Mystery Monday: Death by Apples

This weeks mystery monday is a recipe for success! No, not the successful murdering of your guests by making them eat tons of apple cores (the seeds contain trace amounts of arsenic, or so my mom told me growing up - fun fact!), but rather the successful writing of mysteries which, according to my extensive research, depends on having a bag of apples at your disposal at any and all given times. One of my favorite characters in Agatha Christies mysteries is Ariadne Oliver, a mystery write herself who is perhaps a vague parody of Agatha herself. There are two things in life that Ariadne relies on: her woman's intuition and her apples. Of the two her apples seem to aid her the most (her intuition on the other hand, seems to merely lead her astray). She is never without her bag of apples, munching furiously as she plugs away at her manuscripts.

Clearly I have been reading a lot of Agatha Christy lately. What can I say? She's a master of mystery, and that's that. Oh and Ariadne Oliver is seriously the funniest character ever.

Less is More

The school year has finally begun, accompanied by cooling temperatures and early-evening darkness. I for one am excited about these changes. I am more than happy to make like my grandma and put on my warm slippers, make a cup of tea, curl up with a good Agatha Christie and enjoy the relative gloominess outside (when it's especially dreary I like to pretend I'm in England).

In terms of cooking for fall, I am most excited about soups. Simple hearty vegetable-and-bean soups. Boring? I prefer reliable. Delicious and warming? Mmmhmm. But before I get to those, I have set my heart on a little transitional changing-of-the-seasons pantry clean-out.

I am hoping to not go grocery shopping, other than for milk, for the next week or two, in an attempt to use up as much of the ingredients that I have accumulated (stockpiled might be a better word). It is difficult to stock a pantry, especially nowadays, with everyday cooking spanning the globe. My cabinets are overflowing with indian spices, vinegars (asian, wines, cider), oils, flours (all purpose, corn, buckwheat), grains, canned goods, and small quantities of an endless variety of goodies. It's stressing me out. (ie. OH MY GOD I FORGOT ALL ABOUT THE BUCKWHEAT GROATS I BOUGHT A YEAR AGO TO MAKE CREPES.) It's now or never little buddies. And I haaaate wasting ingredients so it will be now. Hopefully I can use up as much of the extraneous items I have hidden in the nooks and crannies of my tiny kitchen cabinets.

My goal is to end up with a little more of a streamlined collection of ingredients. A little simpler, a little more focused. Out with the old. In with less (and better quality) new? At the very least I will get rid of some of the clutter.

Food for Thought

I just finished Marcella Hazan's autobiography, and while I'm not completely in love with the book I liked what she had to say about American grocery stores and how the produce that is available affects what and how we eat:

At my local Publix or Whole Foods now, when I feel the rock hard peaches and pears, or I try to pick up a scent from the unforthcoming melons, when I bring home green beans or zucchini that have little more taste than the water with which they have been abundantly irrigated, not to mention the times that the musty smell of long storage forces me to discard what I have just bought, I think of the fragrance and juicy sugary flesh of the primazaro's fruits, of the concentrated flavor of his vegetables, and I wonder why we in America can't have better-tasting produce. Why aren't we showing the people who raise our produce how to be better farmers? Not necessarily organic farmers, or more efficient farmers, just plain old cultivators of good food. If our vegetables had taste and cooks were shown what they need to do with them, which is very little, everyone would eat more vegetables. Italians don't eat as many as they do because a government agency or the press tells them how healthy it is for them. They eat them because they taste so good. It is through irresistibly good taste - never mind "organic" or other fashionable categories - that food makes people happy and healthy.

As someone who likes to eat lots of fruit, vegetables, and fresh herbs but doesn't have the money to even shop at musty old Whole Foods, I am constantly disappointed by the mediocre quality of the comparatively inexpensive produce I buy. Sadly, even if I do spend a lot it rarely makes a difference, unless I am getting my produce from a local farmers' market. I find it really frustrating both that I can't get good quality produce, and also that eating healthfully has become so demonized in America. Eating healthy foods, lots of vegetables and fruits and fresh homemade meals is great! It tastes great and makes you feel great. If that's not good living then I don't know what is. (And I certainly don't think that eating a ton of really unhealthy processed foods all of the time qualifies).

My Pesto is the Best-o

I love pesto. My parents always used to make fresh pesto with their Magimix when I was growing up. Fragrant and brightly colored from the fresh basil and pungent from a generous amount of garlic, it was always a special and loudly appreciated treat.

When I was a little older I remember going to my older brother's best friend's house for pesto dinners. They had a little ritual: every time we would go they would make pesto made from the Joy of Cooking. It was fun, and probably one of the first times that I was involved with a group of young people cooking and sharing dinner sans adults. It's also funny to think that two young men would be so obsessed with pesto. My brother and his friend would always get into the same fight over the amount of oil to use. Stubborn in his adamant belief that it is necessary to use a generous quantity of oil, my brother even encourages coating the top of the container of pesto with extra oil to keep it from turning brown. His friend, on the other hand, held equally strong feelings about using less oil (the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup). Regardless, their pesto was always delicious.

Nowadays, pesto pasta is one of my favorite dishes to make. Pesto is my boyfriend's favorite, and to my shock and horror he had never had a homemade version before I made it for him. Now he buys me pine nuts as a present (they are so expensive!), and he assures me every time I make a batch that it is "the best batch yet." If that's not encouragement I'm not sure what is.

Note: As much as I would like to agree with my brother (he is family after all) I have to agree with his friend in regards to the excessive amount of olive oil called for in the Joy of Cooking's pesto recipe. Other than that I've cut down a little bit on the parmesan (I like to sprinkle a little on top at the end), and I like to brighten the flavor of the sauce with a squeeze of lemon juice (which keeps the color bright too).

Basil Pesto

Adapted from the Joy of Cooking

Serves 4-6

Fresh basil (a large bunch, leaves washed and picked off the stems)

1/2 cup grated parmesan

2 cloves of garlic (or to taste, peeled and roughly chopped)

1/4 cup pine nuts (toasted and cooled)

1/4 cup olive oil

Lemon (to taste)

Salt (to taste)

Pasta

Using a food processor blend together the basil, parmesan, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and a squeeze of the lemon juice. Once everything is thoroughly blended, taste the pesto and season it with salt and add more lemon if it needs it. The flavors should be bright and strong and balanced.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil for the pasta. Cook the pasta, then when it is done cooking scoop out a 1/2 cup of the cooking water and set it aside before you drain the pasta. Stir the pesto into the drained pasta and add a little bit of the cooking water if it needs it. (The hot starchy water will help the sauce get a creamy looser consistency.)

Dig in!

*If you want, you can add chopped up chicken or chicken sausages to the pesto pasta to make it heartier.*

Everything's Coming Up Yogurt

Yesterday I had yogurt for breakfast, dinner, and dessert. It was, to say the least, too much. Here's what I've learned from my yogurt overdose: yogurt is incredibly versatile. It can go from sweet to savory, it can be used to sauce, marinate, and tart up just about anything. It works in a pinch as a substitute for sour cream, mayonnaise, and if stirred into some milk makes a great tangy faux-buttermilk. While it is in fact a great breakfast, it is even better with dinner.

One of my new favorite recipes, which I wrote up recently, is pasta and fresh raw vegetables tossed in a little bit of yogurt and olive oil. It's easy and delicious. It's no cream sauce, it's better. I've been making different versions all month. At my parents we made it with zucchini and fresh corn sliced right off the cob, and topped it with chopped chives and fresh basil. And this week, we had it with just zucchini and basil. My favorite relegation comes from my father regarding this recipe. He suggested chopping the zucchini into sticks rather than rounds (which have a tendency to stick together). As usual, he was right.

For dessert I made strawberry-banana yogurt popsicles. Just watch the sweetness on these suckers, they tart up significantly when they freeze. Desserts may not need to be overly sweet, but they definitely shouldn't be overly sour. Lesson learned.

I was especially exited, due to my recently increased yogurt intake, to read the Wall Street Journal article on the effects probiotics (found in yogurt) have on the brain. "Reduced levels of 'Psychological distress'"? Yes, please!

Mystery Monday: QP is for Quarter Pounder

Today brings us back to Kinsey Milhone of Sue Grafton's Alphabet series. I love love looove Kinsey Milhone. She is so funny and crazy - a quintessential nut. The perfect mixture of completely out of control risk taker, and neat freak homebody. Other than her ability to keep her tiny abode clean as a whistle, she is completely devoid of any domestic skills. Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches are as fancy as she gets in the confines of her own kitchen, so she sustains herself primarily with foods found outside of her making. One of her absolute-favorite moan-inducing standbys is the QP as she calls it. QP standing for Quarter Pounder.

Now after reading repeatedly about this ah-mazing sinfully delicious readily available item, I have held my ground and steadfastly avoided trying one myself. Now I have to admit it: I've never been to McDonalds. Never ever. I'm afraid that if I met Kinsey in real life that she wouldn't like me very much. Now that I think about it she probably would think that I was a health nut who took food a little too seriously. I have taken up exercising in the mornings though, so maybe we could go jogging together? Oh who am I kidding, Kinsey is a lone wolf, and I refuse to eat crummy fast food! We'd drive each other craaaazy.

In order to get a taste of this much talked about burger, I decided to take on the challenge and made my own version. A simple 1/4 lb beef paddy spiked with some garlic and worcestershire sauce grilled to perfection and topped with a generous squeeze of ketchup and yellow mustard a sprinkling of chopped white onion and topped off with a classic sesame bun.

Mmmmm! Next time I'm making it a double!

Books by Cooks: Amarcord

I came across a copy of Marcella Hazan's autobiography, Amarcord, several months ago at the library bookstore and bought it on a whim. I finally pulled it out of the cookbook section of my bookshelves where it had been languishing. I really didn't know much about Marcella, beyond general sense that she was perhaps the italian culinary equivalent of Julia Child. All I know is that I have been trying to get my hot little hands on a copy of her magnum opus, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, for some time now to no avail. I did, however, recently find a copy of one of her earlier cookbooks, The Classic Italian Cookbook, which was buried in a pile of bargain books at the used book store. I snatched it up for the steal of $2 and gave it a prominent place in my cookbook collection.

So far, I especially enjoyed her description of her first encounter with American food. While humorous, her grief over her inability to connect with or understand American cooking is clear.

Victor had taken me to a coffee shop where he ordered what he called the national dish, hamburger. He poured some red sauce from a bottle over it and encouraged me to try it. "It's called ketchup," he said, "and it's tasty." I was not prepared for its cloying flavor and I found it inedible. (That sweet taste over meat was an experience that I would be subjected to again, bringing me grief at my first Thanksgiving dinner.) The coffee tasted as though I had been served the water used to clean out the pot. I thought to console myself with dessert. I was able to figure out what the words "coffee cake" on the board meant, and that was what I ordered. It was stupefyingly sweet and loaded with cinnamon, which I loathe, yet with not the slightest trace of coffee flavor. "This must be a mistake," I said to Victor, "there isn't any coffee in here." "Oh, it's only called a coffee cake because it is served with coffee." To this day, I am mystified. A chocolate cake has chocolate, an almond tart has almonds, an apple pie has apples; why doesn't a coffee cake have coffee?

In comparison to her struggles trying to find comfort and familiarity in the foreign and often alienating supermarkets of New York, when she returns to Italy she quickly falls into a natural rhythm when it comes to her cooking. With her return to her homeland she finally finds comfort and confidence, cooking intuitively, seasonally, and joyfully.

My cooking was very simple, usually guided by the vegetables that looked best to me that day. We might have pasta with zucchini or fresh tomatoes or cauliflower, or a frittata with asparagus or green beans or peppers and onion, sausages with fresh borlotti beans, veal stew with foraged mushrooms, or my mother's veal roll-ups, of which Victor was so fond. From a trip to the fish market, I might have brought back sgombero, small mackerel that I cooked over the stove like a pan roast, in olive oil, garlic, and rosemary. Or a kilo or more of our tiny Adriatic clams, peppery and soft like butter, a small mountain of them sauteed with lots of olive oil, garlic, and parsley, which we would eat with nearly their weight in marvelous crusty bread, sopping up their juices. Those noontimes together at home gave us such strength and encouragement.

Great, now I want to move to Italy.