The Start of the Annual Tomato Bender

The only really good thing about stupid hot weather is that in Illinois it usually happens at the same time as tomato season. I grew up eating proper tomatoes which means I'm picky about them and only want real ones (real = not well traveled, smells right, possibly dirty and best if hot from sun). However, when they are around it is about all I want to eat.

My first box of cherry tomatoes was purchased at the first sign of availability. They were very cute, but it was little early to get the really full bodied tomatoness. I am happy to report that we seem to have turned the corner though and are in the throes.

Mmm, grillings.

At a yard sale this summer I found a $3 mini Weber and it figured it was meant to be. I realize there are people in the world who insist cooking on a gas grill or under a broiler is the same thing as grilling over charcoal.

They are wrong. So far some of my favorites include:

A Cornish hen split down the center, backbone cut out for broth and flattened. Then done up with a glaze of olive oil, herbs, dijon and black buckwheat honey. The project also taught me my new favorite word "spitchcocked" which means to grill\broil\fry after being split down the middle. It apparently used to refer primarily to the cooking of eels but I would really like to see it enter wider usage.



Salmon marinated Japanese style (soy, marin, sesame oil) and then wrapped in a banana leaf package and thrown on until the leaf dried out.

Happy 4th of July

I'm off for a LONG weekend in rural, internetless places so happy early holiday!

The Dread Eggplant

I really love most veggies, even less popular ones like beets and kale and brussel sprouts. However, I truly loathe eggplant. I find it very pretty but just plain nasty. I don't the taste, the smell or the texture. The only preparation I've found that I will eat is baba ghanoush.

This does not reflect on a growing open mindedness towards this member of the belladonna family on my part but rather the fact that baba ghanoush is pulverized eggplant with other intense flavors thereby obliterating any trace of Satan's veggie's native taste, smell, or texture.

Because I have a new grill and it is hot I decided to make baba ghanoush as a part of my lunch box this week and so yesterday I did something I have never, ever done in my entire life. I bought an eggplant. And took it home. And threw it on the grill as I ate my meal last night.

This morning I made the baba. The process of getting the eggplant into the food processor reaffirmed my dislike (that spongy give is just NASTY) but the end result was pretty rocking. My flavor set was lemon, garlic and a good whallop of chipotle sauce.

Flavored Butter

Tucked away in my notes I found a recipe for a flavored butter. I'm unsure where I got it from but it is easy a nice to have on hand; especially since I picked up a mini-Weber at a garage sale this weekend and am now all into what I can put on the grill. (I do find it sort of hilarious that because grilling is supposed to be all butch, grill accessories are all HUGE. The charcoal aisle at Target is flanked by giant tongs, forks the size of my arm and sauce mops. Gentlemen, face up to the facts: you are cooking. And normal size utensils are going to give you better control. If you can take the heat.)

But I've digressed. This a great on a grilled steak. I've got notes about it working well for sauteeing chicken or fish (although it has a low burn point so you'd probably want an oil splash in there) and this morning I used for huevos ranchero.

• 1 stick butter (softened)
• Zest from two limes
• Juice from one lime
• 1 small shallot, finely diced
• 1 clove garlic. finely diced
• Fresh Herbs (I had chives and tarragon on hand so that's what I used, parsley would also work well)

Throw in the food processor. Scrape out and chill.

V. Special Treal

I don't live in the woods or the Pacific Northwest so wild mushrooms for me are a very special treat. I was surprised to find them (I thought it was past season) but there were Morels at the Farmers Market last Sat. They were a splurge, but I figured it was justified if I threw them into a meatless meal.

Their fate was a risotto. Base layers were butter with fresh thyme and rosemary, then green garlic and white wine. Then the morels, then rice. A bit of asparagus and then the long slow broth bath.

Iced Coffee

There are certain things which mean summer: BBQ, Baseball, Pools, Rhubarb Pies, Splashing Water, Cold Beer drunk outside. I consider all of these sort of national prerogatives.
In my family, summer also meant ice coffee. Growing up (and still when I visit my folks) ice coffee means a strong pot of Folgers brewed in the morning and then put in a sink of cold water. Then drink it black.

Which is fine and all. I'll still drink it.

It tastes like home after all.

Then I went to Holland and found Cafe Verkeert (sorry, I'm sure I've mangled the spelling. Between studying German and picking up a smattering of Dutch at social gatherings my grammar and spelling is a disaster. Hell, my spelling is iffy in English.) It is basically a cafe con leche or a a cafe au lait. But the fact that it translates to "coffee gone wrong" makes it sooo right. The end result is that I now take my coffee with milk. Including iced versions. And this is my standard for ice coffee now: strong with lots of milk NO sugar (same as the hot).

Then I went to Vietnam.

And there was no milk.

But there was white coffee. Which meant a swirl of heavy, sticky, sweet condensed milk to stir into your coffee cup.

And then there was the iced version.

One glass ice.
Condensed sweetened milk at the bottom.
A little filter perched on the top full of grounds.
Hot water poured slowly over.

Drip.
Drip.
Dripping down.
Onto to the ice
and the sweet.

And there goes your afternoon.

Roasting and the Single Girl

Wee Roast: Nothing in this Pan is over 1.5 Inches Long

One of my favorite pieces of kitchen equipment is a red enameled cast iron Le Creuset dutch oven that I dug up at TJMaxx. It is a thing of beauty and gets heavy use for stews, soups, roasts, carmelizing onions, etc. etc. But it holds 4 and a half quarts. I've also got a nice roomy roasting pan.

This presents the dilemma of what to do when I'm making dinner for myself and want just a small portion of roasted goods. I used to use a small ceramic baker for these sorts of projects but the outer surface never got that nicely crispy, roasty browning. Recently though, I've roped in my little 2.5 quart Staub into duty. Last night I had a nice bit of lamb and some teeny little fingerling potatoes. I pan grilled the lamb after marinating and to go with I tossed the potatoes with a bit of green garlic, olive oil and salt into the li'l pan and roasted at 425-450 F. Perfect. Proper outer surface on the taters without the trauma of a giant pan to clean.

Radish Bingo

Market Madness

I went a little nuts at the market yesterday.

It was one of those seductive summer days: warm, but not too hot. A bit breezy. The heaps of fresh produce were too, too much to resist.

Check out my little bouquet of alliums: chive blossoms and green garlic. The chive flowers will make their way into salads and maybe a stirfry. The garlic makes it way into everything for as long as its in the market.

Last night did a spring risotto with green garlic and sorrel as the base flavors then a bit of prosciutto. As a last minute what-the-hell addition I threw in some fresh English peas. They added a nice fresh accent to the creamy richness of the base risotto.

Cradling Sorrel

Present Obsession

Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

Start with a heap of fresh local spinach, as much as the plate with hold.
Slice two hard boiled eggs.

For the dressing, mix balsamic vinegar and a bit of brown sugar. Set aside.
In a non-stick pan, fry two strips bacon chopped. When the bacon is crispy, set aside to drain on paper towels. In the rendered bacon fat, sautee one finely diced shallot. Reduce the heat, pour in the vinegar and sugar. Stir to emulsify.

Crumble bacon over salad, pour warm dressing over.

Back to Pasture

With the opening of the farmers markets here in Chicago last week I am like a ruminant who has been allowed out into pasture after a winter of eating hay; I am obsessed with fresh green things. Pea shoots, spinach, baby lettuces, arugula have all been making their way down the gullet. This week's dinners have included:

• Sauteed greens with a bit of prosciutto and shallots over olive oil tossed pasta.
• A spinach omelet.
• A massive spinach salad with warm bacon dressing.

And for tonight I'm brainstorming a pizza with pork sausage (meat from the awe inspiring Mennonites of Organic Pastures) and greens over some of the remaining roasted tomato marinara from the freezer.

Spacca Napoli

I do not eat out all that often. Since I cook at home, when I do go out I like it to be something that am I either not prepared to tackle in my own kitchen, something with unusual\hard to procure ingredients or something done very, very well. Doing something well doesn't have to mean high-end culinary training, sometimes its just a recipe passed down from somebody's grandma and made over and over and over again.

Last week I went with a group of friends to Spacca Napoli and had a meal that somehow managed to be all three. I left the table a very happy girl.

This was the second time I'd been there and I love, love, love the food geekiness of the joint. It's not good enough to just have woodfired pizza. It's pizza in the style of Naples.

They tell you what kind of flour they use.

They had an appetizer of white anchovies on the specials list. Which are one of my favorite things in the world. And awfully hard to find.

As we sipped our rose (Sicilian and the color of plums) they gave us each a little sampler piece of a not on the menu truffle pizza.

I had a prosciutto and arugula pizza that tasted like the best thing in the world and traded slices to get a piece of sausage\rapini and diablo (spicy sausage, basil, real mozz). Lovely.

Quail Eggs

Too pretty to resist.

True Love Never Dies

I got my first good knives as a graduation present from my parents when I left college 12 (gulp) years ago. I had started cooking with gusto when I was about 19 I so I was sent into the world with a good GPA in not so useful majors (English, American Studies), a second hand car and three German knives.

Since then I've got a lot of experience in the tech field, a different car and...the same knives (with a couple of additions). I realize that as a proud resident of Chicago I am supposed to shun Macy's for the whole renaming of Field's but I was lured today by the offer of free professional knife sharpening; a service which normally has pornlike pricing by the inch.

It's hard to turn down free.

So I biked off to the train this morning with my blades wrapped in a dish towel tucked into my messenger bag and walked over at lunch. SO exciting. I have a steel at home but one run through a pro-sharpener and my babies are like new again.

An Attempt to Justify a One-use Gadget

Growing up in rural Iowa by parents who wished they were someplace else meant that periodically bits of 70s\80s foodie glamor made their way into our home in the form of exotic appliances. Among other items we had a sprouting system, a yogurt maker, a pasta maker and were earlier adopters of the food processor (a still functional almost 30 year old Cuisinart).

The yogurt maker disappeared, but I recently got sort of obsessed and bought myself one. Since I eat yogurt almost everyday, it is close to paying for itself already which I feel justifies my gadget indulgence. I really like being able to control the sugar levels and play around with unusual flavors. It results in yogurt that has a nice tang to it and flavors that don't taste "chemical." Some sample batches have included:

• Coffee
• Rhubarb
• Chai
• Lemon Ginger (this one may be my favorite so far)

2% milk seems to be the best compromise between satisfying creaminess without being flat out decadent and I've found no difference between using powdered yogurt culture or plain store bought yogurt for the starter.

A Ramp By Any Other Name Would...

...stink as greatly! Despite the snow on Wednesday, it is attempting to be spring around here. There are tell tale signs like green grass outside the window and I can't stop sneezing.

If you have spent more than 24 hours in West Virginia you know that this means that you should be eating ramps. So, I requested that my mom send me a batch. Apparently, she came across an discount Easter candy sale on the way to the post office 'cuz I wound up with a package on my doorstep Friday evening with the slightly surreal combo of three chocolate rabbits, two packages of Peeps and a pound of ramps. Tempting as it is to come up with the additional verses to make the "Twelve Days of Easter," I think it is best if I just move along.

The high excitement was, of course, reserved for the ramps. They were properly filthy but cleaned up real purty:



So far I've pretty much just been indulging in them straight as a part of a sort of WV country skillet: homemade hash browns, egg over medium, a mess of ramps and bacon. Lushy.

Sandwiches Fail to Move Me

Lunch is always a bit of a dilemma for me. I am a proponent of brown bagging it, but in general sandwiches fail to move me. I deeply love leftover roast chicken with argula and aioli on sourdough or, my nostalgic childhood favorite, liverwurst with sharp dijon mustard and loads of fresh parsley on soft whole wheat. (And no, that's not a joke. I really did love that sandwich as a kid.)

Even having these tasty bits day in and day out would wear on me though so I am constantly on the prowl for non-sandwich alternatives. In winter I rely heavily on soups and in summer I'm found of hearty, well traveling salad with a grain or legume base. But I've recently changed my commuting habits so my day starts and ends with a two mile bike ride. Which makes me hungry.

I had recent success with an curry combo (lamb in a spiced coconut milk base accompanied by potatoes and long bean) and this week I am testing the portability of quesadillas: whole wheat tortillas with a chipotle\black bean puree topped with roasted red pepper and goat cheese.

Book\Event Review: Soul of a New Cuisine

A couple of weeks ago Marcus Samuelson was in town promoting his new book Soul of a New Cuisine and doing a cooking demonstration. Although he is probably best known for his Scandinavian cooking, the new book is based on flavors of Africa.

The demonstrated recipes included a spice crusted rack of lamb, a shrimp piri-piri, a cabbage\citrus salad with a peanut based dressing and a seared tuna steak that had been cured overnight. They were all really nicely balanced dishes and I was surprised at how many of these dishes had an almost Asian feel to them.

There are a couple of things I like about the book, which are among the things that will prompt me to buy a cookbook. First, there's a through discussion of ingredients, regionality and culture that helps place the food in a cultural context. Second, there's a nice versatility in the recipes which leaves room for riffing and improvisation. For example, there are instructions for spice blends and rubs that can be used in a variety of ways. The piri-piri from the shrimp demonstration is a vingretteish sauce. I made a batch and discovered that it also works beautifully as a marinade\finishing sauce for a grilled Mahi-Mahi.

April is the Cruelest Month

Particularly here in the northerly parts of the Midwest.

I'm ready for spring cleaning and wearing breezy dresses and open toed shoes. I'm fully prepared to throw open the windows and sleep under gentle breezes. I feel up to the task of sweeping off the balcony and planting the flower boxes. I'm ready to nibble on fresh, bright green things and put pussy willows on the dining room table. I accept all of these things as my responsibilities for spring.

Despite all this, I am instead faced with the coldest Easter in, apparently thirty years, and trundling around with my heavy scarf. I'm consoling myself with cream of asparagus soup topped with a bit of finely chopped tarragon. I also found the first reasonably priced rhubarb of the season yesterday which sits in the fridge. Waiting.

Tarragon

My home is, alas, far far away from the glory that is Stanley's market. But I was almost out of shallots and cringed at the thought of paying the ungodly $7 a pound at Whole Foods or sorting through the old ones at the Asian market. I decided that this was an enough of an excuse to head down this weekend.

Once again, it made me wish this could be a weekly venture. I picked up:

• Perfect shallots at less than $3 a pound
• Artichokes! Fer cheap!
• Avacadoes
• Fresh thyme
• Fresh basil

And the kicker? Fresh tarragon for $1. My summers throughout high school and college were spent in upstate New York with a huge and wildly enthusiastic tarragon plant growing just outside the back door so the taste of it always reminds me of summer.

I put some in the butter to go with one of my steamed artichokes and some sprinkled over asparagus. Since I'm taking a few days of slack between student teaching and returning to my old job this morning I went to the gym and then had a breakfast of an omelet; while it was cooking I added goat cheese and a generous sprinkling of fresh tarragon and then wrapped the lot around steamed spinach. Hard to beat.

Zippy Li'l Pickles

Being of good Midwestern stock, I always viewed pickling as a noble but somewhat intimidating task. Lunch when visiting my grandma in downstate Illinois was almost always accompanied by glass dishes with homemade bread and butter pickles and green tomato relish. Both were amazingly good but my own effort to make her bread and butter pickles was a three day project with lots of vats of things like brine and boiling vinegar and sterilizing baths. And then had to wait to eat them.

I recently, however, got a new bookcase and have been shuffling around my rather extensive cookbook and culinary history and food writing books. In the process I was flipping though Elizabeth Andoh's lovely Washoku which hovers perfectly between cookbook and reference guide and stumbled across a section on making pickles.

But these were not huge undertakings. These were little projects. I had some radishes from my veggie box that were getting close to over the hill and decided they'd make good candidate for pickling redemption.

The base liquid for the pickles is:

• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• A bit of salt
• 1 inch square of kombu

It soaks together for about 20 minutes and then you heat it, which takes no time. Meanwhile the radishes were sweating under some course salt and then were rinsed, packed in glass and the cooled liquid poured over. They cured for about 30 minutes and then they were pickles.

They were lushy and addictive. And so simple. They were soon followed by a batch of pickled "blushing" ginger (like what you get with sushi, but fresher so with a bit more bite) and another batch of radishes.

Dreamy Breakfast

Since I have all this fresh ricotta around the house I have been tinkering with it this week. One of this best uses I found was for breakfast, riffing off traditional Turkish morning fare.

Breakfast in Turkey means light goat cheese, bread, cherry jam, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and sometimes a hard boiled egg. Memories of that inspired me to throw an English muffin topped with fresh ricotta under the toaster oven and then when hot and bubbling, spoon over some fantastic cherry jam thick with whole cherries. It was good enough to make it breakfast for most of this week.

No Whey!

In an effort not to be wasteful, I decided I would try and use the whey from cheese making as the liquid medium in a loaf of Bittman's food geek sensation no-knead bread. And the verdict? Um, no. I'm not sure if there was too much heat in the whey and it killed the yeast or if there is something else chemical but, despite a pretty crust, my rise got nowhere fast. Back to the original rules and water in the bread for me.

Little Miss Muffet

For the last few years I have had an article on making homemade ricotta stuck up on the fridge. It seemed like such a nice idea, but I'd never bothered to actually do anything about it. For unknown reasons, the science fair allure of this project called to me this weekend so this morning I assembled the equipment and ingredients:
1 gallon whole milk
1 pint well shaken buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt (which should be increased a bit, a least for my palette)
Fresh ground pepper

The first step was to pour the milk and buttermilk into a stainless steel pan, I used my 8 quart stock pot which was the perfect size. Then everything needed to be whisked together and put over medium high heat. At this point, my instructions said the milk would boil and cook for 25 minutes until it curdles and "thickened but still light" (whatever that means). It was unclear if that was supposed to be 25 minutes total or 25 minutes post-boiling. So I decided since I already had an apron on and a wooden spoon at the ready I would just hang out in the kitchen drinking tea and peering into the pot periodically. This was a good idea because timing in the recipe was irrelevant to my experience. The milk burbled but never really boiled and was on the stove close to 40 minutes before anything happened. At this point a few curds started to appear, continued cooking and stirring for about 10 more minutes resulted in more and bigger curds.

Curds and Whey

At this point I had to drain off the whey. This was tricky because A) it felt very wasteful since there was a lot of it, if I only had a pig to slop I would have known what to do B) I do not have a large bucket which would have been useful. I improvised with a bowl that had to be shuffled around for draining and strainers\colander lined with cheesecloth. Since I was in the science fair mode, I reserved some whey to use in bread baking. Results pending.

This left me with pretty, fluffy (albeit damp) curds. I went back to the instructions and mixed in salt and pepper and then let the curd drain for about 20 minutes. They still seemed a bit too wet, so I relied on yogurt cheese making experience and went ahead and bundled up the cheese cloth and started squeezing additional liquid out.

Snuggled up Curds

I sampled some at this point and...quite lovely. I detected a subtle nutty flavor that I can't recall ever having in commercial ricottas in the midst of all that creamy pleasantness. At this point they got spooned into oiled custard cups and cooled under cover at room temp for about 45 minutes. In summer methinks they'd be very pretty with a nasturtium blossom tucked on top.

Finished Product

Happy Valentine's Day

Peanut Sauce

I'm not a big tofu eater, with the exception of when it is in a Thai style peanut sauce. I used my trip to Thai Grocery yesterday as an opportunity to make a batch. This is one of those recipes where I forget exactly how to make it so it's a little different every time.

The constants are:

• Peanut butter (I will only use the hippie kind, fresh ground peanuts and nothing else)
• Coconut milk
• Chili paste
• Fish Sauce (I use 3 tablespoons, which many would find excessive but I do like the stuff)
  
• Minced Garlic

This gets thrown into a sauce pan over low heat and stirred until the texture has smoothed out. I sometime use grated ginger at this stage as well. Then I add the "top notes" of this dish. Yesterday, this was finely chopped cilantro, scallions and holy basil.

Once a batch is finished it can be spooned over stir fried tofu and veggies and any leftover sauce keeps beautifully for another meal.

Rhubarb Nectar

Although I am generally a proponent of eating local, seasonal produce these noble instincts are hampered by the fact that I live in Chicago. Our "Paris on the Prairie" has many fine qualities but a year long growing season is not one of them.

So it was great delight on this snowy morning that I unearthed a container of Rhubarb Nectar that I'd tucked into the freezer last summer at the end of rhubarb season. My mom has long made a rhubarb compote to spoon over ice cream and the nectar is just a slight version on the same theme with a bit more liquid and serves as a drink base. I defrosted and stirred into a glass with a dose of seltzer and pretended for a moment that it was green instead of white outside the window.

Chard Stems

I am a fan of Chard, but for years I had been relying on its spinach like qualities. The recent arrival of the Silver Spoon into my life, however, introduced me to the idea of using the chard stems which I had been throwing away up until now.

No more. After parboiling them slightly, I did a really lovely dish with olive oil, lots of garlic and anchovy. At this point I am limited to using the plain white Swiss Chard stems but my mouth is watering at the thought of recreating this dish in the summer months once the Bright Lights variety hits the farmers' market.

Coming in from the Cold: Thai Grocery

There are times when the charms of urban life are a bit elusive, like being stuck on a jam packed grubby train with a delay. That's when stumbling into to someplace like Thai Grocery can remind you that city life does have its glories. I am originally from the sticks where places like this simply don't exist. This market has been around for over 20 years and its narrow aisles
are a great resource for anyone interested in Asian cuisine and I took advantage of having Lincoln's Birthday off (go Abe!) and headed down there this morning.

The shelves hold a wide range of goodies, both expected Southeast Asian specialties such as fish sauce and rice vermicelli as well as some surprises like a great selection of reasonably priced seaweeds, bonito flakes and furikake for Japanese dishes. There is beautifully fresh produce outside of typically supermarket fare including gangal, fresh kefir lime leaves, cilantro roots and 2-3 types of basil. This morning they even had fresh curry leaves for Indian style dishes. The fresh goods also include locally produced tofu and soy milk and I picked up a package of fried tofu with visions of peanut sauce running through my head.

There's a nice selection of take out dishes tucked away in the back, but this morning they were out of my beloved steamed banana, rice and coconut milk dumplings. There was mourning.

For the gadget fetishists among us, Thai Grocery's inventory is rounded out by a small selection of gear such as woks, rice steaming baskets for sticky rice and mortar/pestles.


Thai Grocery
5014 North Broadway
Chicago, IL 60640
(773) 561-5345
One half block west of the Argyle red line stop.

Bacon: A Love Story

For the better part of my junior year of college, I was smitten with a young man who was a vegetarian. One evening as we sat in a diner studying over coffee I asked if ever missed eating meat, such as when the smell of bacon cooking wafted across a room. And he replied:

"Oh, yuck. Bacon is nasty."

Although he spurned my interest in favor of someone else, I should have known then and there that it would never work.

My veggie box recently contained collard greens, which made my heart sink when I first saw them. I like most kinds of greens, but a few years ago I was sharing a veggie subscription with friends and eventually had to drop out after an seemingly endless series of collard greens. They kept appearing week after week in the dark heart of winter. But after my initial dismay, I realized that I was using a flawed approach. I have discovered the correct attitude to have when faced with collard greens: they are an excuse to eat bacon.

My method for this was to chiffonade the greens and then sautée bacon until crispy. I pulled out the bacon bits to drain on a paper towel, added some finely chopped onion and (here's the kicker) braised the greens. In bacon fat.

I might be okay with collards showing up in the box again.

Book Review: Anthony Bourdain's Nasty Bits

Ever since figuring out how to decode the written word in first grade, I have been a reader. Obsessively so. Although I read quickly and widely, the reality is that I live in a smallish urban apartment and do not have the luxury of having space for a library. Over the past few years, my compromise position has been that I try to limit my book purchases to cookbooks and culinary topics and rely on Chicago's excellent library system to meet my fiction and non-fiction needs. On a semi-regular basis I'm going to periodically review recent reads.


First up: Anthony Bourdain's Nasty Bits. This was actually checked out rather than purchased since I have mixed feelings about Bourdain. I spent my college years and a chunk of grad school moonlighting as a waitress which meant Kitchen Confidential didn't seem all that revealing and abrasive machismo is most entertaining in limited doses. I read A Cook's Tour in the airport in Singapore after just having spent four and a half months covering a lot of the same territory that he writes about in SE Asia. I loved his enthusiasm for the food of Vietnam, which totally won be over but I read the chapter on Cambodia shaking my head and thinking "what a dumbass." Despite knowing that he can usually make me laugh and it would qualify as a purchasable food book, I pulled out the library card rather than shelling out for the hardback.

I actually liked most of it quite a bit. He shows more self reflection than in the early books that tempers the abrasiveness and several of the pieces raise some interesting questions about class and the changing roles for chefs. When he pulls out the bite, it is used to rally in defense of the immigrant workers that form the backbone of kitchen labor. Or in an essay attacking the silliness of the raw food movement, which earns my whole-hearted support.

Disjointed: Or Why Julia Child Warms our Hearts

As a general proponent of making things and doing things from scratch, I really don't have much fear of projects that might require an investment of time but will result in something that might be tastier or more aesthetically pleasing that a pre-fabbed solution. With varying regularity I make pie crust, pasta, pickles, jam, bread, slow cooked sauces to freeze, broth and mayonnaise. Granted if my schedule's crazy I will buy pre-made versions of most of these items (Pie crust, however, is never ever ever purchased. It is simply not the way of my people. But that's another post.) but homemade is more satisfying.

It is with a bit of shame that I realized I couldn't recall ever going from a full chicken to a nicely disjointed and boned pile of parts. Full chickens usually got turned into roast chickens once they passed through the door. I could feel my maternal grandmother, born in 1896 and who didn't have running water or electricity in the kitchen until 1948 tssking at me from the great beyond. After all, for years if she wanted chicken she started with something that was still clucking.

So, a sense of moral duty, a copy of From Julia Child's Kitchen and a sale on whole chickens at the grocery store inspired me to sharpen my knives and a new skill.

Step one, was basically just slicing the skin along the backbone. We then moved on exposing the leg\thigh structure and breaking open the thigh joint. The wings come off with a third if the breast (which makes them something other that an excuse to eat chicken skin). Then you repeat on the other side. This leaves the carcass which you cut open with shears and two chunks of breast to be deboned.

Mrs. Child's instructions were impeccable and the disjointing took me less than 10 minutes. The deboning needs a bit more practice, but I was using the meat for stir fry and to be sauteed with garlic for an artichoke and chicken pizza blanca.

Overall, I'd say it was worth the trouble. I wound up with portions of chicken that were sized the way I wanted, spent less money than buying the pre-split parts and got the bonus of a carcass and neck for the broth pot. Plus, once you've done this a few times the process will speed up to next to nothing.

Quality Time

Two recent events have conspired to get me back in the kitchen more than I have been in a while. First, I started student teaching down the block from house which not only makes me happier than my old job but frees up two hours a day that I used to spend commuting. Second, I started subscribing to a veggie box.

Once summer rolls around I like nothing better than puttering around at the market for whatever is in season. But the box of veggies is a nice alternative for the winter months plus it sort of throws down a weekly challenge. Week one I got cauliflower, which I don't normally buy, I turned into a nice Indian style curry with a heavy hand of ginger. An abundance of parsley turned into a hummus and tabboulehi lunchbox. Last Wednesday, it was a big bunch of kale which turned me to one of my favorite winter soups.

Simple and hearty, start by sauteeing onion and Italian sausage in a splash of olive oil. Throw in some finely chopped fresh rosemary as the onions turn golden and then add a quart or so of chicken broth* and a cup of lentils (to expand or contract recipe just keep a 2:1 broth lentil ratio). I'm a sucker here for the lovely, petite French lentils.

Let that simmer until the lentils soften up, add salt and pepper to taste. Then chop up the kale and throw that in towards the end.

*You make your own broth right? It's about as hard as making tea. But you can boil it down and make your own bullion cubes. And it's addictive. See evidence below of my kitchen in the throes of a fix: