I Cook and Eat

Christie's Chicken and Rice Porridge

I know it's rather early in the year to start thinking about hearty soups...at least for us in Northern California.  Still, anytime the calendar winds it way around to September, I start thinking...comfort food time!  (Truth be told, there's never a bad time for comfort food...). 

Anyway, it was a lazy morning and we hadn't got out to the store yet.  So, with the cupboards pretty bare, Christie decided to make a dish that satisfied the taste buds as well as met the criteria for fast, nutritious and low in fat and salt (heart healthy!).

This porridge is a great variation on the typical chicken soup, with a short cut or two.

3 chicken thighs (bone in, with skin)
1 container of chicken broth (low sodium)
1 cup of basmati rice
1 cup of whole "baby" carrots (these are actually just regular carrots just whittled down to baby carrot size.  But it makes preparation go that much faster)
1 cup of fresh or fresh frozen sweet baby peas
2 TB of salt
2 TB of garlic powder
1 TB fresh ground pepper
pinch of nutmeg
1/4 cup asiago cheese- shredded

Put everything except the peas in a big saucepan and bring to a boil.  Then turn it all down to simmer and cover for 30 minutes.  Check occasionally to make sure that the mixture isn't drying out...add water as needed.

After 30 minutes, take the chicken out and skin & debone.  Dice the chicken in chunks and return to the pot and mix well.

Turn off the heat and add the peas, stir.  Roughly cut up the baby carrots. in the pot.  Add extra salt & pepper to taste.  Top off each bowl of porridge with the shredded cheese.  Serve with a good crusty bread sprinkled with olive oil and a big fruity wine.

What a great meal for football afternoons!

Leese's Walnut Avocado Salad

For a number of years now, whenever I've been asked to bring a dish, inevitably it ends up being some incarnation of this salad.  I started out making it for my son-in-law, who by his own admission is a picky eater and a dedicated shunner of all things green.  I knew it couldn't be a brainy salad composed of bitter greens, sharp, clever vinegars and organic fungi...the ingredients had to include something that spelled comfort and familiarity...not adventure!  Luckily, there are lots of examples out there and I found one to put my own spin to.

Since I got it just the way I wanted it, I've had a number of people ask me for the recipe but because I always put it together on the fly without regard to quantities, the best I could tell them was a 'little of this and a little of that'.  It's high time  though to get real and write it down.  I must extend kudos to Linda Carucci's salad dressing recipes in her book "Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks".  I've used her measurements as a rule of thumb.

The most important thing is to use the best ingredients you can put your hands on.  There's no cooking here so what you put in governs how delicious this salad will be!

Salad Dressing
---------------------
Mustards--(Grey Poupon is my favorite brand but any imported brand will do.)
1 teaspoons Dijon
1 teaspoons grainy Country Dijon

1 medium shallot finely minced

1 tablespoon orange juice

1 tablespoon honey (I like orange blossom honey as it complements the orange juice)

Vinegars
1/8 cup Rice Vinegar
1/8 cup fruit based vinegar such as apple or raspberry

Up to a 1/3 cup cold-pressed nut oil (grape-seed or walnut...but in a pinch you could use some fruity extra virgin olive oil).  Please excuse the approximation...I actually never know how much oil I'm going to use until I taste the dressing!

Salt to taste

Fresh ground pepper to taste

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (or to taste)

Combine all ingredients together in a non-metal bowl.  Whisk vigorously until mixed through.  Your own personal taste plays a primary role here.  If it's too sweet add a bit more mustard and vinegar.  Too tangy?  Add more orange juice and oil.  Whatever your favored preference, if possible let the dressing sit for a bit so that the flavors meld more and the shallots release some of their sharpness.

Salad
---------------
1 bag mixed greens

1 small orange peeled, segmented and cut into quarters (make sure it's sweet!)

1/4 cup of walnuts

1/4 cup of pine nuts

1 ripe medium avocado diced

1 small container of grape tomatoes (these are the smallest tomatoes you can buy...but if you can't find them, you can substitute cherry tomatoes.  Just make sure to cut them in half so that they are in bite size pieces.)

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

3-4 crumpled strips of crispy bacon (optional!)

The trick to this salad is to throw it together at the very last moment.  Right before we're going to eat I place a layer of walnuts, tomatoes and avocado in the bottom of a large bowl.  I sprinkle them with garlic powder and a splash of dressing.  Then I mix in a layer of greens and toss them all together.  I repeat this until all the lettuce is in the bowl and dressed (but not over dressed...the leaves are coated but there's no goopy lake of dressing at the bottom of the bowl).  I then top off the salad with the orange slices, bacon , pine nuts and a sprinkle of the remainder of the dressing, giving the whole concoction one last big toss!  Then it's to the table to devour.  Yum!

Chelsea party

So, I'm in England, London...and it is way too expensive to even think about doing more than one very nice dinner out...which we did at Oriel (50-51  Sloane Square, London).  I'll write more about Oriel later.  Right now I want to concentrate on the food we prepared.

Houses in London proper, even for the well heeled expat executive are standard issue Euro-compact.  Everything is well proportioned but by no means generous.

Appliances are big enough to get the job done, sans the bloat we're used to in the states. Even so, we were able to get two chickens into the humble little oven, with a raft of roasting vegetables.

This dinner was Gina's special.  It's quite simple.  Take two medium chickens, wash them and pat them dry inside and out. Rub on a generous amount of unsalted creamery butter.  Season liberally with salt, pepper, onion powder on the outside and nestle sprigs of rosemary and thyme on the inside.  If there's room, insert a quarter of fresh lemon wedge and a clove or two of garlic.  Pop these poultry in the oven for 1 1/2 hours at 375 or when the juices run clear. 

Because sis didn't have a roasting pan with sides, she put it on the slotted roaster and let the chicken droppings run down into a pan of roasting veggies below.  We favored carrots, cauliflower and shallots.  They went in with the chicks and came deliciously out when the chicks were done.

C'est Manifique!

Only a few morsels were done at the end of this feast.  We knew that we needed to eat up because the fridge was small too!

Pie for President

I just read Mark Morford's amazingly insightful and brash colurmn on living in dark times. He's right. All the bad bits seem to be coming very, very fast. All the rotten egg nastiness of society's morose and ugly underbelly. I think the best thing that can be done in times like these is exercise vigorously, limit exposure to so called "news" to less than an hour a day and daily, yes daily, eat fruit pies.

No, this is not an advertisement for Hostess or Neslte or any other multinational processed food conglomerate seeking to cash in on our woes. When I say pie, I mean the homemake kind, made with your own homegrown hands.

One of the most egreious sins committed against humanity was the advent of the Mrs. Smith Pie. The easy morals of the frozen store bought pie took the hard work and thus the pain before pleasure principle out of making what is argueably one of the most satisfying foods on earth (it should be noted that chocolate cleaves very closely to this honor...but that's a different blog). The process or as some connisor's have taken to saying the journey of making pies is a long and historied one. But one fact that's stood out through the mists of antiquity is the actual thrill of making something delicious, delicate and sweet with a slender hint of saltiness that you get to consume at the end of the experience.  The anticipation, as they used to say to blushing brides makes it all that much better!

The making of fruit pies is nothing to be trifled with. It includes making the crust, no simple task for the uninitiated. Further it involves finding and preparing the raw fruit for acceptance into the womb of warm dough. The entire assemblage then is exposed to the testing fires of an oven and then to a modest hiatus for the cool down. When dished up with a glass of organic milk or fair-trade coffee, the miracle is complete.

Please my fellow Americans, make and eat pie daily and wish fevervently for the dankness of night to wax away to the dawn of a new era.                                                            

Holiday Glitter

It's the holiday season so a little indulgence is due, n'est pas?  After lunching for work for the better part of the afternoon (!), we came home, donned our cocktail dresses, reapplied our makeup and started our next sortie.  The evening was devoted to the classic holiday-in-the-City outing, stepping out to see the famous and delightful White Christmas at the Curran.  Curtain call was at  7:45 so of course we had to catch a quick meal... and that quickie was a good one Kuleto's in SF did not disappoint!

Christmas Cheer at Quinn's Lighthouse

Office luncheons are an iffy affair...you may or may not like who you carpool with or sit next to.  The food quality, quantity or preparedness may be unreliable and the whole process can drag on and on suffused with forced joviality and insipid small talk.  Luckily for me, none of these plagues visited my office's holiday party.  It was a rousing success, in no small part because of the venue: Quinn's Light House, in Oakland's Embarcadero region.

Let's set the record straight here, Quinn's does not aspire to the culinary heights.  It's food is nicely presented, tasty and sufficiently warmed through when served.  It's surroundings are what I call 70's waterfront theme park.  Sitting on the estuary, its interior was styled in what the original architects imagined evocative of cheery ship peering out to sea: rustic wood interiors, rectangular ship-shape windows, low beamed ceilings and colonial tables ringed around the perimeter. It is the quintessential Sunday brunch, after church, take the parents to dinner and yes office lunch with staff eating establishment that existed before the huge corporate chains like Claim Jumpers or Black Angus became the norm. 

Quinn's fits snugly into the "small events" eating venue category...a warm, quirky place to sit and be loud and laughing in the middle of the afternoon...it is where you celebrate life's mundane peaks with both family and friends.  And what else is the annual holiday party but one of those little peaks that long time co-workers who aren't so lucky to get bonuses look forward to each year?  As a vessel for these modest outings, Quinn's gets high marks for it's good mess served by an efficient crew on a tight and tidy ship.

I Cook and Eat

Upon the table's shining face,
I heap a bit of saving grace
for victuals placed with care and awe
my food in states from cooked to raw.

In the kitchen fights broke out.
I cleaved a turkey's little snout.
I brooked the store and meadow's field
to win the fatted calf's congealed
drippings stuffed with garlic paste
sacrificial smell ripe upon this place.

A mirepoix of earthen things
nestle snuggly with poached chicken wings.
They sit astride other fruits of war
ten cheese rounds, sweets and breads galore.

A six part salad sits alone
the prized victim of a toppled throne,
the crown glory of the potagE'
whose heads were doomed since 1st of May.

I'm weary yes but soldierings done.
My foodie skirmish's all but won.
Feast...for it's the battle's treat!
Then did I cook and now I eat.

-Leese

Eating Locally

It can be frustrating living in the shadow of Candyland by the Bay.  Occasionally I tire of hearing of the many stars in the SF restaurant constellation. Yes, we get it, we're lucky to be living so near a world class foodie city. Those of us across the bay (with the great views) are amply blessed too but lack the bragging rights. Why is the existence of a huge cadre of wonderful eateries in Not-San Francisco or Not-Berkeley such a huge surprise to everyone?

Sometimes I want to have a really good meal cooked and served to me and I don't want to traipse over a bridge, pay for the privilege of braving the traffic, only to then drive around for an hour trying to find an elusive parking spot. Lucky for me when I'm not cooking I eat and eat well in Oakland.

T-Day tales

A close family friend was tending the Thanksgiving fires this holiday. The whole making-sure-the-day was-a-rousing-success spotlight was NOT focused on me. So how come I spent so much time in the kitchen trying to make sure that the little ham and salad I cooked up was just so?

I rationalized---I brought food to a Thanksgiving Dinner where the host had been cooking for two days because I was bringing 6 people to dinner...that's a lot of mouths to feed, for free. So, it's only fair that I as official co-leader of half the guest list make a contribution, right? On the surface, that looks like simple consideration, but actually, it's me in deep subterfuge mode. I got to cook a T-Day dinner without the pressure of top billing. I made an uncredited guest appearance, which helped me try out some of my material in front of a real studio audience.

And you know what? It wasn't half bad. Tactically, I made a smart move in not cooking marquis items: the Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy and vegetables were all made by the host. Rather than stealing his thunder, my entrees were a descant...a decorative accompaniment to the main event. Want a little counterpoint to turkey? Have a nice slice of juicy honey-raspberry-ginger glazed ham. Looking for an alternate flavor profile for cooked spinach? Have some fresh spinach dressed in home made balsamic-tomato mayonnaise.

In short it was a bit of a coup because I think my food (which I slaved over until we left for the party) tasted just as good as the frenzied host who had been up half the night and had the added pressure of needing to be at the airport early the next morning.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a command performance. But I'm proud I made a decent showing. Next year, I'll be ready for the big leagues.

Salt

Last night we came home, weighed down by Thanksgiving food and neither of us were in a mood to cook...but of course we were hungry.  So I took some chicken out and used some all purpose Adobe seasoning.

Last time I made this, I seasoned with a sensible shake...not too much, not too little and actually as it turned out it WAS too little. Most of the flavoring got washed off by the broth during cooking. So, C encouraged me to over-season. I did and voila, salt cured chicken was the result. I wonder sometimes...am I ever going to live up to my parents and grandparents excellence? I'm rather past middle age now...it stands to reason that it may not happen...