Now, even I can’t be “The Bacon Guy” every day.   I’ve worked hard these past seven months or so to change my eating habits, making sure I have plenty of fruit in the morning and trying to center my evening meals around vegetables and whole grains.  I’ve developed a strange affinity for turnip greens and no longer grimace when unsweetened iced tea crosses the threshold of my mouth and I really, really think the world would be a better place if we were all a little bit thoughtful about what we ate.

Okay… I get it.

But at some point we have to take stock and remember who we are. Yes, I still eat bacon. Yes, this is still a blog about pork products. Yes, I still think about ways to adding bacon to popcorn and toffee and yes I still grunt primally when I smell it from eight miles away, and yes I would fight man three times my size in an alley in the seedy back alleys of Barcelona for the last piece of perfectly seasoned chorizo (I would totally frikkin win, too) and yes, I want to lurk in the trees like Rambo and pounce upon wild boar with my knife and build an elaborate necklace out of its rib bones and yes, I want to smear myself in pig fat and run through the streets singing “alouette” at the top of my lungs.

But I’d settle for some pork belly.

The porcine undercarriage and I share a tricky history.  I have no empirical data to support this - but I think the cut inspires people toward overly elaborate preparations that turn out relatively well, but hardly worth the effort.  Frankly, Ive been guilty.  Nonetheless, as long as you don’t allow the meat to dry out and use enough seasoning, you’ll do fine.

I am reminded of this married to the sea cartoon…

www.marriedtothesea.com

This time I opted for a straight-up braise.  I figured a gentle, flavorful simmer would work as long as the meat remained submerged and the liquid was sharp enough to cut through the fat.

This, by the way, is my braising vessel of choice.  It is from Belgium, and although technically it is an antique, you can find them on Ebay periodically. It’s smaller size allows meat to remain submerged without a great deal of liquid, and the  underside of the lid is ribbed so that evaporated liquid will condense evenly on top rather than just leaking off to the side.   Everyone needs one of these, along with a cast-iron skillet, a good whisk, a sharp chef’s knife, and a big cutting board.

So braising is like the NCAA’s.  There are automatic qualifiers and at-large selections. You’ll usually find onions and carrots and celery and garlic.  There will be a flavorful liquid or two, usually a mix of broth and wine and juice.  But there will almost always be one key, unique ingredient particular to each dish (and usually an old standby that happens to find itself on the wrong side of the bubble).

In this case that Cinderella ingredient was apple.  I decided to braise with a mixture of broth and cider.

As much as I have an aversion to eating raw whole-apples (it’s a texture thing), pork with apple is among my favorite parings.  I don’t care if it’s a bed of applesauce under you pork chops or an Applejack sauce drizzled over loin medallions or just sauteed apples with bacon… the two flavors are just made for each other.  The instant sweet tang seems to just slowly meld into the rich, fatty saltyness of the pig - I don’t know of two other strong tastes that work so harmoniously.

Anyway, make sure to choose a cut of meat that will fit into whatever contraption you are going to use to cook it with, and you may need to adjust the liquid to match. In this case, I used 1:1:1/4 with cider, chicken stock, and red wine.  You can just continue tasting the liquid as it cooks to make sure the base liquid is to your liking.

And Remember my NCAA analogy?  Tomatoes or Tomato sauce is Duke, and it’s 1995.  You can assume they’ll be there, but in this particular case, they just don’t qualify.  Leave them out.

Anyway, Recipe:

Cider-Braised Pork Belly (serves about 4)

1 3 pound hunk of pork belly, salted
1 medium onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 ribs of celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cups apple cider or apple juice
2 cups of chicken broth
1/2 cup red wine
2 bay leaves
Olive Oil, salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 300

Bring the pork belly to room temperature. We’ve covered this.

Place a small bit of olive oil into your braising pot over medium heat.  Once the oil shimmers, add the pork belly and cook on each side until just browned.  Remove meat and set aside.

Add veggies to the pot, and stir for a moment.  Add the chicken broth and stir until all brown bits from the bottom of the pan are dissolved.

Return the meat to the pot and add the cider and wine and bay leaf.

Bring to a bare simmer, cover, and place in the oven.

Check the meat every fifteen minutes to make sure the meat is submerged and the liquid is not boiling and the “liquid” tastes the way you want it to.

When the meat is tender and registers about 150, remove pot from the oven. Remove meat from and set aside. Reduce the liquid into a thick glaze.

Slice the meat into small strips, return to the pot, to cover with the glaze.

Really?  Smoothies?

But sometimes seeds are planted.  Ideas can lodge themselves in the throat like a sliver of popcorn and remain there until you spend every ounce of your energy bringing the Thing into reality.  This is what happened to me a couple of nights ago.

I haven’t been sleeping.  But in between my typical dream vignettes of loosing my teeth and my being roused at 4am by a phone call and trying to speak into the end of my stick deodorant on my nightstand (I am an extremely heavy sleeper) - I saw it.  A tomato tart.

WANT.

So this was my thought process for the remainder of Tuesday:

4:13 AM.  must. tart. make. Good night, Gillette Clear-Gel.

5:00 AM.  I have to make a tomato tart. But It cant be too complicated or fatty because it’s fairly obvious I’m not leaving this #&(& bed to go jogging.

8:50AM I don’t have the faintest clue how to make a tomato tart.

8:50:30AM Like that’s ever stopped me before.  I’ll figure it out.  It’s only a difficult seasonal vegetable fruit baked into, say, homemade pie dough which is totally easy.

8:51 I don’t know what is more annoying about myself, my snobbery, my arrogance or my sarcasm.  It’s a frikkin wonder I’m single.

9:10 Tomato Tart:
+ Easy Leftovers
+ Uses the fresh veggies I bought at Findlay Market Saurday
+ Can eat at 3am.
-No idea how to make it and don’t trust the recipes I have
- Pie crust is annoying
- Might take a while.  And I would like to get up and run in the morning
- Can eat at 3am

9:45 Tomatoes are really watery.

10:30 I have all of this cheese, too.

11:12 I am really interested in knowing how cheese and tomatoes over a crust is fundamentally different from “pizza.”
11:12:30 I’m not judging, I’m just saying.
12:15 Wait. What if I ROASTED the tomatoes?

12:45 You’ve just added an hour to this dish. You’re not running tomorrow.

1:30 If I am going to roast tomatoes I need Thyme. Yes, I really am that insufferable.

2:15 Wait a second. Think about what you have. Roasted Tomatoes, shitake mushrooms , carmelized onions, parm.

2:20 OOOH!!!!

And this, friends, is where everything came together.  I had a tart where all of the key ingredients contained the elusive “Umami” taste, that unctuous, savory sensation that, like porn, is difficult to explain but very easy to sense and understand.   If done correctly, this tart would have multiple complimentary levels of rich, intense flavor, and without the use of salt or seasoning.

The timing here would be tricky.  I tried to keep things as streamlined as possible, but the key point to this entire endeavor is to develop maximum flavor in as many ingredients as possible.  Onions needed to be brown and gooey.  The mushrooms needed to taste like, well, you know.   And the tomatoes had to be strong, bold, and meaty…  so there were a few steps.

Otherwise, I like the way it turned out. So:

UMAMI TART

For the crust
Scoop of Flour (about a cup)
stick of butter (into cold little pieces)
pinch of salt (kosher)
spritz of water (About 1/4 cup)

For the filling
3 large, in-season tomatoes purchased from your local farmers market
1 large handful of fresh shitake mushrooms, divested of their stems and cut into strips
2 medium yellow onions, julienned (or cut into rings)
1/2 cup good quality Parmesan cheese
5 sprigs fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste
preheat oven to 450

Make your pie crust.  Pulse the butter, flour and salt in your food processor (or just do it with your fingertips) until the mixture resembles loose cornmeal but holds together when you squeeze a ball of it.  Add the water,  pulse a few more times until it comes together into a loose mass.  Work the mass into a ball, and allow to rest in the fridge for an hour.

Core and quarter your tomatoes, and place them in a large roasting pan along with a drizzle of olive oil, some salt and pepper, and the thyme sprigs.  Place in your oven, which should now be preheated. Stir every fifteen minutes.

Place the onions in a skillet on your stovetop (yes, I know, a lot of heat. Sack up, the tart is worth it.) with a glug of olive oil and pinch of salt. Simmer on low heat until browned.

After 45 minutes, toss the mushrooms in olive oil, set them on a pan or in a small baking vessel, and place in the oven under the tomatoes.  Give them a stir once or twice.  Do not burn.

Okay, once everything is roasted, turn the oven down to 400.  Remove the stuff from the oven, and turn the heat off on your smoldering onions.  Remove ball of dough from the fridge, and let it set on the counter for about five minutes (just to soften it a bit, so that less rolling is required to shape it)

Place dough on a large piece of parchment paper on your counter, drizzled with a bit of flour Roll the softened dough into a disk a few inches wider than your nine-inch/one inch deep ceramic tart pan you bought at Ikea but never use. A regular pie pan is obviously fine here, too.   Once the dough is the right size, flip it into the pan, and shape it to the sides, if need be.  Poke several holes in the bottom of the pan to allow heat to escape.

Bake the crust for fifteen minutes.  Remove, and allow to cool for another fifteen.

Mix together the tomatoes, onions and mushrooms.  Pour into the tart pan and top with the parm.  Place in the oven for another fifteen minutes or until the cheese has melted and darkened nicely.  Remove from oven, allow to cool/set  for 20 minutes or so, cut, plate and eat.  MMMM.

So this recipe could be completely wrong, but it is the product of a days obsession.  Honestly, it worked.

I suppose I should back up.

I hosted a WatchThis movie this past Friday evening.  You guys know about these, right?  Our friend Alex decided this past winter to watch his way through the AFI’s top 100 films, and along the way the project has just taken on a life of its own.  Large venues have signed on to host movies, Alex has been in the news a couple of times, and it’s been a really fun way to relax after work with a bunch of friends. Not to mention the change to make a few new ones along the way.  Small crowd this time, though - Alex’s email suggested that I have a much smaller apartment than I do, the movie itself is, admittedly,  disturbing, and with all that was happening in town this weekend, the audience was made up of just the usual suspects: me, Alex and Allison, along with my buddy Sam.

A Clockwork Orange is among my favorite movies.  It is confusing, tense, violently unhinged, and seeps with a contemptuous, darkly comic streak that always has me wondering if it’s okay to laugh (it is.)   I don’t know of too many other movies that work on such a visceral level (the brutish marina-walk scene is I think my favorite part of any Kubrick movie - right up there with the final duel in Barry Lyndon or the final frenetic minutes in the War Room) without sacrificing its powerful satirical ring.

Anyway, not that I never need an excuse… but I relished the chance to once again make large quantities of yum.

It happens that I have a unique and very dangerous set of skills:  The ability to memorize a decadent recipe (I can never have cocoa and brown sugar at the same time because brownies instantly appear), extrapolate it into a ratio, and prepare larger versions of that recipe without too much fuss.   And although, yes, these final products require tasting and tweaking, it’s fairly simple for me to replicate the taste of the original.

So. Two ratio-driven recipes.

A pitcher of margaritas is not THAT complicated, but it does have a nuance.  I think you have to remember that the pitcher is not being shaken or agitated with ice in the same way an individual drink might be, so it’s important to remember to let a bit of the ice melt just to “soften” it, or add a few tablespoons of water just to make sure it’s not too overpowering.

Most margarita recipes involve a 3-2-1 ratio where the two and the one are represented by freshly squeezed lime juice and some sort of orange liqueur.  They seem to split down the middle, however, between which is the two and which is the one.  I myself prefer the two to be lime, and the one to be the orange, and specifically, Cointreau.  Grand Marnier, while possibly my favorite spirit, is too overpowering here. Good-quality triple-sec is also fine.

Also, after a lot of testing, I’ve come to like Patron Reposado when I prepare these.  (Sauza Hornitos is also an excellent choice for margaritas).  But, really, any blanco or reposado tequila will work, as long as you understand that you will have a very different flavor depending on the age of the tequila. Blanco will be brighter and more floral, while reposado tequilas seem more rich and balanced.

Oh, a word about limes.  Choose the small spherical limes with the thin rind, rather than the larger and more lemon-shaped ones.  Both the IGA down the street and the Kroger up the hill just mix them together, but the smaller ones yield a lot more juice.

Anyway, for a pitcher of margaritas, squeeze the juice of 6-8 limes.   Measure how much you pour into a large pitcher (hold a few tablespoons back for taste-testing), and then add half that much Cointreau.  Finish with your three parts of tequila and stir vigorously with ice.  Taste.  You may wish to add simple syrup, additional lime juice for more zing, or even additional tequila if you wish.  Just find the balance that works for you.  Keep the drink iced, serve over ice with a salt rim and lime wedge.

Caramel Corn.

First things first, YES, if you have to use goddamn microwave popcorn, do it.  One bag will equal 1/4 cup unpopped popcorn.   Just don’t tell me about it.

4 parts dark brown sugar (light is OKAY but dark does taste better and yes I’ve made it both ways)
2 parts butter
1 part corn syrup
1 part unpopped popcorn
1/4 part cooking oil

(using 1/4 C unpopped popcorn is easy.  So that would equal 1 cup sugar, etc.)

Pop the popcorn in your usual manner and set aside.

Preheat oven to 250

Prepare your sugar syrup.  Melt the sugar, butter, and corn syrup over low heat until liquid, turn the heat up to high, stirring constantly, until the mixture looks about like this and moves around the pot in ribbons. You’ll know what I mean when you see it.  About like this:

Pour your popcorn onto a jelly-roll pan or half-sheet pan or rimmed cookie sheet lined with a silicone baking sheet.  Pour your molten caramel mixture on the popcorn, (Warning: THIS IS SOME HOT JUJU, MON) and spread around with your spatula until syrup covers as much popcorn as possible.

Place in the oven.  Now, strictly speaking, this step is not necessary.  You will have tasty, chewy popcorn with a gooey caramel glaze.  However, by dehydrating the corn a bit, you spread the mixture around more evenly, you allow the corn to soak up as much “sauce” as possible, and the corn “crisps up” quite nicely.  Just make sure to stir the popcorn every fifteen minutes or so.

After an hour, remove from the oven and try to break apart as much as possible on your baking sheet.

Allow the corn to cool slightly and add the cinnamon/sugar/salt sanding.  Allow to cool completely.

Your finished product will be a class-one controlled substance. It tastes sweet, salty, crunchy and rich,  and it has just enough of a surface grit to make it feel divine in your mouth.  Store it in a plastic bag, it should last for a day or so,  depending on whether or not Jeff is present.

I’ll be sure to make some more when I host Double Indemnity on Friday, August 13th. Hope I see some of you here.

I know those moments.  And bad things happen.  It is only due to the tenderest of mercies that I no longer pop sugar packets.  I am still, prone, however,  to making this thing that I like to call a “Flattie” but is basically fried dough.  Two parts AP flour, one part water, small pinch of salt, 1/2t bp per cup of flour. stir, knead, pattie, fry flip.  You can tart it up any number of ways - cook two strips of bacon and use the rendered fat as your cooking medium, you can top it with cheese, you can mince scallions into it or spriknle a dash of cayenne into the batter.

No matter what you do, however, you still bascially have fried dough.  This loveless, lifeless hunk of carb that does little for you but coat your kitchen in clumps of flour and paste while rendering you little more than “Temporarily Not Hungry.”

Fortunately, I think I discovered a better option.

Now, my Midwestern prarie hardwiring that demands I have a well stocked pantry at all times. Atkins nightmare that it may be, I’ll always have flour, rice, potatoes, course-ground cornmeal, pasta, and lentils around. I have enough spices to keep things interesting and I’ll usually have milk, eggs and butter, and, more often than not, cheese, at least parm.  Include canned tomatoes, pork products, chicken broth in the freezer, and I’m set.  I try to keep enough dry staples and dairy around so that if, hypothetically, I can’t go to the grocery store for a couple of weeks, I’ll be okay.

There are also certain veggies I keep around, too, salad bags, onions, carrots, mushrooms and, as of recently, napa cabbage.  I’m really starting to like the stuff, for reasons that I cannot identify but for the time being, am not going to question.  It’s bright without being obtrusive, filling without being bulky, and can be used to even out harsh flavors, and it seems to keep for a while.  

Before I cause some kind of international incident, let me emphasize that I’ve been trying really hard NOT to call these “Spring Rolls.”  Think of it more as “an Asian-thematic slaw bound lightly by a clumsy vinagrette and rolled into comically mis-hydrated wrappers I picked up at Jungle Jims.  Call them whatever you want.  However, I really like them.  They take ten minutes to make, take advantage of stuff I tend to keep around, and taste fantastic.  Because the veggies are cut so thinly, the filling really does have a density to it that is emotionally satisfying to eat when you are hungry.  But instead of a “starchy” filling, it’s more of a vegetal, bright filling thats more encouraging than overpowering.

Tweaks are easy.  You can add ground pork or fabricate a vietnamese dipping sauce or substitute bean sprouts for the mushrooms or if you are feeling especially sassy, deep fry them.   The big improvement *I* am hopin gto make as I go along is to learn to roll these effectively.  I don’t know if I’m overstuffing or if the filling is too close/far/away from the edge or I’m just don’t have the manual dexterity called for.

Anyway…

“Asian Hunger Rolls”

1 cup napa cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, grated
6 button mushrooms, finely chopped
4 Spring roll sheets made from rice flour.

clumsy vinagrette
3T peanut oil
1T rice wine vinager
a few drops each of soy and peanut oils

Combine the chopped veggies.  Make your vinagrette separately then stir the finished dressing into your slaw.   Meanwhile, hyrdrate your wrappers, one at a time, in warm water for about fifteen seconds each, until just after you can roll the wrapper into a ball without it snapping in two. 

Place a couple of tablespoons of the slaw about 1/2 inch from the bottom of the hydrated roll.  With your thumb and two fingers, roll the roll a few inches while using your remaining fingers to tuck in the edges.   Curse Jeff this entire time, because the instructions i’m offering may be completely wrong.  But dude just roll the things and try to keep them neat.  It’s late and you’re hungry.

Slice each roll in half.  (On the bias, b/c it looks cool) Serve with soy sauce.

This isn’t sated, or full, or even satisfied or happy - this is one of those moments where you’ve spent hours with your eyes glued to the back of your skull and your jaw slack from what you’ve just felt - and all of your favorite smells and tastes have just shouted to you in a mysterious language you only at this moment understand.   And you realize, right then, when you’re done sitting in the dark corner licking the unctuous charred bits from the edge of your plate or trying to fish those last grains of rice from the tines of your fork even though you’ve already finished dessert - that THIS this is the meal against which all future versions will be Judged and Found Wanting.

I spend a lot of energy around a certain construct - that high quality fresh food, simply yet thoughtfully prepared, is central to a wise and happy life.  Sometimes this simplicity is an unfortunate byproduct of my gluttony-prone bachelorhood, or maybe my tendency to worship Mark Bittman as a culinary false idol.

But paella this past Saturday kind of squeezed everything inside out…

For those of you who don’t know, Paella is a traditional rice dish from the Eastern Mediterranean coast of Spain.  It marries the peculiar local varieties of rice with scraps of whatever meat is on hand, and it almost always includes the regional specialty, saffron.   It’s one of those fortunate dishes that hails from a geography of agricultural abundance but relative poverty, where a simple working-people dish can evolve into something even celebratory.

And it has this… texture. It is not creamy like risotto but is not fluffy like pilaf, despite the fact that the cooking method echoes both dishes.  The rice is infused with highly flavorful liquid and the grains barelycling to one another.  There is a prized crispy layer (called the “soccorat”) that adds texture.  And there is meat.  Typically, a LOT of meat.

I guess my whole point is that simplicity does not mean a lack of knowledge or technique. Indeed, COOKING paella is really simple.  There are several ingredients and there is a good amount of shopping and it really does help if you have a special pan.  But it’s no more complex than, say, beef stew or chicken and dumplings.

Which is not to say that good paella, even great paella is difficult. It is not.  It’s just that no matter how hard you are willing to work and how much time you may have, and no matter how much you pour over the recipe as if it were some sort of Culinary Zapruder-Film, most of the work is already done by time time the gas on your stove flips on.  So a recipe, in my opinion, is completely useless unless you already have an idea of how to do a couple of things.

First, you have to know how to shop for rice.  You should keep basmati around for general use as well as a jasmine rice if you like stir-fries and fried rice, and maybe a short grain if you like to make risotto or rice pudding.  You should know that basmati is fluffy (and smells beautiful), arborio is creamy… and your paella rice… should be neither.

There are two rice options for paella, both reasonably easy to find if you are motivated to do so.  They are short grain rices, but do not release as much starch as risotto rices.  Also, quite importantly, they tend to absorb a lot of liquid.  Valencia is a good option I’ve used several times.  It’s not that expensive, good grocery stores tend to carry it, and it doesn’t really demand that you stand and watch it.  However, Bomba rice is even better.

Bomba is actually pretty interesting stuff, and a couple of things about it make it the perfect paella rice.  It’s an extremely hearty grain grown on the hills outside of Valencia.  Not only does it have a low-yield, it also has a two-year harvest cycle due to its unusually long stalk.    This explains why it’s a bit more expensive than many premium rices.

BUT.  It’s an extremely thirsty grain.  It can hold about 3 times it’s volume in water without going mushy, which means that you can infuse the rice with a great deal of flavor and your end product will taste amazing if you “feed” the grain sufficiently.  Also, there is a certain balance to the starches of the rice that mean that some, but not too much free starch is released during cooking, which means that the dish will just hold together without being either soupy or grainy or undercooked.

Okay.  You’ve chosen the right rice. You have to be comfortable cooking both a risotto and a rice pilaf, and knowing why you are doing what you are doing.  Both these dishes begin by sauteeing rice in a bit of fat, along with onions and garlic.  Risotto involves the continual stirring, while pilaf involves the addition of liquid and a slow, even finish in the oven.

Paella is sort of a hybrid of the two.  We want to make sure we feed enough liquid to the rice, but we also want to make sure we allow the right amount of steam to evaporate.  So we add liquid slowly, then finish in the oven to allow the bottom of the pan to crisp up.

Also, dumb, stupid luck is helpful. Big once-a-year seafood sale at IGA.  ;)

Anyway, please forgive me if I’ve overcomplicated this.  Recipe as follows:

Paella

I medium onion, chopped
1 large red pepper, seeds and membraine removed, cut into slivers
8 cloves of garlic. Don’t freak out.
1 14 ounce can of chopped tomato
2 cups Bomba rice (Valencia is also good, arborio will do in a pinch.  Other rices will yield a tasty final product that wont ‘feel’ quite as good.
4 cups good quality chicken broth
1 cup white wine (I used a Torrontes on Saturday and it worked nicely)
as much good saffron you care to spare steeped in 1/4 cup of boiling water.
8 oz of boneless chicken thigh meat, cubed and salted
4 ounces Spanish Chorizo
4 ounces unshelled yet deveigned shrimp
4 large sea scallops
two lobster tails (or a little bit more of the other meat) steamed, cooled, cracked and shukked.
1/2 cup frozen peas
2 t pimenton
1 lemon, wedged
1 handful of parsley, minced
Olive Oil, salt, and pepper

Note: a 9-12 inch paella pan with sloping sides and ring-style handles is ideal, but any large cooking vessel or sautee pan will work.

Oven to 375.

Season the chicken with salt and pepper. set asisde.

Peel the shrimp, keeping the sheels in a small bowl.  When done peeling, add hot water to the shells to cover.

Quarter the scallops.

Heat your pan with a layer of olive oil, and add the chicken.  Cook for a few minutes until barely cooked. Set aside.

Cook your chorizo (add extra fat if needed), remove and set aside.

Sweat the onions in the pan, on medium heat, along with the garlic.  Add the peppers, and cook for another two minutes.  Add the rice, slowly, stirring as needed so that all the rice gets coated in fat.  Cook on low heat for a minute or two, or until you can smell the nuttyness from the rice as it’s sugars begin to carmelize.

Add the chopped tomatoes, and cook for another two

Add a cup of chicken broth, along with the wine and saffon water and “Shrimp stock.”  bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  When the pan looks dry, continue adding a bit more chicken broth until the rice is al dente.   When the rice finally softens, add just a bit more liquid, along with the meat.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil, tightly.  Place in the oven for ten minutes.  Remove, allow to rest, and serve.

(serves about 6-8 ppl)

Again, I was unbelievably happy and proud of how this turned out, and I felt really privileged this past Friday to have a group of good friends to share it with.  They were willing to ignore the fact that I had never made sangria before and that my ice cream cookies…

… were a valliant effort but lacked the appropriate bun/payload ratio and were too frozen to bite through.

What a great meal.

So this is probably not the proper forum to confirm or deny the “Karaoke in a giant green sombrero” rumors.

I did, however, spend a long weekend in Indianapolis.

The trip had a bittersweet feel to it, as a couple of my close friends are moving away.  Things won’t change much in a day-to-day sense, but hastily planned day treks up I-74 are no longer possible, and the whole “late-night-the-tequila-has-kicked-in-but-im-not-in-jail-yet-and-there-is-a-guy-in-a-Mountie-uniform-asleep-in-my-yard phone call” dynamic becomes more complicated when one has to take time zones into account.

One upside is that my pal Rachel has taken an interest this past year or so in healthier eating/cooking/and thinking about where her food comes from, so it was fun to visit a couple of her favorite places- I always love it when people share their passions with me (my trip to a yarn store with two obsessed knitters remains one of my happiest memories of 2006), but it’s an order of magnitude more amazing when you yourself feel the same way.

But first things first.

Shapiro’s has to be my favorite dining establishment.  Just outside of downtown Indianapolis, Shapiro’s has been serving their massive deli sandwiches for over 100 years now.  A trip is mandatory for me if I’m doing anything more than passing through Indy, and even then I often make it a point to at least grab a “light” lunch to go.

Obviously, the food is special.  The brisket is bright red, smokey, and whiffs of garlic.  The potato cakes are perfectly crunchy from the time you point at one until the last bite enters your mouth.   The roast chicken is seasoned with a bit of salt and paprika, and even the white meat is moist.  The roast beef (which I like to get) strikes a perfect balance between tenderness and deep beefy flavor often lost when slow-cooked.  The meatloaf’s crispy crust is a perfect balance with the delicate, tomato-infused interior.  Even the little details - how the crumb-crusts on the cheesecake can be so simultaneously rich and yet support a pie wedge the size of the Bermuda Triangle- or how the pickles don’t get over-saturated in brine seem to be thought of.

Some establishments make a name for themselves, build a clientele and then survive simply on inertia - but what is always amazing is how diverse the client base seems when I go here.  The last time it seemed like a mix of older Jewish families joking among themselves, a bit of the downtown lunch crowd, and the usual mix of random Midwesterners just adding mass to themselves- it really made me think about what it means for a place to succeed for 100 years - whenever I leave the place I can’t help be awed by the amount of TEACHING that would have to go into what happens every day.  It’s not just that Shapiro’s manages to stay open, but it’s evident that many of these details are carefully passed down through, I’ve learned, the five generations that have worked there.

Eating there really reminds me of two seemingly irreconcilable facts - that great food is not fussy, but that even with seemingly effortless food, the little details matter.  And it seems like it takes 100 years and a lot of talent to bring everything together.   What a great lunch.  Gives you the strength and energy to think you sound like Warren Zevon.  Again, no comment.

By the way, another random Indianapolis shoutout.  I had a chance to visit the Goose The Market north of Downtown and was awed by their meat selection - picked up skirt steak for a cookout and some spanish chorizo,  they also stock a ton of regional beers/wines on thier lower level.  They also serve a pretty mean pistachio gelato.  Check them out if you’re in town.

Goetta is my friend, ham is sort of the Meat Next Door, BBQ and I go too far back for there to be passion,  pork tenderloin and I exchange long glances when we pass each other by the water cooler, the Pork Belly Mac and Cheese at Mayberry is on my Laminated Celebrity Card, and pork hocks and I have an understanding.

Chorizo is what calls me at 2 in the morning.

I don’t know of another pork product that can just reach is little unkosher cloven feet into my soul and grab me in such a primal, carnal way. I’ll grant that most pork sausage is good, but chorizo adds a tantalizing set of flavors that make me do a little happy dance whenever I see it.   And while Mexican chorizo you can find at many good supermarkets, it’s the Spanish stuff that finds me drooling so often.   It’s not as hot-peppery as the Mexican,  typically being seasoned with pimenton, a smoked paprika sprinkled throughout Spanish cuisine.  This means that the sausage just seems to hit all the right notes - fat, smoke, pepper, fruit, salt, pig - it’s a bold yet harmonious complexity that I don’t think any other sausage has.

It’s great in scrambled eggs, and should I every acquire the motor skills necessary to fold an omlette, I’d stick some chorizo in.   It’s nice chopped up on salads, where the acidity of the vinaigrette can be balanced by the sausage.  It gives off this earthen red color, too, when you stir some into leftover polenta or, if you’re feeling especially indulgent, mashed potatoes.

And seriously.  I would snort pimenton were it not chemically akin to a munition.

Anyway, I have two recipes here I’ve prepared in the last week or so.  They are significant for several reasons:

1. Both come from sources I really respect
2. Both involve chorizo in sort of a “Major supporting role.”  Think Scottie Pippen in the early 90s, or the film career of Jennifer Connolly
3. Both, when prepared with just a bit of care, are awesome.  They take advantage of their ingredients, they’re easy to make, and manage to taste both comforting and exotic at the same time.
4. Both recipes involve an important “tweak,” which is what I really want to talk about here.

The first recipe is my favorite chicken stew, a chicken fricassee from Patricia Wells “Provence Cookbook.”  Over the years it’s become my go-to chicken stew, yielding tender chicken, and a rich, deep-red broth that heightens the flavor without distracting your palette.  The author (A noted food writer, cooking teacher, and expert on French Quisine) notes that the recipe itself is Catalan, hailing from the fertile region around Barcelona, wedged between the Mediterranean, the rich soil of Southern France, and the Saffron of Valencia.

I LOVE the way this dish smells and tastes.  But the problem has always been, it’s never thick enough. Despite flouring the chicken and allowing the colorful broth to simmer, I wind up with something more akin to a soup.

So I borrowed a tip from most beef stew recipes and thickened the broth - this is what I come up with:

Chicken Fricasee with Chorizo and Peppers
(adapted from The Provence Cookbook)

1 3-4 pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces
2 T butter
3 T olive oil
2 onions, julienned
4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 cups chicken stock
2 ripe, red tomatoes
1 T tomato paste
2 each red and green peppers, cut into thin strips
8 oz chorizo, cut into bite-sized pieces (pref Spanish chorizo, but Mexican is fine, too)
Salt and pepper to taste

Season the chicken on all sides with salt and pepper

Combine butter and oil in a large skillet, brown the chicken on both sides until the poultry turns an even brown color, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a platter.

Place the onions and garlic in the fat and cook on low heat, for about 3 minutes.  Return the chicken and any accumulated juices to the pan.  Add stock, tomatoes, and tomato paste. Cover, and cook over low heat for 20 minutes or until the chicken has cooked through and thoroughly absorbed the sauce.

Add Peppers and choirzo,  Re-cover, and simmer for about another ten minutes..

Wells stops here.  And, in fact, if you do, the dish will taste wonderful.  My only problem is how thin the sauce is. My option is to remove the chicken from the pot, again, bring the sauce to a boil and reduce it by about half.  Reintroduce the chicken and serve.

YUM!

The second recipe is one made by Mark Bittman recently on his New York Times web-video series, The Minimalist.  (Btw, this is some of the most instructive and entertaining culinary videography around, I highly suggest you check it out) -  Chickpeas with Spinach and Chorizo.

The recipe, as presented, is straightforward and will taste great if you make it as stated. You can even leave out the sherry and you’ll be fine.  Basically you’re rinsing and drying canned chickpeas, sauteing them for a moment with Spanish chorizo, adding spinach.  You can, if you want, coat the pan in bread crumbs and place under a broiler.

But, also, I go about things a bit differently.

Because the recipe seems to call for really, really crisp chickpeas, I think it’s easier to oil them up, and place them on a cookie sheet in a 400 degree oven for ten minutes.  I cook the chorizo in the pan, remove, and add the spinach.  I think this two-step, while creating just a little bit of extra hassle, better reaches the result.  But it’s a matter of taste, perhaps.

(Yes, this was taken when I followed the instructions precisely. Except for using the Mexican stuff. Oh well.)

Recipes are not useless.   I would have never in my life thought of adding chorizo and spinach to chickpeas, for example.  But sometimes they involve value judgments - compromises between time and effort, between texture and flavor, or a simply stylistic decision as to a result.  This is why I think it’s important to think of a recipe as a template - the start of a conversation that goes on over years, with each attempt bringing its own nuance.

I mean, I’m not so arrogant as to assume that I can improve any recipe just by staring down a cookbook. It doesn’t work that way.  I have SO much respect for who actually train as a chef or make a living tinkering with food in ways much more profound than what I do - I always try to be mindful of the fact that there are REAL professionals with REAL talent at work out there whose opinion and advice I happen to take seriously.

That said… if I want to add more chorizo… I’m adding more chorizo.

First Broken Rule?, I had guests over. I almost NEVER do this. While Friday night and Saturday find me eager to be social, Sunday is about ME. It’s about finding the perfect balance of solitude, sloth, and the gentle sort of productivity that demands little effort but scrubs the soul -  It’s about making sure I have enough clean socks for the week, a perfectly soft loaf of honey-tinged bread to gnaw on, and the other emotional mise-en-place that I’ll require by whatever time on Monday morning I realize the snooze button is no longer a viable option.

Second Broken Rule?  Dinner consisted of something I had never made before… Candidly, the main course I had never even TRIED before, leaving me without an expected rhythm to its preparation (as if I am the model of grace under other circumstances) but more importantly, without a frame of reference when assessing its taste or texture.  Which, for something with sharper flavors, does make a few demands.

Anyway, I learned a few things.

So. Confession.  I’ve never had Pad Thai. While there is plenty of great Thai food in Cincinnati, so I hear, whenever I eat at a Thai place I tend to steer towards dishes with training wheels.  There is a place down the street for example, I don’t think I’ve ever ordered anything more challenging than garlic chicken.

And, I know, I’m missing out.  I’m missing the dizzying flavor combinations or the nuanced heat that typifies Thai cuisine.  I realize that “I seldom go out to eat” is a poor excuse, but, well, there are six Indian places within walking distance.  I’ll leave it at that.

Reading various recipes for it didn’t help. I’m skeptical enough about bean sprouts and cabbage, but palm sugar? real tamarind? Fermented mini-shrimp?  Maybe next time.

But after seeing Mark Bittman’s streamlined version in the New York Times last week, I was determined to try it.  Like many of his Minimalist dishes, he is able to demonstrate simple (but not simplistic) treatments of dishes you would think require a lot more fuss.   After a few views, I was hooked.

Shopping is the most difficult part of the preparation.  I’m lucky to have a great Indian grocery store just down the street, and they had tamarind paste.  I still have the fish sauce I bought at Jungle Jims two years ago, along with the wide, flat rice noodles called for.  Otherwise, my pantry usually holds up.

By the way.  Fish sauce is amazing, powerful stuff. Its smell in the bottle is borderline objectionable, it’s basically the water squeezed out of fermented anchovies, but it adds such a deep, almost brooding, exotic richness when seared in a pan, I always make it a point to use it when I stir fry.  Consider keeping a bottle in your pantry.

I won’t bore you with  re-reciting the entire recipe, (which is here) but the significance is what happened as a result of playing around with the ingredients. Specifically, the noodles.

Rice noodles are, without belaboring the point, made of rice.  As such, they have no gluten.  This means they are very tender and very easy to cook - you just cover them with boiling water for a few minutes, but, as a result… they are very delicate, even if re-hydrated to a quasi al-dente stage where they still offer some token resistance if bent.

Which means that you have to be EXTREMELY careful when the recipe calls for these noodles to be worked back into the stir-fry.  Many of the noodles wound up being shredded by the jostling around within my undersized wok. Mental note for next time: drain them early. Add a dash of peanut oil to keep them from sticking. Fold in carefully.

I LOVE these moments.  Those points in the kitchen where a light goes on and you realize something not quite articulated in a recipe, and find yourself eager to try the dish again. You become comfortable taking more chances when you realize that a current shortcoming is nothing more than a moment to be filed away and used next time… in this case it wound up making me happy to think about making this again soon.

You know, most nights I just want build a fort out of my couch cushions, cover it with my penguin-decorated throw blanket, huddle inside and gnaw on roasted potatoes - unwinding from my day takes a lot out of me.  But sometimes, when I have the time and energy, it’s great to explore.  Push your boundaries, and share.

Especially when your friends nearly go monosyllabic over the chcocopots.

This meal was the best kind - somewhat impromptu, somewhat DIY, with just enough of a “forbidden” element to make it feel tantalizing and naughty.

It is not without irony that I’ve waited been lazy until after Easter in order to write this. My friend’s observance of Lent rendered the alcohol and the rich food a decadent treat. I have also been watching what I eat lately, exercising caution thought the week and then enjoying whatever I want on Sundays.

And, of course, the meal was “forbidden” because I obtained another cookbook in order to prepare it.

Seriously, it’s time to admit I have a little problem. I know people with more cookbooks, but I don’t have the shelving - I’ve long since graduated from milk crates but buying “real” bookcases sounds too much like Growing Up. And, I usually have a bunch strewn over the floor and on my red chair and my little end table behind the couches.

Anyway, I liked Michael Ruhlman’s new book, “Ratio.”

I like it because it’s one of those books that tries to change your thinking rather than simply listing ingredients alongside a brief paragraph of instructions. He illustrates how interconnected many groups of foods are, and demonstrates how, by simply tweaking the proportions of ingredients, it’s fairly easy to move from, say, crepes to pancakes or from creme brulee to quiche.

And I suppose in writing a cookbook like this, one could easily be tempted to get pedantic. You could insist there is really no difference between doughs other than quantities - and basically stop at that. But what Ruhlman so masterfully does is SHOW how these little differences matter in terms of preparation - like how reducing the fat from in going from brownie to cookie forces you also to start paying attention to gluten formation. Even though this book is about exploring new relationships among ingredients, you’re never forced to walk blindly into a recipe.

And in fact, I had this in mind as we did the crepes.

I liked the idea of a crepe bar, where we had a variety of “stuff” to choose from, both savory and sweet, I whipped up an otherwise forgettable crabmeat salad, seared a few slices of bacon and a hunk of Mexican chorizo from Findlay Market. I sliced up some strawberries, banana and mango, whipped up a quick creme Angliase, I also had some melted chocolate left over… the only thing really left to do was, you know, make the crepes.

Crepes are like pancakes, but with one important distinction: they are not leavened. In fact, the batter is almost always rested for an hour so that any bubbles remaining in the dough - formed by the whipping of the egg or air that’s been incorporated - will dissipate. What results a “bread” that is tender and rich to the taste, yet dense and firm enough to be rolled.

Ruhlman’s formula worked very well, here, 1 parts each milk and egg (which works out to four ounces of flour and two eggs), along with half a part of flour - a half a cup by weight. I added a big pinch of sugar and a small pinch of salt, along with a drizzle of vanilla extract. I combined these in a blender, let the batter rest for an hour while Lauren and I sipped mimosas and chatted, and then cooked the batter in a non-stick skillet.

Yum.

Anyway, please forgive the long hiatus. I have much to tell you about!

Now, despite my grounding in the Midwest, our family did have one other important geographic connection, one which I had to think clearly about when i received a small package from “home” this past week.  My father grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and all of his side of the family still lives there.  Our family vacations typically involved the twelve-hour trek down I69/65 to visit, sight see, guzzle the absurdly sweet tea I’m only now shaking off an addiction to, and absorb the culture shock of the slower, genteel Deep South.

But Birmingham is also home to my first real Food Memory.  Ollie’s Barbecue.  No matter what the circumstances of our trip south, no matter how much or how little time we had, our extended family always made it a point to go.  It’s one of those traditions kids get caught up in, but by the time I was a teenager I could never wait to go to Ollie’s and sit at the ancient Formica counter top and watch the meat being smoked.

Ollie’s was an institution in Birmingham from its founding in the mid 1920s.  I never once saw my grandfather place his order verbally.  He would nod and smile at the staff, who always seemed to understand.  In fact, he said, it wasn’t uncommon for second, third, and even fourth generations to continue patronizing the place.  And even taking into account the overall friendliness of a place like that, it always seemed like most of the staff had known the customers for years.

The food was worth it.  Succulent pulled pork on steamy hamburger buns, dipped very lightly in a sweet vinegary sauce.   Never dry, never under (or over) cooked, it still defines for me what Barbecue is supposed to taste like.  I”m quite sure I’ve had better, but it’s never Ollie’s.

I would learn in the early 90s that Ollie’s was the subject of a landmark Civil Rights case that went before the Supreme Court.  The court ruled that because most of the food was purchased out-of-state, denying full patronage to African-Americans (they were allowed to order carry-out and eat “out back”) interfered with interstate commerce, and, ostensibly, the place was integrated. But when i look back, I remember the customer base as being, like so many of the places I went in Birmingham, absolutely lillywhite, despite the staff being nearly all black.

And it was this last point that dominated my thoughts this week as I finally had a chance to use some Ollie Sauce.

Anyway, my aunt had made it a point to send my dad a couple of bottles of Ollie’s sauce, which is still in production despite the restaurant itself being closed. On a whim, I went ahead and roasted a pork shoulder.  It’s technically not barbecue, and frankly it’s not even the sort of aluminum-foil-over-woodchips/quasi-tent-thing you see sometimes.  This is just slow-roasted pork at home, finished with a little of Ollie’s sauce.  And it was close.  Close enough that it really made me think about what I was eating.    Anyway:

If you cook pork shoulder low and slow, it’s pretty difficult to screw up.  I took a four pound shoulder, seaoned it with a mix of salt, pimenton, onion powder, powdered chipotle, cumin and thyme,  I preheated my oven to 250, set my remote thermometer to 175, and placed it uncovered, in the oven.

Once done, I wrapped in aluminum foil and let it set on the counter for about an hour.  I sliced, dipped in the sauce, seared it for a second, and spent the week figuring out new and creative ways to eat it.

I realize what I have made is horribly inauthentic.  But it certainly was tasty.

Anyway, it’s funny how food memories work, isn’t it?  As I was munching one of the first sandwiches (two slices of homemade bread that were just warm to the touch) - EVERYTHING came back to me, and not just the taste of the food.

It wound up being a very sobering experience.  I’m hesitant to blame people for being grounded within their time/place in history. There is, however, no way around this fact: my experiences in the south were laced with extreme, if subtle, racism.  The attitudes of the older members of my family weren’t terribly out of line for people of their generation and geography, but along with inhaling every bit of these amazing sandwiches I remember these whispers and uncomfortable glares that seemed to form the dark underbelly of southern kindness.  I remembered a assistant at my Uncle’s vet clinic (he’d been there for years and used to take me out for burgers sometimes) who suddenly vanished because my uncle had a problem with his “attitude,” I hadn’t thought about that in years.  Or the horrible, caustic comments made at the dinner table, and how my dad would often pull me aside later and try to sugar-coat or justify what was said by others (a fact that cost me a great deal of respect for him)

It reminded me of the backhanded Chinese fortune, “may you get what you wish for,” which of course winds up as a curse.  Yeah, my Ollie’s pork tasted great, almost like it did in 1992, the last time I was there.  But it also made me remember everything else about my own weird relationship with the Deep South, and memories, like flavors, can be quite double-edged.