Rookie Cookery

Heirloom Tomatoes

I'd like to say these heirloom tomatoes came from my own garden, but our plants are not ready for harvest, and I have no qualms about buying these golden orange beauties.  Lightly dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper... (sigh). So good.

We got a late start on the garden this year, and Nature is a cruel Mistress; there are no  hall passes or tardy slips that will give me back those early summer weeks when I should have been out there in the yard planting seeds or setting out young plants.  In fact I have a confession: the cherry tomatoes that are growing now are volunteers from last year! Several little tomato seeds got it in their little round heads to sow themselves.  And despite my "square foot gardening" plan, all neatly drawn out in grids on my paper,  we could not bear to pull out these upstarts. So while the Plan is not completely shot to hell, it is... well let's just say it's more of a "wavy foot garden", not quite as geometric as I had planned.

But that's OK. I did pull out ("thinning" after the fact) the plants that were too close together, and then I cut off the excess limbs so as to strengthen and train the best vine of the plant onto a rudimentary structure. The idea is to grow the vines vertically in order to increase yield, and conserve water and space and work. 

In the next few days  (after the New Moon) I'll be planting the other veggies and herbs, trying to fit them around the tomatoes and in some kind of relaxed grid.  I'll explain these grids later for those of you new to the idea of "square foot gardening".

For now I am just glad to get to the garden and eat a few heirloom tomatoes from the market to keep me inspired.

Kitchen Stories: A Rookie Movie Review

Kitchen Stories is a quiet little gem of a movie that probably flew under the radar of the average film fan. For one thing, it is a foreign film, so unless you speak Swedish (or is it Norwegian?) you will need to select English subtitles on the DVD before you hit the play button.

To further challenge the typical American audience, the pace of the movie is measured, contemplative and ultimately highly seductive. If you are a "people watcher",  (which is actually the theme of the movie), I defy you to resist coming under the spell and charm of this humorous and intriguing story.

Remember those grainy, black and white home economics films from the 1950s? Kitchen Stories imagines the backstory for the data of those films.  The setting concerns a Swedish researcher whose task it is to observe and record the daily movements in the kitchen as a home maker cooks and cleans.  They collected the data for the women, and now it is time to observe the single men in their kitchens. So Folke, the Swedish Observer, arrives in his company owned trailer to the remote home of Isaak, the Norwegian farmer, to record his daily routines in the kitchen.

But this is a scientific experiment, and there are Rules.  In order to preserve the integrity of the data, the Observer and the Host must not interact. Conversation and food are not to be shared for the duration of the experiment, which is several weeks.

Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

My cardinal rule of movie or book reviews is to never spoil the plot. I do want to provide enough of a taste to whet your apetite for more, however,  and I do hope I have succeeded  in this case. Kitchen Stories is not a "foodie film" insofar as food per se is not what the film is about.  But it is about nourishment, and the inextricable role that food and kitchens play in the humble human drama of communication and connection.

Kitchen Stories was an official selection at Cannes in 2003, and deserves an audience. If I were to describe it as a meal, I would say do not expect haute cuisine,  but rather  something heartwarming, delicious, and substantial that sticks to your ribs... right around your heart.

Cherries

In my Ideal Pretend Life, we have a Bing Cherry tree.  That's going on my Someday For Real List, for sure.

Nocino Notions

Nocino (pronounced "no-chee-no") is an Italian walnut flavored liquour that is made by infusing alcohol (in this case, vodka) with the flavor of  walnuts, spices (cloves and cinnamon), lemon zest, vanilla and sugar.  Recently I had the opportunity to taste some home-made nocino, then mix up a batch for myself and some friends.  Naturally I had to participate in this spontaneous adventure in kitchen alchemy.

Part of the appeal in making the nocino is the fact that it requires some time and a little daily ritual.  The actual mixing of the concoction is dead easy:  Pour some vodka in a big bowl, add the sugar, zest and spices, and stir it up until blended. Then chop some green (very unripe) walnuts into pieces and portion them out evenly into mason jars. Cover the walnut pieces with the vodka-sugar-spice mixture and seal them tightly.

For the recipe and a thorough explanation of the process, (including warnings not to stain your fingers with walnuts!) I refer you to Elise's blog Simply Recipes.     It was Elise who instigated this nocino-making party, after a few of us helped clean up from the food blogger's pot-luck.   

Mixing the nocino requires only a few minutes, but it takes about two months before the flavors have fully infused the alcohol with the deep, intense flavor of walnuts and spices. It's fun to watch the contents of the jar change in color from bright green to a dark mahogany brown, then black as the walnuts stain the vodka with their essence.

Here's the daily ritual part: Every day, while the nocino is stewing and brewing in the jar, you have to pick it up and tumble the jar around in your hands a few times.  I do this every morning while I brew my coffee, and then at night before I go to bed. 

I like this ritual of tumbling the nocino jar. It only takes a few seconds,  and it keeps me in touch with the process of distilling and waiting for good things to come.  It reminds me that not everything worth having can be had instantly.  The nocino jar puts me in a meditative frame of mind,  reflective and patient, waiting not only for the very literal results of a tasty liquour, but for the more esoteric results of a life steeped in meaning.  It inspires me to look for the hidden and valuable essence of life.

Just In The Nick of Time: A Potluck

You see those people huddled around that table of food? They were at the second annual Food Blogger Potluck, hosted by Garrett and Elise here in Sacramento yesterday.  That potluck came Just In The Nick of Time for this blog, because June is the month I was going to either renew my blog subscription for another year or let Rookie Cookery slide into the oblivion of recycled pixels and cyber-dust, or whatever happens to dead blogs when they go poof off the internet.

I've decided to let my blog live.  And while it might have been nice for you to be reading about the potluck now, and all the fabulous food and fascinating people I enjoyed yesterday,  in fact this post is all about me, me, me, and my obsession about what to do and where to go with this little blog o mine.  You might as well know now that  I am going to indulge myself in the next post or two about the fate of my blog, namely what exactly I aim to accomplish with it, taking into account my personal interests in food, and my creative energy, time constraints etc. 

But in the mean time I want you to know that I loved the food potluck yesterday, and I loved being both impressed and humbled by the talents expressed by the attendees. Mostly I was inspired: Inspired to keep learning new things,  to explore new foods and savor much more of what the world has to offer. 

Because it's an awesome world, filled with really great people, and I want to share it. What better way to connect and celebrate than through food?

It's fitting that I should be inspired to keep blogging by a potluck, because "potluck" is pretty much what you'll find in these posts.  You may never quite know what you'll be getting, but I will try to keep it interesting and tasty.

Yeah, I think this rookie's gonna stick around.  If you enjoy a potluck, I hope you'll visit now and then. 

Mark Bittman's concise and brilliant speach about food

My immediate family (husband, two grown sons age 18 and 22) includes every diet preference from steak loving carnivore to vegan.   As the family cook, attempting to satisfy this range of diets has resulted in my cooking lots more vegetables (which is easy because I already loved cooking veggies) and less meat over time, or serving meat more as a side dish or condiment than as the star player in the meal.   Frankly I prefer to cook that way.

One of the things I appreciate about Mark Bittman's cooking is that his style  is very similar.   I just discovered this short video of a talk he gave about the crucial implications of our diet not only for our health, but for the state of the world's ecology.  Simply put, we simply cannot afford to consume the current (and abominable) "standard American diet" that is very heavy on meat and industrially prepared foods.  Nor can we afford to simply "buy organic" and forget the rest.

I hope you have a chance to view the video and apply these ideas to your own food choices.  I am not willing to give up meat,  but the fact is I can easily feed a family of four adults on one roast chicken a week and maybe some fish plus "everything else", by which I mean vegetables and grains, some of which we can grow ourselves.  Oh yeah and nuts and peanut butter! 

The video also includes a brief history of the American diet in the l;ast 100 years. Good stuff.   Don't miss it!

Persimmon Vinegar and a quick cabbage and carrot salad recipe

No, I didn't forget about the persimmon vinegar I made this winter.  I drew the vinegar off the fruit and decanted it into this empty (and cleaned) soy sauce bottle.

I rarely buy prepared salad dressings anymore, because it is so easy and tastier to make my own fresh.  Lately I've been dressing salads with a couple of tablespoons of my own persimmon vinegar, mixed with a little extra virgin olive oil, mustard powder (to emulsify the dressing), salt and pepper.  The persimmon vinegar adds an intriguing and unexpected note to the mix.

Here's a quickie salad: grate some cabbage and carrots,  toss them together in a bowl, and dress very very lightly with a vinaigrette such as my persimmon vinaigrette or your own version. (You can substitute red wine vinegar for the fruit flavored one and it will be yummy too). 

It makes me happy to create a dish with my own crafted ingredients, even something as simple as this.

Mmmm it's beginning to taste like summer.

Grilled Yellow Zucchini

One of the best things I ever did was buy a cast iron grill pan at a local thrift shop.  It allows me to grill indoors, all year long.  I love the way it adds grill marks and texture to vegetables, meats, and even firm fleshed fruits.

I let the pan heat up for a few minutes on the stove top while I slice my vegetables and give them a very light coating of olive or vegetable oil. then a sprinkle of kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper.   Then it's off to the grill for a few minutes on each side.

The veggies are good by themselves hot off the grill, or they make good leftovers, cut up into a cold salad or reheated with pasta, in a soup.... you know the drill.  Good stuff.

Natural Ginger Root Beer from Zevia

Recently we were invited to try the new diet soda alternative Zevia, the soda made with the Stevia supplement instead of harmful artificial chemical sweeteners-- specifically their new Ginger Root Beer flavor.   This led to the following brilliant insight on the part of my son Evan, who then enlightened me--Root Beer is flavored with Ginger Root!  Hence the name! Ginger! Root! Ginger Root!

That's right, until that day I never realized that the traditional flavor of root beer has always been made with ginger.  These two dots have now been formerly connected in my brain.  I always thought "root beer" was some mysterious un-named plant or flavor that gave it the distinctive root beer flavor.  Maybe there was a plant called root beer plant.  But no. "Root" is just a shorthand way of referring to ginger root.   Once identified, it is forehead smackingly obvious, but in my defense may I point out that my son Evan had the same revelation that day. 

We owe this new culinary insight to the good people at Zevia, who had the sagacity to put the word ginger in the title of their fourth new soda flavor.  And it's good! This new flavor makes it even easier to order a case of 24 from their web site,  allowing you to try all four flavors if you wish. 

My family was fairly unanimous in their positive review of the new ginger root flavor of Zevia.  "I like it the best," said Ethan. Jim said "Their new flavors are always the best".   Evan says "it's made with ginger!"  Me? I like it too!  I enjoy the subtle flavors, gentle and refreshing. 

Having struggled with a diet soda addiction myself,  as well as caring for a diabetic loved one, it gives me great pleasure to have a natural and healthy alternative to sodas made with artificial chemical sweeteners. ZEVIA is made with Stevia, the sweet-leaf plant supplement that is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar but with zero calories.

For those of you rightfully concerned about the ethics of the diet soda industry: Please be advised that Zevia is completely GMO free, and is NOT associated with Coke or the Cargill company in any way. Zevia uses pure Stevia, as it occurs naturally. This is important, because industry reports are that the Coca-Cola company, in association with Cargill, has plans to develop a genetically modified (and hence patentable) version of stevia  called "Rebiana".   I do NOT support GMO foods, nor this attempt by Coca-Cola and Cargill to continue their monopolies in the beverage industry.  Furthermore, if one is to consume diet sodas at all, I encourage the support of companies like Zevia who refrain from the use of GMOs and who have the health of their customers firmly in mind.  Indeed, the concern with health is why Zevia was created in the first place! Please have a look at their web site to learn more about their history.

One final note to the commenter who tried to leave a note stating that Zevia was part of the Coca-Cola/rebiana/Cargill unholy trinity: Please get your facts straight before you make acusations against a company that is trying to provide a genuinely healthful alternative!  Zevia is one of the good guys in the beverage industry.

Previous Zevia reviews: here and here.

Easy Fish and Chips Beer Batter Recipe

I love fish and chips. There, I've said it.  And in defense of this fried food, let me say that when properly cooked, fish and chips do not have to be soggy and greasy.

Here's the trick: the hot oil simply must be hot enough to fry the fish quickly and vigorously, but not so hot that it spatters and creates a fire hazard!

Use a frying oil that has a low "smoke point", meaning it comes up to frying temperature quickly, such as grape seed, vegetable or canola oil (not olive oil).

To test if the oil is hot enough, drop a tiny bit of batter into the oil. If it sinks and stays there, it is not yet hot enough. If it immediately fries to a crisp or explodes, too hot! What you want is for the batter to sink, then immediately rise to the surface and stay there while it turns golden and bubbles away merrily.

Here's a tasty and dead-easy batter that results in light crispy fish:

INGREDIENTS:

For the batter:

one cup of all purpose flour

one cup of room temperature beer

optional: a teaspoon of cayenne pepper

firm white fish filets (cod is best, can use tilapia or others)

corn starch

cider vinegar, lemon slices or tartar sauce to serve

potatoes

DIRECTIONS:

In a medium size bowl, combine the flour, beer and optional cayenne pepper and whisk until blended. Set aside for up to an hour.

Slice the potatoes into wedges, coat lightly in olive oil, salt with kosher salt and spread out on a pan. Bake or broil in hot oven until lightly browned, about 20 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile fry the fish:

Pat the fish filets dry, then dredge lightly in corn starch. Then dredge and cover the fish with the batter and (very carefully so as not to splash the hot oil!) place into the hot oil.  Turn carefully when golden on one side. When completely golden brown, remove the fish to a paper towel and allow to  drain and cool a bit. Serve while still hot, with the cooked potato wedges.

Serve the fish with fresh lemon, tartar sauce or cider vinegar.