Playing in the Kitchen
It was Top Chef day at camp yesterday, and Louisa came home all jazzed up about the food cooked by her “village”. They apparently won for the healthiest recipes, and Louisa couldn’t wait to recreate them at home. But, I can’t make magic happen in the refrigerator. I can’t wave a wand across it to make the needed ingredients magically appear. But that didn’t stop Louisa who proceeded to call up Joe in the office and ask him to pick up a few things on the way home.
So our homegrown Top Chef whipped up a dessert for us using tortillas. She filled them with a mixture of vanilla yogurt, fruit, cinnamon, and whipped cream. On top she crumbled Teddy Grahams, and drizzled melted Dove chocolate squares (a staple ingredient in our house). As you can see, she has a flair for assembly and presentation. Although I wasn’t especially in the mood for yogurt, it was a pretty good effort. My only complaint, Miss Louisa, is that the next time you play in the kitchen, clean up duty is also required. This isn’t a television studio with helpers scurrying around when you’re done! Or is that how she sees me?
Patience
Only a few slices at a time, or they won't fry correctly.
One of the less frequently noted requirements for cooking is that the chef have PATIENCE. And the lack of patience in our world may explain why so few of us cook meals at home. Take tonight’s dinner, for example. There were some very nice looking eggplants this week at the CSA, so I decided to make eggplant parmigiana. I don’t make it very often because I’ve never been able to make it as well as my mother does, and I hate frying food. You end up smelling like a fish fry yourself when it’s done – and it’s such a mess to clean up. But it’s one of those things on my life list that I would like to become competent at, someday. So since I purchased a fryer within the past year, I decided to take another shot at it.
Well, two hours later the job is finally done, and I didn’t even make the tomato sauce today, I had some in the freezer.
It takes patience to slice the eggplants into even slices. It takes patience to dip them in the egg wash and bread crumbs. It takes patience to fry a few slices at a time so the oil isn’t overcrowded. It takes patience to layer the ingredients in the casserole, and it takes patience to wait for it to bake in the oven. Now I remember why I don’t work on this life list accomplishment very often. I don’t have as much patience as you need for this recipe.
I just hope it came out tasty and was worth the trouble, because my patience has been used up for the week. But right now I’m exercising patience waiting for my husband to come home for dinner.
It’s a Question of Texture
The flavor wasn't the problem.
Each week my CSA posts a few recipes on their website with suggestions for using the current crops. One of this week’s recipes was intended to give us a way to use the amaranth greens that are in season. It was a recipe for Callaloo soup, a soup that derives from the Caribbean, with ingredient roots in Africa. It’s a relatively simple soup to make – you toss a whole bunch of chopped vegetables in a pot, add broth, coconut milk, cloves, garlic and thyme, and simmer until the vegetables are soft. Finally, you puree the batch in a blender or, in my case, with an immersion blender – the wonder tool of the kitchen – and add salt, pepper, and hot sauce.
The soup isn’t as pretty once it’s been cooked up and blended – it’s kind of a duller color than pea soup. The cloves and hot sauce added spice and an unusual flavor to the bowl. But there was one small problem. I didn’t mention all of the vegetables, but the one small problem was the okra. I’ve only cooked with okra once before in my life, but it was a rather, er, disgusting experience. I really can’t find a better term to describe a pot full of green vegetables that appear to be cooking in thick, clear mucous. That particular instance I was experimenting with the vegetable and had just decided to boil them up as a side dish. Never again.
But with this Callaloo soup, oh, I don’t know what I was thinking. I used frozen okra because fresh wasn’t available at Whole Foods or the farm. I don’t really know if fresh would have made a difference. And the okra was blended in with the other vegetables, so it didn’t really stand out from the rest. But after Joe had his first taste, he asked me how much oil was in the soup. Oil? There wasn’t a drop of oil or fat of any kind in the soup. It was that disgusting okra again. Joe and I liked the interesting flavor of the soup, although the girls weren’t quite crazy about it. But once Joe didn’t ask for seconds, I knew something was wrong. It was the texture. That stinking okra spoiled my soup. I would like to know who really likes okra? Who likes mucous-y oily soup anyway? And is there a way to avoid the mucous? Did I do something wrong? I welcome any and all suggestions for conquering this slimy veg.