthday. This time, I wanted to see a play.  There were several good choices that weekend, and we decided on The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I was excited. Not only is this one of the greatest of American plays (and one of my favorites), but the main role of Amanda Wingfield was being played by Sally Field. As I had not read the play in many years, I bought a copy and re-read it on the train. I finished it shortly before we arrived at Penn Station. 

The production we were going to see is directed by Sam Gold, known for his bold reinterpretations of the classics. I'm not opposed to "re-interpreting" the classics—Richard III set in a counter-factual fascist England or Romeo and Juliet in mid-20th century New York. For Shakespeare, this works reasonably well because his plays are about language, regardless of time and place.

We booked the tickets for this play before the reviews had come in, flying blind so to speak. But it was Tennesse Williams; it was Sally Field; it was Sam Gold. That was all the information we needed, right?

Lunch that day was at ABC Cocina, a shabby-chic styled tapas restaurant next to the famed ABC Home design Mecca in Manhattan. At this point, however, instinct suddenly kicked in; my amygdala woke up. “Danger Will Robinson, Danger!” Much like my Neanderthal ancestor who grabbed a spear upon seeing a saber toothed tiger, I quickly grabbed my iPhone to read the reviews. 

I know that reviews about plays and movies, much like restaurant reviews, should be taken with a grain of salt—merely one person's opinion—but when three major New York-based publications slam a production for nearly identical reasons, then it's time to pull the fire alarm. The opening paragraph from the review in The New Yorker was especially blistering:

The despair and disgust I felt after seeing the director Sam Gold’s rendition of Tennessee Williams’s 1944 play, “The Glass Menagerie” (at the Belasco), was so debilitating that I couldn’t tell if my confused, hurt fury was caused by the pretentious and callous staging I had just witnessed or if my anger was a result of feeling robbed of the beauty of Williams’s script.

Ouch!

But I couldn’t agree more.

Thankfully, dinner at The Modern did a lot to compensate for what we had just witnessed. It certainly gave us plenty to talk about.

As is my custom, I ordered a martini before dinner. That got me thinking. Just like certain classic plays have no business being “reinvented,” the same holds true for certain cocktails, the martini being the prime example.

With the simplest of ingredients, the martini is sleek, cool, and seductive. It’s like someone poured a Maserati into a glass. Even the glass is elegant. It forces you to be deliberate in how you progress through happy hour. It forces you to be civilized. You must be careful not to spill any of the contents, guiding the glass slowly—but not too much so—to your mouth while making a witty, but obscure, comment about Dorothy Parker. This is not some cheap whisky thrown over ice into a double old-fashioned glass at the 19th hole. 

And then it all came crashing down. The martini’s simplicity became its first victim. What followed in the early Aughts was like so many bastards with claims to the throne. There was the ubiquitous "Apple-tini" with an electric day-glo green tinge that looked like it had been cooked up in a meth lab. There was the Chocolate-tini," the “Cinamon-tini,” and the Lemon-tini. The martini was corrupted because it was made complicated.

And this is what Sam Gold didn’t realize when he reinterpreted The Glass Menagerie. He forced complexity onto the audience. He gave his audience the theatrical version of an Apple-tini. The Glass Menagerie is a great and timeless play because Williams’ language distills all of our very sad human hopes, dreams, and fears into a drink that must be handled carefully and sipped slowly. 

There are just some classics that don't work well unless performed in the vernacular. 

And by the way, a vodka martini is not a martini. Enough said. 

Spring Has Sprung and so Have the Peas!

Everyone has their hypothetical “last meal” (or at least they should). For me, it would be my Mom’s baked chicken, white rice with gravy, and green peas. I grew up in the 70s and the concept of fresh, locally sourced vegetables was unheard of. Mind you, this was the era of big cars, shag carpet and T.V. dinners that came in aluminum trays with that mystery desert at twelve o’clock.

So my peas came in a can, but not just any can—Le Sueur! This was considered gourmet back in 1976! And my Mom would not dare buy any other variety.

To this day, green peas remain my favorite vegetable. However, I didn’t discover fresh green peas until I was an adult. If you have never had fresh peas, then you don’t know what you’ve been missing. But don't feel bad because there is a a good reason if you haven't. 

Peas are best eaten shortly after picking, but alas they do not travel well and spoil very easily. They are also in season for only a short time during spring. This is why most peas are found frozen or canned. In fact, only 5 percent of peas harvested are actually eaten fresh. It is this rarity that historically reserved them for the wealthy and the royalty. They became quite the rage in the Court of Louis XIV of France. Here’s what Madame de Maintenon (second wife of Louis XIV), said about peas in a letter to Cardinal of Noailles in 1696:

The question of peas continues. The anticipation of eating them, the pleasure of having eaten them and the joy of eating them again are the three subjects that our princes have been discussing for four days...It has become a fashion—indeed a passion.

Peas are best eaten simply and require very little effort. They are good raw in a salad or gently simmered and served with butter and mint or other light herbs. 

Peas are spring’s reward for our survival of winter. So, pick some peas (or more likely grab some frozen in a bag) and enjoy. More peas please!

Here’s a simple recipe for peas called “peas in butter” from Larouse Gastronomique:

Cook the peas in boiling salted water, drain them, and put them back in the saucepan over a brisk heat, adding a pinch of sugar and 3 ½ ounces of fresh butter per 6¾ cups of peas. Serve with chopped fresh mint.

Oryza Sativa (a/k/a Rice)

I have a culinary confession to make. It’s nothing terrible—I’m not talking about serving Spam at Thanksgiving or passing off a cake from the local bakery as my own. No, I’m talking about the fact that I really stink at making rice. In fact, I am a complete bust at the process from start to finish. And wait, the confession gets even worse. I’ve actually purchased (in bulk from Costco), and used, Minute Rice. I’m not proud of it, but you do what you have to do to survive. 

Ok perhaps I’m exaggerating just a bit, and I have gotten better lately with practice because one kid has been asking for rice at every meal here lately. He claims his rigorous soccer practices require more carbs. But the thing is I can’t maintain consistency. Some nights I nail it; other nights there’s a hissing, foaming, overflowing covered pot on the stove that looks like a white volcano. 

And with this in mind, you will certainly ask me, “what were you thinking,” when I tell you that this past weekend I decided to make shrimp risotto. Yeah, go ahead and shake your head in disbelief. I did.

Rice could possibly be the most popular food in the world. And while many folks may associate rice with Asian cuisine, it is the Italians who I think have really perfected it with risotto—literally “little rice” in Italian. For thousands of years rice has been the understudy in Asian cuisine. But in Italy, she has become the quickly rising star. If plain old white rice were a car, it would be a Chevy to risotto’s Ferrari. 

Three different types of rice are used for risotto: arborio, carnaroli, and vialone nano (which sounds like a character from The Godfather). According to Larousse Gastronomique, these grains are “characterized by high absorbency and a firm, but ‘clinging’ texture” which are “ideal for achieving a moist, slightly sticky risotto in which the grains retain their separate identity with a little bite.” That sounds like a good description of Rome!

To make risotto requires a certain degree of patience, which I confess (again) is something that I lack. And while there are as many risotto recipes as there are Italian grandmas, there is little variation in the preparation. The rice is first toasted on low heat in a pot with a little olive oil, butter, or both. Hot stock is added slowly, sometimes spoonfuls at a time. The rice is stirred frequently and quickly until the stock is absorbed. A little more stock is added, and the process begins again. After forty-five minutes, you have a creamy sauce with rice just slightly al dente.  

Bellissimo!

It may have been beginner’s luck, but I nailed this risotto. And based on past experience with plain white rice, this should have been a disaster. But maybe I wasn’t giving the understudy her due. After all, an understudy does sometimes perform and shine. Anthony Hopkins was an understudy to Sir Laurence Olivier and got his big break when Olivier came down with appendicitis during a production of August Strindberg's The Dance of Death. 

Good rice is harder than I thought, and making risotto—something that I had not tried before and, thus, garnered more of my attention—made me realize that. I may be getting carried away here, but making rice could be a metaphor for our lives. We rush through things. We take things (and people) for granted. Life is not Minute Rice. It requires slowing down; it requires attention. Friendships, families, and marriages take time. They also take patience and the knowledge that, like a boiling-over pot of rice, they’re imperfect and messy. 

Love and chaos. Maybe that’s why the Italians do rice so well.

Buon appetito!

I Think I Got Shipwrecked on the Spice Islands

I’ve tried everything....

Chris Terrell © 2017

Before

I’ve tried alphabetizing. I’ve tried country of origin. I’ve tried flavor profile. I’ve even tried color. No, I’m not talking about the latest culinary fads, but my spice cabinet. It’s a mess. And no matter how hard I try, I cannot keep it organized. So I continue to buy spices I don’t need because I cannot find the spices I already have. I have two jars of ground nutmeg (obviously a panic buy during Thanksgiving 2015); I have three jars of chili powder (2014 Iron Bowl?); and I have one unlabeled jar of a spice that I cannot identify (don't ask). 

If this were 1517 rather than 2017, I'd be sitting on a fortune. I would've retired on this spice cabinet way, way back in the day! 

What a difference 500 years make. 

Chris Terrell ©2017

After

If you were living in Western Europe in the late Middle Ages, life was dull as dishwater. Speaking of dishwater, I’m pretty sure this is where the “don’t-drink-the-water warning” came from! The only option you had for hydration in 1354 was  to drink beer…at breakfast…at lunch…and at dinner. These folks had to have been buzzed most of the time. 

But if the water didn’t kill you, the food certainly could. It was bland. It was boiled. It was boring. No wonder folks tried to score some Malabar black pepper in a back alley moat to make that stuff edible. Pepper was medieval crack to these people. 

It was no wonder then that the Europeans' need to "spice up" their dull culinary lives lured the Portuguese explorer Vasca da Gama to India in 1498. The spices he hauled back to Europe covered his expenses several times over. Nice rate of return Mr. da Gama!  

These days, spices are cheap and scoring some nothing more dangerous than a short drive to the Piggy Wiggly. We even have entire stores dedicated to selling nothing but spices. First world problems, right?

No cuisine may have a stronger association with spices than  Indian, especially curry—a melange of various individual spices. Many of these mixtures, or "masalas," are family secrets, passed down from generation to generation. 

And speaking of Indian spices, during my expedition into the dark recesses of my spice cabinet, I found six jars containing different Indian spice blends, made by a company named  Ajika. I grabbed the jar for Tandoori Chicken Blend and, believe it or not, the “use-by” date was many months away. And on the back of the jar in very fine print was a recipe for grilled tandoori chicken that sent me scurrying in a huff to find my reading glasses. Dinner that night was solved. It was quick, easy, and tasted great. 

For this post, I wanted to share my discovery with my dear readers. However, there was one problem. Ajika no longer appears to be a going concern. I couldn’t find the website advertised on the back of the jar, and even on Amazon the available jars were limited.   

Sharing a recipe for a commercial spice blend that may or may not be readily available doesn't make a lot of sense if one can't get ahold of it. The only other option was to re-create the recipe. On the back of the jar, the ingredients were listed simply as: “cinnamon, clove, fennel, turmeric, ginger, spices.” Not much to go on. This was going to take a bit of detective work and so down the rabbit hole that is the Internet I went.

I quickly uncovered more tandoori masalas than there are bodegas in Manhattan. After several dead ends, however, I came across this recipe for tandoori masala that looked promising. So, with the Ajika spice blend  recreated—perhaps—here’s the recipe:

Grilled Tandoori Chicken

For the Tandoori Masala:

2 T cumin powder

2 T coriander powder

4 tsp turmeric powder

4 tsp chili powder

4 tbsp sweet paprika

4 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 tsp. ground cardamom

Preparation:

For the marinade, combine four tablespoons of the tandoori masala with 1 cup of yogurt, 4 cloves of minced garlic, 2 tablespoons of minced garlic, 4 tablespoons of lime juice (about 2 limes), and salt to taste. Pierce four boneless chicken breasts and poke numerous holes in the chicken breasts with skewers. Place the chicken in a gallon Ziploc bag with the marinade and marinate for 4 to 24 hours. Grill at high heat on both sides until tender. 

So what started out as the dreaded task of cleaning out my spice cabinet, turned into a delicious recipe for grilled tandoori chicken. And much like those discoverers of the 15th and 16th Century, I realized that one will never know how to get from the start of one's journey to the end. But then there’s a real reason for that phrase: “variety is the spice of life.”