Paprika

Gizzard Paprikash

2011-02-26T21:45:00.000-08:00

While I was home over the holidays, we got together with some friends and butchered a number of chickens -- hens who'd stopped laying, roosters with asthma, roosters in general. Nobody else was particularly interested in the organs and feet, so I took those. Gracious. Those old roosters grew dragon's hide on their feet! I dunked the feet in boiling water for five minutes, clipped off the toenails, and then my mother and I painstakingly peeled off the outer layer of scaly skin before making stock of them. That dragon stock was gorgeous. You could have walked on it and not fallen in.

But this is about the gizzards and hearts. Gizzards and hearts are delicious dark, dark meat -- almost blue, they're so dark -- but they take a little stewing to become tender. The gizzard is a powerful disc-shaped muscle in the chicken's neck, which grinds seeds and grass. To get the partially digested food out of the gizzard, you have to split it open and peel the lining out, which is why gizzards have that clam-shell shape when you buy them.

When considering what to do with my bucket of gizzards and hearts (besides make an enormous pot of gravy), I recalled a delicious dish of zúza paprikás, a.k.a. gizzard paprikash, I had one evening in Budapest. And I recalled a page or two I'd spent an entire day translating from a Hungarian cookbook, and from these two recollections I made a very delicious, convincing gizzard/heart paprikash for supper. It was boldly orange, piquant and creamy.

Back in San Francisco, I wanted to compare my recipe to that in a book of mine called Cooking with Love and Paprika, a 1966 cookbook by Joseph Pasternak. To my alarm, he makes a distinction between Hungarian paprikash and Transylvanian paprikash; according to him, my recipe is Transylvanian because it includes sour cream. How perplexing. Well, the zúza paprikás I had in Hungary most definitely had sour cream in it, just like practically everything I ate there (oh sigh!). Also, a good bit of Transylvania used to belong to Hungary, so maybe it's a moot point.

Many Hungarian dishes start with rendering some minced smoked pork fat in a skillet. Unfortunately, I cannot walk two blocks to the nearest market hall and ask for a kilo of smoked Mangalica fat from the butcher. (Nor can I ask for a kilo of goose gizzards, or a quart of pickled peppers ladled from the brine vat, or get my jug filled up with raw milk for a handful of forints -- sigh, sigh, and sigh.) So I would recommend frying a few slices of bacon at a fairly low temperature for a long time, so the fat renders out without burning at all. Pour the clean fat into a jar, eat the bacon, and clean the sticky stuff off the skillet before putting the fat back in. This will give you good fat with a nice smoky flavor.

You may chop the gizzards or hearts before cooking them; when cooked, a whole gizzard tends to be a bit more than one mouthful. You can also remove the "hinge" in the middle of the gizzard -- this is the most sinewy part -- and then the gizzards will become tender much sooner. I lazily left my gizzards whole.

Mince a large onion fairly fine, and let it cook in the fat in Dutch oven till soft and clear. Push the onions to one side of the Dutch oven and briefly brown about a pound of gizzards and/or hearts on the other side.

Add salt and a large peeled, crushed tomato (or a tablespoon of paste), and a ton of fresh sweet paprika, 2-3 tablespoons.* Pour in enough chicken stock** to cover the gizzards, cover the pan, and let it simmer for about three hours, until the meat is tender. Undercooked gizzards are unpleasantly squeaky on the tooth. If you trimmed the gizzards, they may only take an hour or so to cook.

If the dish seems too liquid (soupy, not stewy), remove the lid and let it boil down for a bit. When it's done cooking, add a couple of cloves of finely minced garlic and turn off the heat. Swirl in sour cream or creme fraiche to taste -- at least half a cup. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Paprikash is traditionally served over little egg noodles (tojásos tészta). As you can see in the picture above, I sometimes enjoy it on potatoes.

You can also use this recipe to make straight-up chicken paprikash. Break a small young chicken down into drumsticks, thighs, wings and breasts. It will only need 45 minutes or so of cooking time, and you can let the chicken pieces make their own stock as they cook. Add the breasts towards the end of the cooking time so they don't get overdone. Old stewing birds will take about three hours, just like the gizzards.

*About the paprika: it really needs to be good if you're not just sprinkling it on deviled eggs for pretty. Fresh means less than a year old. Sweet means it's made from sweet peppers, not spicy ones. It's hard to find non-sweet paprika in the United States, so you probably don't need to worry about it.

**You probably expect me to say "or water" here. But I won't do it. If you were making a custard that called for milk, would you use water instead? Only a very slight exaggeration. Vegetable stock also doesn't work. Neither does most of the "chicken broth" you can buy in stores. Unless the stock is made from bones and tendons, there will not be gelatin in it, and gelatin is necessary for that silky feeling on your lips. And that silky feeling on your lips is necessary for happiness. Okay, fine, you can use water if you're really in a pinch, but don't make a habit of it. Also, if you've gone to the trouble of tracking down chicken gizzards, you're probably in close proximity to some chicken backs or feet, too. Just simmer them for a few hours before you make supper.

How to Make a Wedding Dress, Part One

2011-02-16T10:14:00.001-08:00

When I was about four, I saw that dainty ladies pinched their skirts up and walked with pointed toes (probably in a book, because all the women I knew wore plaid and denim). I knew I should be just as dainty as these storybook ladies. Daintier, even! I lifted my skirts as high as I could and pranced around like the queen of daintiness, until my mother told me I wasn't allowed to wear skirts to church if I flashed everyone.

When I was about seven, I vowed that I would never, ever, ever wear jeans. Denim was entirely too uncomfortable, stiff, and modern. I preferred calico dresses, with buttons down the front. "I will not even wear jeans when I am a TEENAGER," I said. I pretty much held to it, wearing long flowing skirts all through high school and the first year of college, up until that day I cut off all my hair.

This is my wedding dress design problem, see. I have too long a history with fantastic dress-ups. I know how to sew a wizard's cloak, how to turn thrift-store negligees into fairy gowns and spiderwitch tatters, how to cut a cardboard sword from the Arabian Nights. I'm getting married; I can't screw it up now. All my younger selves are standing in a dainty row, waiting to see their dreams fully realized in my wedding dress. So I lay awake at night, thinking about sashes and gores and trims and petticoats, and wondering what Mlirriiken the Wizardess would wear to her wedding. And what would you wear to a pirate wedding on the Purple Island? Or hell, to the polyandrous weddings in Midderwynn? These are ponderous, ponderous questions! I tossed and turned.

I thought about buying a wedding dress. There are all kinds of professional magical seamsters, on Etsy and elsewhere, who spin gossamer gowns out of seashells and hickory nuts. They could certainly do a better job than I. I thought about embarking on the most epic thrift-store-scouring mission in the history of used clothing. Wouldn't scavenged laces and ruffles be fun, and cheaper than sewing?

But that line of dainty young selves shook their heads. When would I ever again have the chance to make a dress entirely out of my dreams?

On a flight home, I filled a sketchbook with drawings. The businessmen on either side of me must have thought I was some kind of overgrown eight-year old, hurriedly filling pages with sketches of nearly identical dresses. With my imagination finally loosed, the possibilities and abstractions drove me crazy. I have designed skirts before, and designed fitted bodices before, and made dresses from patterns before. But designing a whole dress required entirely too many choices -- and I knew my vision needed to crystallize before I could set to with my scissors and pins.

Also, you know how hard it is to make a flat map of a round earth? HA. Spheres are EASY. They are so predictable. Mapping a body is the real challenge.

In part two: how to actually make a pattern, instead of just talking about it.

Ring-Making Recipe

2011-01-11T14:04:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've been thinking of white wool and green silk almost as much as I've been thinking of eggnog and avocados. There's a lot to be done when you get engaged! And of course I want to make marrying-time as fun and arduous as possible, so here I am, revving up the sewing machine and finding my anvil.

Actually, I was prepared for these rings to be a lot more difficult than they were. My father helped expedite the process, sending me home with a full ring-making kit. I find that assembling my materials and tools is the hardest and least rewarding part of any project, so this was a great boon. The kit included: sandpaper in an array of fine grits, a cylindrical file, a small hammer, and two 1930's silver quarters that he mounted on bolts. Quarters newer than 1964 have copper cores.

The bolt gives you something to hang on to when you're hammering. The washers also give the quarter stability, so an errant hammer-stroke doesn't fatally warp the quarter.

For my anvil, I used one of the stones from my grain mill. Holding the bolt so the quarter was vertical, I tapped the edge of the quarter, turning it between taps to avoid making flat spots. I did that for half a day. The rim of the quarter widened as it flattened, and the diameter of the quarter shrunk. When it reached the predetermined size of W. Crawford's finger, I took it off the bolt.

I started using the narrow file in the bolt-hole. Silver dust was flying! Then I wrapped a slightly wider metal cylinder in medium-grit sandpaper and removed the rest of the middle. At that point, you could no longer tell it had once been a quarter.

The rest was just sanding. The ring fit W. Crawford perfectly, and he promptly went to work making one for me, of daintier dimensions.

Also, it's only illegal to destroy coins if you plan on reusing them as currency.

Buttermilk-Soaked Buckwheat Pancakes

2010-09-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

I never, ever vary my breakfast routine. I get up at dawn and putter about for a few minutes until my hunger wakes up. Then I move with a swiftness. I heat the skillet, toast a slice of homemade bread, and circle back to the skillet to crack in two eggs. The eggs barely make contact with the pan. (Over-easy is the term, but we called them "gook-out" when we were young.) Then the toast pops, and the butter drips down through its chewy holes, and I tuck in. Once my hunger wakes up it's a growling beast.

After dipping my toast in the warm yolks and sliding the whites through the dripped-down melted butter, I can more leisurely turn my attention to things like sauerkraut and tea. It's a splendid breakfast, so splendid that when I make fancy breakfasts for other folks, I still make myself eggs and toast.

Indeed, I never, ever vary my breakfast routine. Except for yesterday. And today. The folks at the farmer's market didn't bring eggs on Wednesday, being too busy with tomatoes. I am such a snob that I just can't tolerate the sight of ordinary commercial eggs anymore, not even the expensive organic omega-3 faux-family-farm eggs. They look flaccid and mucilaginous, not at all muscular and perky and bright like real eggs.

So I went back to an old recipe I was saving for the dark of the year when real hens cease to lay. It's a recipe that was outdated before it was published a century ago. Helen Marsden, the endearingly nostalgic author, bemoans modern methods and the modern fear of inconvenience. But back then, "modern methods" meant baking powder instead of soda. And "inconvenience" was taking the time to soak your batter overnight. These days, breakfast itself is the great inconvenience.

Take heart, though! She assures us that "the setting overnight ... is in fact a very simple and convenient process, consuming only a few minutes and doing its leavening work in accordance with nature's chemistry during the long hours of the night."

It turns out that nature's chemistry is delicious, and truly easy. There's nothing in our modern repertoire quite like these buckwheat cakes. You know the spongey sour Ethiopian flatbread, injera? The cakes are spongey like that, but more delicate on account of the milk, and not sour. Like a cross between crepes and injera. They're tiny little chewy toothsome morsels. She calls it "light nothingness." Yes, that's true, but they're also satisfying -- they fill you up without the midmorning pancake crash. I ate a dozen and they kept me humming till lunch.

Real Buckwheat Cakes

This recipe makes enough pancakes for two hungry people, with maybe a few left over for a third person who generally prefers coffee to breakfast.

The night before, put two cups of buckwheat flour in a large bowl with a cup of sour milk (buttermilk, kefir, whey, or clabber), and a cup of water. Whisk until all the lumps are gone. Add a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of molasses, and whisk in. I think Marsden assumes you're using toasted buckwheat flour (the grey-colored kind, readily available), but I usually prefer freshly ground untoasted buckwheat groats.

Put a tea towel over the bowl, a plate on top to hold it on, and a thick dish towel over the whole thing. Set it somewhere warm. I put it directly on my stovetop over the hot spot from the pilot light. A radiator would also work. It shouldn't be so hot that it hurts to touch -- that would kill the fermenting bacteria.

In the morning, heat a cast iron skillet over a medium-high flame. Don't let it smoke. Add a teaspoon of baking soda to the batter, and whisk it in until it's all bubbly and evenly distributed.

Grease the skillet well (use ghee, lard, or bacon fat -- or butter, if you're careful not to burn it). Marsden says to use a "cooking-spoonful" of batter for each cake. It's not a lot. These are little guys. Put four or five in the skillet.

Flip them when they have bubbles in the middle. Remove when they're brown on the bottom and re-grease the skillet before you put the next round in.

Serve hot with gravy or butter. Or syrup, if you must, but I warned you about the pancake crash.

Hint

Helen Marsden recommends an innovative pan-greasing device: a piece of fat pork stuck on the end of a fork. I suppose I could keep it handy in a little jar on the back of my stove; no more running around for the butter knife between pancakes. In fact, I could even use the fat-pork fork for my ova over-easy.

Hollandaise

2010-09-02T12:53:00.001-07:00

Hollandaise! It's mayonnaise, but with butter. Do you know why that makes it hollandaise? Because in Holland they fry their bacon in butter. Yes, and it's delicious. The only confusing part is why I never made hollandaise until today. And that confusing part is also an embarrassing part -- hollandaise is one of the Mother Sauces!

But at lunch today, hollandaise became a simply ineluctable condiment. I was making a salad, and realized that I wanted some butter. Sadly, there was nothing to spread it on, since I had just run out of bread and wouldn't be baking till tomorrow. And then I knew what I had to do: dress the salad with butter, of course. The time had come for hollandaise.

I went straight to the stove and made it. I didn't stop to look in a cookbook or ask the Internet. My conviction was complete, and left no room for doubts or hesitations. I cracked the egg, I melted the butter, I beat it. A pinch of salt, a splash of vinegar. In less than five minutes, I returned to my salad, and poured over it a glossy golden ribbon of sauce, and became a whole woman again. I can still feel it, shining inside me.

Hollandaise

Gently melt 3-4 tablespoons of butter in a small pan. Turn it off as soon as it is melted. For the hollandaise to be really sunny, use butter from grassfed cows.

Separate an egg (and fry the white; why not?). Put the yolk in a small jar or bowl and beat it well. For the hollandaise to be even more sunny and golden, use an egg from a pastured hen.

Pour in one drop of the melted butter. Beat it thoroughly, so that the butter is completely incorporated into a creamy, shiny emulsion. Repeat until you've added all the butter. (Towards the end you can add the butter in larger quantities, but don't stop beating until it's all smooth.)

Add some salt and a little apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. I think lemon juice is the preferred thing, but I didn't have any lemons today.

Note: this dressed one large serving of arugula-apple salad.

Also, now I'm beginning to doubt myself. Surely I've made hollandaise before today? In a little way, for a last minute supper? For crepes at breakfast? I'll ask W. Crawford. I make him eat so many things, and they just float away without recipes to weight them down. Or maybe I dreamt about making hollandaise. That's just as likely.

OH MY GOODNESS! I just had an idea. Hollandaise in Waldorf salad. No, better: browned butter hollandaise in Waldorf salad.

Purple Sauerkraut

2010-08-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

At the farmer's market yesterday, there weren't any green cabbages, just purples, so I loaded three large ones onto my bike and pedaled away. I pedaled remarkably slowly, though, because I'd also strapped two dozen eggs to the rear rack, and every time I went over a bump all twenty-four eggs made a threatening rattle. By the time I got home, I'd imagined about twenty-four terrible ways my eggs could break, leaving me lump-throated in the middle of the street with eggwhites dripping down my cold, bare knees.

Ordinarily, I'd put everything into my pannier, where it would be somewhat cushioned from the bumps, and I could ride away swiftly. But I'd thought the market would be closed by the time I got off work, so I'd left my pannier at home. I'd also thought the sun would still be shining, and the air temperature would be within ten degrees of the temperature when I left the house. But San Francisco reverted, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of Fog moved upon the face of the waters. And the hem of my gown was above my knees.

Happily, the fog drove everyone away from the farmer's market, which meant that there were still eggs by the time I arrived! Along with many, many purple cabbages.

Most purple sauerkraut is treated specially, fermented with vinegar and spices (there is exactly such a recipe in The Lost Art of Real Cooking, in fact). But today I am just making plain sauerkraut and happening to use purple cabbage instead of green.

Purple Sauerkraut

Take three large heads of purple cabbage, rinse them, and peel off the outer leaves until you get to the shiny part. Quarter one of the heads and cut out the core. Slice each quarter into fine slivers and put them in a large bowl.

Add a tablespoon of sea salt and knead-squeeze-punch the cabbage vigorously until it breaks down and forms juice. Dump the kneaded cabbage and its juice into a one-gallon crock. Repeat with the remaining cabbages, using a total of 3-4 tablespoons of salt.

When all the cabbage is chopped and kneaded and put in the crock, press down on the chopped cabbage to submerge it beneath the juice. Clean the sides of the crock of any stray pieces of cabbage (cabbage exposed to the air will mold), and find a plate that just barely fits down inside the crock. A large jar might also work.

Put the plate upside-down directly on the surface of the cabbage, and press down on it to bring the juice up. Set a weight on top of the plate -- a jar full of water will work. Cover with a cloth and secure it with a rubber band. Set it somewhere warmish and out of the way, and check on it from time to time. Depending on the temperature, the kraut may be ready in just a few days, or it may take a couple of weeks. When it smells delicious and tangy, repack it into jars and put it in the fridge. Once it's fermented and refrigerated, you don't need to worry about it molding on top. You can eat it right away, or age it for a month or more in the fridge.

The color of the kraut will fade as it ferments, becoming more pink than purple. The purple will also eventually fade from your fingernails.

Beer Braised Lamb

2010-07-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

Do you find that you only talk about recipes you hardly ever make? This is the third time this month that we're having beer braised lamb, and yet, all I've talked about are things like doughnuts that I eat about twice in three years.

The weather certainly has something to do with how frequently I put bony chunks of meat in a pot and simmer them all afternoon. I'm wearing sweaters and cats, see. The rest of you who are eating salad and peach ice cream can just save this recipe till your winter comes along.

You can use any properly bony cut of lamb for this dish, which is why it's economical. Things I have tried that work well: lamb neck pieces, lamb ribs, miscellaneous "bone-in stewing lamb," and lamb shanks. Shanks tend to be a bit spendier and frankly I don't know why, when lamb ribs are so much more unctuous.

Beer Braised Lamb

This recipe feeds two people with the possibility of some leftovers.

Take a pound of bony lamb, rinse it, and put it in a large heavy pot. Add a couple of sprigs of rosemary, a roughly chopped onion, plenty of salt and pepper, and the better part of a bottle of strong, sweet beer.

Cover and bring to a gentle simmer. Simmer at least four hours. During the last hour or so, check the level of liquid in the pot. If it's still deep and thin, let it simmer uncovered for a while. As the beer reduces, it will thicken and caramelize into an unctuous sauce. Yeah, I like that unct.

Note: if you double this recipe, don't double the beer! More meat in the pot will make the liquid level higher anyway, and if you add more beer it won't reduce and caramelize in time.

Doughnut Bread Pudding

2010-07-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

You're right. Nobody ever has too many homemade doughnuts just sitting around waiting to be made into doughnut bread pudding. Nor would I ever dream of recommending that anyone make doughnuts just for turning into bread pudding. But should the unthinkable occur, consider that doughnut bread pudding is nothing other than a good rich dough, fried in lard, glazed, and baked in a custard; i.e., sublime.

For my cookbook release party on Thursday, Mama and I made eighty-odd doughnuts according to the directions for overnight-risen potato doughnuts in the book.

Half we glazed with the standard glaze, and half with the maple glaze (this time I browned the butter in the maple glaze recipe, a charming variation).

We only brought a dozen back home, and those quickly dwindled to half a dozen. But after a day or two, the unthinkable happened: the doughnuts ceased to be perfect. And a doughnut that is anything less than perfect really has no reason to exist. So I made bread pudding.

Doughnut Bread Pudding

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice six or seven stale homemade doughnuts in half like bagels and place them on a rack. Put them in the oven until they're lightly toasted, flipping them if need be.

Meanwhile, beat 5-6 eggs in a large bowl. Add a teaspoon of vanilla, half a teaspoon of salt, a grating of nutmeg, a few tablespoons of maple syrup (inversely proportional to the amount of glaze on the doughnuts), and a quart of rich milk. Beat well.

Pull the toasted doughnuts from the oven and let them cool. Butter a 9 x 13" baking dish. Find a slightly larger roasting pan to use as a water bath, and bring a kettleful of water to a boil.

Arrange the doughnut halves in the buttered baking dish and pour the egg mixture overtop. Let the doughnuts soak in the custard for 15 minutes or so, turning them to sop it up on all sides. When they are nicely soggy, cover the dish with tinfoil and place it in the larger roasting pan in the oven. Pour hot water in the roasting pan about an inch deep. Bake 45-50 minutes, until the custard is mostly set, but still a bit runny in the middle. Let cool for half an hour and serve warm or refrigerate.

Upcoming San Francisco Events

2010-07-16T10:30:00.001-07:00

The Lost Art of Real Cooking, good food, wine, and company: next week at two events!

On Thursday evening, I'll be at 18 Reasons with my co-author, Ken Albala, and our illustrator (my mother) Marjorie Nafziger. Wine and lots of good food -- Ken is bringing homemade salami, pickles, cheese, and bread. I'm bringing homemade doughnuts, butter, and koji pickles! My mother will have prints and cards of her illustrations available. July 22, 7:00-9:00 p.m. 593 Guerrero Street (just off of 18th Street). $5 for 18 Reasons members; $10 for non-members. 18 Reasons is a non-profit event space for the celebration of art and food. More about 18 Reasons.

On Saturday afternoon, I'll be at Omnivore Books on Food, again with Ken and Marjorie. We'll read and talk about the book in one of my favorite bookstores ever. It's entirely dedicated to cookbooks -- new, used, and antiquarian. July 24, 3-4 p.m. 3885a Cesar Chavez Street. Free. More about Omnivore. A write-up on SF Weekly.

Books will be available for sale at both events. I would love to see you at either one!

The Lost Art of Real Cooking (& Lacto-Fermented Jicama Pickles)

2010-07-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Lost Art of Real Cooking is a real book! You can get it here.

Yesterday, I got off the train from Oregon and just like that, all of a sudden, I was a published author. I was also tired, smelly, grumbling at the fog, and oddly nervous.

Is it odd to be nervous about book releases? Particularly, cookbook releases? It's not like I've just published The Collected Love Letters of Thirteen-Year-Old Rosanna (which, incidentally, would be a longer book than I'd like to admit). But still, reading over this cookbook, I find myself thinking, "I said that? But it's so opinionated! How bold!" and I shiver. Not that I don't hold those opinions, of course. But I've had a bit too much practice actively suppressing my opinions in the short-sighted belief that they would only stir up contention if I uttered them. I was nervous. I sidestepped controversy, nodded and said "hmm." I was afraid of being engaged. And now, there's a permanent record of my cooking opinions, in a book! So I'm nervous.

If only I had so actively suppressed my romantic opinions at the age of thirteen.

Certainly it's not very odd to be nervous about live radio interviews. Can you conceive of something more nightmare-and-fever-inducing to an introvert than a live radio interview? It's like talking on the telephone. Times a billion. Of course it's always worth it afterwards, when I'm glowing in the knowledge that the gracious interviewer was actually interested in my book and what I had to say, and that there were many stupid things I could have done and said but didn't. Then I play the interviews back, and notice how my voice sounds so girly and breathless, and wish all over again that I were one of those people who can be effortlessly warm and funny at once.

Like Ken, my co-author. You should listen to an interview he did for Good Food on KCRW today. You can find it here, sometime in the future when it airs.

Now I'm wondering if I'm supposed to confess this timidity, or not! I should be bold and forthright, shouldn't I?

Here's something decidedly bold: jicama pickles! I've only ever had vinegar-pickled jicama before, but it was good enough to convince me that lacto-fermented jicama pickles would be sublime. (It is one of my opinions that lacto-fermented pickles are superior to their vinegar equivalents.)

It took them almost a month to ferment at cold room temperature, but as soon as I got back from [sigh] Oregon, I stuck my nose in the crock and was rewarded with the beautiful aroma of mature lacto-fermentation. They had a little mold growth, which I skimmed off before ladling them into a jar for refrigerator storage. They're delicious right now -- snappy crisp, briny -- but I know they'll only improve as they age in the fridge.

There is one problem. Jicama is a starchy vegetable. The starch from the cut jicama has dissolved into the brine, turning it milky and unpleasantly viscous. Perhaps I should have rinsed the jicama very well after I cut it, to wash off its external starches. Without trying that method, I'm suspicious that more starches would have simply seeped out during fermentation. Or perhaps I should rinse the pickles now, before serving. But that makes me sad, because usually I treasure the brine nearly as much as the pickles (there's nothing like brine in a salad dressing!). Perhaps after I eat the pickles the starches will settle, and I can decant or siphon some clear brine off the top.

Jicama Pickles

Take two or three large jicamas. Clean and peel them and cut out any bad spots. Cut them into sticks about 1/4" wide. (Here you might try rinsing them.) Peel several cloves of garlic and pick the stems from a couple of dried chilies. Pack everything into a medium-sized crock. Mix a tablespoon of salt with a cup or two of water. Pour the water over the cut jicama just until it covers it. Place a clean, flat-bottomed weight inside the crock on top of the jicama. A half-gallon jar filled with water works well, depending on the size of your crock. The closer your weight comes to the edge of the crock, the better (air exposure = a place for mold to grow). Cover everything with a tea towel or layered cheesecloth to keep out bugs, and secure with a rubber band.

Put the crock in a dark, warmish place. Here in San Francisco, that means the cupboard over my refrigerator. If you're anywhere else that actually has a summer, you should probably seek out a relatively cool place. For the next few weeks, check on your pickles every so often. Skim off any visible mold and let them ferment until they start to smell like pickles. Transfer them to a quart jar, pour the brine overtop, and refrigerate. You can eat them now, or let them keep curing. They will only get better.

Slow Bread

2010-06-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been making Slow Bread. It's the bread I make when I've neglected my sourdough starter, but I want the deep flavor and chewy texture of a long, slow fermentation. The idea is simple: long, cold rising encourages flavorful lacto-fermentation, instead of astringent yeasty-flavored alcoholic fermentation. I positively detest the flavor of over-yeasted bread.

Slow Bread is also very convenient for the work week. I can mix it up before bed, knead it down just before I leave for work the next morning, and shape it into loaves when I get home. You can even let it go for a third rising in the bowl before shaping it -- so long as the weather's not too hot.

About that weather. I've been wearing wool for a week and my hands are growing bony with the cold. The cats have cabin fever and quarrel over my lap. It's deathly still for a moment and we are so stuck, so trapped, so entombed in this wretched fog. It's only June, but my heart quails at the thought of another horrid mummified summer on this godforsaken peninsula.

I suppose it's clear that my distaste for this weather is not unmixed with a certain macabre fascination. I like to take long walks among the shrouded eucalyptus trees, and I'm grateful when I don't have to see all the sunny-day people. But a macabre fascination in no way makes up for missing out on summer. And the summers I miss are not even golden breezy affairs, but sickly hot things spent working in the orchard with gnats up my nose and peach fuzz adhering to my sweat.

Well, if you have that sort of summer, you should let this bread rise in the springhouse or down in your basement.

Slow Bread

The night before baking, put 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. yeast (depending on how cold it is) in a quarter-cup of lukewarm water. Stir 2 T. salt into another half-cup of water.

Put twelve cups flour in a bowl. For all my bread these days, I use coarse, freshly ground spelt flour.

When the yeast is dissolved, add it and the salt to the flour. Add a couple of cups of water, and stir well. Keep adding water -- a bit at a time -- until all the flour is moistened. I would give you better measurements, but the amount of water you need will vary widely depending on your weather and the flour you've got. It should be soft but still bouncy. Knead the dough well, form it into a smooth ball, and place it in a large oiled bowl to rise in a cool place. Cover it with tea towels.

In the morning, it should be risen and bubbly. Knead it gently back into a taut ball, and leave it to rise again, still in a cool place. When it has risen high and its top has started to look not taut, but puckered, you can either knead it down and let it rise once more in the bowl, or shape it into loaves.

To shape the loaves, cut the dough in two. Shape each half into a taut ball, and let it rest in the bowl or a floured tabletop for ten minutes or so, to the give the gluten a chance to relax again. Oil a large baking sheet or two loaf pans. Take each ball of dough and tuck two opposite sides down and under, keeping the top of the loaf smooth and taut while letting it elongate. Place the shaped loaves in your pans or on the baking sheet and let them rise again.

When they are not quite doubled in volume (not height), still taut and springy, preheat the oven to 450. Place the loaves in the oven and turn it down to 350. Bake until they are well browned and hollow-sounding when tapped on the bottom, about one hour.

Henna, Paprika, and Hair: An Aside

2010-06-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

This is not particularly relevant to food, but it concerns the color of my hair, which used to be the direct inspiration for the title of this blog. I'm sorry to go on a long ramble about a topic as trivial as my hair. Skip it unless you're genuinely curious about the vanities of a paprikahead.

For many years, I kept my hair a crimson color with the aid of henna (and paprika, for fun). Henna, it seemed, was made for my hair -- it turned my light brown locks a shimmery, glossy scarlet. Almost the color of blood, as you can see by direct comparison in this photo. Pure fun.

But then I grew uneasy at the thought that I was daily deceiving the world into thinking me a redhead. And I grew uneasy with the fiery brilliance, which was too bold for either my pale eyebrows or my usual mood. I also wanted to regrow my hair the way it used to be, having gotten tired of trying to be hip, ironic, coy, or anything other than the sober Pre-Raphaelite I am.

Ah, the way things used to be. I never seriously cut my hair before I was nineteen, when it flounced about my hips in fluffy waves of almost-brown. College, however, was not good for my hair. I blame the cafeteria diet and a double major in mathematics and English for the way my hair thinned after my freshman year.

One day I put it in a ponytail, braided the ponytail, and chopped it off. (I kept the braid in a drawer until some perfect purpose occurred to me, like making creepy braided jewelry of my own hair. But the house caught on fire before I ever did something with it). I felt a little dizzy at first, without my hair. But it made a nice bouncy bob, and a few months later I started coloring it red. Its length varied a little, according to my moods and boyfriends, but it never went much past shoulder-length.

Then, the December before last, I grew really impatient with my roots. The half-red thing was lame, but I didn't want to just chop off my hair. So, for the first (and, I expect, last) time in my life, I set foot in a hairdresser's shop. He was hesitant to mess with henna, which can interact with salon chemicals in funny ways. But, bless his heart, he was willing to try, and so he bleached out the red part and put in some brownish color more like my own.

It was some relief for a while, but after six months or so, the brownish dye faded, revealing the persistent orange-red of bleached henna underneath. In addition to failing to remove the henna, the bleach had destroyed my hair, leaving the ends a brittle, tangled mess. Grrr. If I had more patience and less pride, my hair would be healthier and longer right now, and I'd have kept my salon virginity.

These days, I occasionally put golden-brown henna in the ends of my hair to mitigate their bleach-orange color. But mostly, I just wait. Soon there will be no traces of my paprika color anymore, and I will have to content myself with being only a figurative paprikahead.

That's fine, because at twenty-five, my hair is now just a few vertebrae shy of my waist, and as thick as it was at sixteen. The thickness I blame on a real food diet that includes two pastured eggs for breakfast, cod liver oil, and at least a pint of raw milk every day. Or maybe it's just because I sleep at night instead of doing problem sets and editing the lit mag? Whatever it is, I'll keep doing it, Hair, if you promise to hurry up and grow. I have to catch up with Laura Ingalls and the Pre-Raphaelite contingent!

A House That Stands on Chicken Feet

2010-06-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

I had a pop-up book when I was young, with terrible witches and misers and mysterious cats popping out all over. The text was a translation of the start of a Pushkin poem, and I can still recite most of it by heart. My favorite page featured the pop-up house of Baba Yaga, with dark pop-up pines leaning in close.

On chicken feet there stands a cottage,
No doors, no windows, bare and lone.
Upon the sands of hidden pathways
Lie tracks of creatures unbeknown.

Unbeknown? Whatever it takes to make it scan in English.

Oh, it was magical. The book didn't go into any more detail about the hut; I had no idea it was a central part of the Baba Yaga lore. It was just a chilling gratuitous puzzle, and I studied those pop-up feet intently.

This is all to say that chicken feet are witchy. They are also extremely practical, adding lots of velvety density to your chicken stock. But oh! The Quetzalcoatl reptilian skin! The toenails! Such things call for cauldrons, and upon such things my house should stand.

Well, my house does stand on chicken feet. Because my house stands on cookery (as well as books and love), and chicken stock is a firm foundation for my cookery (with a few other things, like good butter), and the stock made from chicken feet is a strong stock, indeed.

Chicken Stock from Feet

Put at least a pound of chicken feet in a large pot. Fill with water to cover. Add an onion, peeled and cut in half, a carrot, trimmed, and a stalk of celery, trimmed. Bring to a simmer and turn the heat to the lowest possible flame, so the feet just steep. Let them steep for at least four or five hours, or as long as twelve (they can cook that long if the heat is very gentle).

Strain through a colander. You can freeze the stock or keep it for a week in the fridge. Use it for everything -- even plain brown rice cooked in stock suddenly becomes attention-worthy.

A Handful of Culinary Delights, in Pictures

2010-06-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

A few recent photos of contented cooking and eating. Chortles in the middle of a productive purr, not noteworthy enough for their own posts.

Above is a good representation of the "firm, springy wads of gluten" you'll encounter in my sponge bread recipe. Does this picture warm your heart? It makes me so happy.

I gave into my dream-induced scallop craving. My most recent cooking dream: roasting strawberries and blackberries to put on ice cream.

This is what it looks like to be six and have a spring picnic.

Q & A with Paprikahead: Large Beans

2010-06-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

PAPRIKAHEAD HELP MEEEEE

I have these big white beans - what are they? Why have they split into two big halves that are toooo scary? What should I do to these tooo scary beans that have split into two? I want to eat them today! I bet they will cook fast because these tooooo big beans have been sitting on the stove for two days! HELP!!!

Yours Truly,

Big Fluffy Hamster in San Francisco

Dear Big Fluffy Hamster,

While I can't with any certainty identify your large beans, I can tell you something about the general properties of large beans. Beans often split as they soak; no problem there. The bad news is that even after a two-day soak they may still take a long time to cook, simply because they are so very large. Be patient, and you will be rewarded with a large creamy mouthful of beans.

Possibilities: you could have white runner beans (the white variety of scarlet runner beans). You could have gigantes, large white Greek beans. You could have some sort of big lima bean. Send me a picture?

All the best,

Paprikahead

Homemade Wine Vinegar

2010-05-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

I thought all my homemade blackberry wine was gone until I started ransacking my pantry when I was getting ready to move. (Oh, has it been that long? Yes, I moved up the hill a ways to a place with a vast backyard and a chillier ocean breeze.) One of the first things I did in the new kitchen was to turn the blackberry wine into a vinegar project. I have seen vinegar mothers for sale at high prices, but I figured that alcohol exposed to the air would become vinegar just fine by itself. So I just put it in a wide-mouth pint jar, covered it with cheesecloth, and left it in the cupboard. I really wouldn't feel at ease in a new kitchen if there weren't a magical transformation occurring in at least one of my cupboards.

After things were mostly unpacked, I took the next train to Oregon for a long-awaited visit with my brother's family. We had afternoon tea parties and evening rounds of zombie ball, and Legos and stories in all the between times. Then I got on the train again and sobbed my way back to San Francisco. Did you know that in Oregon there are thunderstorms and bare feet?

W. Crawford was away at work, so I went right to my cupboard for comfort when I got back to our apartment (no, not to the snack cupboard, because I don't even have one, but to the Cupboard of Magical Things). I took down my vinegar experiment, and one whiff convinced me it was a success. But then I undid the cheesecloth, and there was the most gratifying skin growing over the top of the liquid! Vinegar I had expected, but a glorious filmy mother-of-vinegar? I had assumed that if vinegar mothers cost twenty dollars, they must not form easily. I should have known. Homemade things are almost always easier and more delicious than businesses want you to think.

Now here's the question. When a delicious, vigorous homemade blackberry wine becomes homemade blackberry vinegar, how delicious will it be? I have been pondering this question quite patiently, fueling my imagination with whiffs from the vinegar-jar, hypothesizing about the effect of blackberry vinaigrette over x, and blackberry vinegar reductions on y, and I just don't know. I want to wait until the vinegar is as strong as can be. I think the mother should be at least an eighth of an inch thick before I even dip my finger in the jar.

And yes, that's another Paprikahead recipe: put something in a jar and leave it in your cupboard for a while.

On an entirely unrelated note, I had a delicious dream last night about roasting a chicken and some scallops. Wouldn't roast scallops be good? I imagine I'd have to roast them at a very high heat--nearly broil them, but just for a minute. I wonder if I could persuade my friend with a wood-fired pizza oven to try it.

Chocolate Ganache Pudding

2010-03-03T13:11:00.000-08:00

You might also call this "Instant Gratification Pudding." When you need this recipe, you'll know it.

It's for defusing sugar cravings. It only makes one serving, and you can have it ready in minutes. The pudding's got a bit of sweetness (from the dark chocolate), but its real merit lies in its completely satiating richness. It's so simple, it might not even be pudding. It might be just ganache with an egg yolk. And yes, that's the entire recipe.

Chocolate Ganache Pudding

Put half an inch of water in a little skillet over medium-high heat. Chop an ounce of dark chocolate into fine pieces. Put the chocolate in a tiny saucepan along with two tablespoons of butter. Set the saucepan in the skillet of hot water. Stir it occasionally as the pieces melt.

Meanwhile, put the yolk of an egg in a cup. Beat it with a fork.

When the chocolate and butter are both mostly melted, turn off the heat and stir them. Let the chocolate and butter finish melting in the residual warmth. When the chocolate and butter are all smooth, pour a bit of the chocolate into the egg yolk. Whisk it well with the fork, then scrape it all back into the saucepan. Stir it together, then turn the flame back on and cook it for just a tiny bit -- less than a minute, for sure -- until the mixture has gotten a bit thicker and glossier.

Scrape it into a small dish and pop it in the freezer. It should set up nicely in ten minutes.

Breast of Lamb Ste. Menehould

2010-02-26T14:00:00.001-08:00

Lamb breasts, also known as lamb ribs, come from the low-hanging part of the lamb's ribcage where the ribs are small and the meat is tough. Not rack-of-lamb material, not ribs-like-pork-ribs, not at all. Just marvelously cheap. Born to be braised.

I bought two pounds of lamb ribs planning to braise them like any bargain cut. When I got home, I decided to check with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, figuring he might have something particular to say about lamb ribs. Did he ever. There is a wonderful thing called Breast of Lamb Ste. Menehould, and the e on Ste. means that it is, indeed, French. And yes, you braise the ribs. But then you slide the bones out, cut the meat into strips, egg-and-breadcrumb them, and broil them crispy. You serve the crispy strips of tender lamb with savory sauces, and everyone makes cooing noises.

Slightly adapted from The River Cottage Meat Book.

Breast of Lamb Ste. Menehould

Serves 4.

Rinse two pounds of lamb ribs. Place them in a large baking dish, interleaved with two sliced onions and several sprigs of rosemary. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in a glass of white wine and a glass of water. Cover the dish with a lid or tinfoil. Bake for three hours at 275.

Pull them out when very tender and let the ribs cool to a comfortable temperature. Gently tug each bone out of the meat. Stack the meat in a tray and place a weight on top -- like a heavy wooden cutting board with a jug of milk on top. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Shortly before you plan to eat, take the cold pressed meat from the fridge and cut it into inch-wide slices. Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall says they should be two fingers wide, but the picture shows slices about as wide as one of his fingers. Which, yes, is about two of mine.

Make sure your dipping sauces are ready. I made a harissa aioli (garlicky homemade mayonnaise with some jarred harissa mixed in). Mr. Fearnly-Whittingstall recommends either a homemade tartar sauce or mustard vinaigrette.

Beat an egg and have ready a cup or so of dried breadcrumbs and a quarter cup of melted butter. Spread the pieces of lamb with a little dijon mustard, dip them in the egg, and press them into the breadcrumbs. Brush them with the melted butter. Put the coated strips on a rack over a baking sheet and bake them at 350 for fifteen minutes. Turn on the broiler, and crisp the pieces for the final few minutes.

Serve immediately. Leftovers are nice the next day sliced thinly on a sandwich.

Molasses Muffins

2010-02-06T13:32:00.000-08:00

W. Crawford is off on a "little" 200k brevet today. A brevet is a long, long bike ride. The big ones take several days; you pedal on the uphill and sleep on the downhill. The main thing is that it's a self-sufficient ride. You have to haul your own snacks, your rain gear, your spare tubes, just like in real life. Once when I was very impressionable I saw a picture of a big colorful bike race. There was a guy in a car leaning out to peel back a cyclist's spandex shorts and squirt some lube down there for him. Nothing like that happens in a brevet.

My job was to pack enough snacks to sustain my randonneur for the ten hour ride (he can stop for a meal, if he feels like it). In lieu of squeezable goo-drinks and other high-tech, entirely artificial food for performance athletes, I sent him off with a stash of well-buttered rye molasses muffins, a quarter pound of cheese, and dates filled with coconut and sea salt.

I'm not just being flippantly anachronistic. These molasses muffins make excellent fodder for heavy exercise. By my calculations, W. Crawford needs nearly 9000 calories today. Exercise particularly drains magnesium, zinc, copper, and iron. If he eats all the (well-buttered) muffins I sent, he'll have 2000 calories right up front, plus 150% of the RDA for magnesium, and 75% of his copper, zinc, and iron. (Along with 500% of his daily manganese requirements, wtf?) If you include the chopped liver he had for breakfast and the righteous supper he'll no doubt have, this is one well-fueled randonneur. Don't worry; I only run the numbers when they're interesting ones, like "9000 calories."

That said, these muffins are dark, chewy, and moist, even if all the exercise you get is grinding grain. That grainy rye flavor is a marvelous (and appropriately subtle) foundation for something as deep and mineral as molasses. Rye flour has less gluten than wheat -- and less of a tendency to toughen -- but still keeps stuff stuck together. The oat flour keeps the muffins from spreading. Substitute quick oats or white flour if you have none.

I particularly like these with a glass of kefir.

Rye Molasses Muffins

Whisk together in a large bowl:

2 cups freshly ground rye flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

In another bowl, whisk together
1 egg
2/3 cup molasses
1 cup buttermilk, sour milk, yogurt, kefir, or (water plus a tablespoon of vinegar)

Put 1/4 cup butter in a small saucepan and melt it over medium heat. Let it brown lightly; remove from heat. Stir the liquids into the dries, pour in the butter, and combine. Cover with a plate and let it sit for the afternoon.

Spoon batter into greased muffin cups and bake at 375 for half an hour or until a knife comes out clean.

The Lost Art of Real Cooking

2010-02-05T10:22:00.000-08:00

It's a real book. Or rather, it will be on July 6. Look at that whisk! I just want to grab the wooden handle -- smooth with use -- and start whipping some cream. Ah, wooden handles and hard work.

It kind of makes me swoon. I think this calls for a second cup of tea before noon.

English Muffins

2010-01-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

A friend came over to make English muffins with me. It was such a rainy day.

We started with a simple goal: whole-grain holes. So we ground spelt berries until we were warm and had 6 cups of flour. Then we mixed in 2.5 teaspoons of salt. We put 2 teaspoons of yeast in half a cup of warm water, and let it dissolve. Then we put the yeast in the flour along with 1.5 cups cold water. We beat the mixture vigorously with a large wooden spoon for five, ten minutes, until it looked less like batter and more like dough. The coarse, freshly ground spelt flour is slow to absorb moisture, and that means it acts wetter than it will later on.

Then we squeezed the dough with our hands -- the dough still being too wet for the usual fold 'n' push kind of kneading. And when it began to form long lanky strands of gluten, we cleaned our hands, wet them, and added yet more water. The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book suggests a texture near to "runny," and we didn't stint with the water, not at all. I think we added another cup, gradually working it in until the dough was slippery, quivery, tender, and tendoned with gluten.

We let it rise, then, and ate a pleasant lunch and read our books. The rising process for a very wet dough is not quite like the usual one where your ball gets larger and larger. Rather, the rising process is one of intense bubbling. The mass rose, yes -- after maybe two hours or so it doubled. Then we stirred it back down -- usually an unremarkable process. The dough, however, did not fall back quickly, but took several minutes of stirring before reluctantly settling back down to its original size. Its bubbles were strong and well distributed.

It rose again, this time more quickly, and again we stirred it down. Then we generously floured two large rimless baking sheets. We cut egg-sized lumps from the dough, shaped them into floppy rounds, and placed them on the baking sheets. They were too wet to cover -- a cloth, unless well-floured, would have stuck. We had fifteen rounds when we were done.

We left them to rise and found a long enough gap in the rain for a nice walk up the dark drippy stairs on Potrero Hill.

By the time we got back, the rounds had spread out and puffed a bit. We warmed two large cast-iron skillets over a medium-low flame. Breath held, we lifted the first little muffin from the tray. It was a two-person job, sliding under the muffin from two sides and gingerly dropping it in the pan. You could do it by yourself if you had to.

We let it cook for five minutes on one side. We flipped it -- fingers work well for that. Bubbles formed. It puffed. Five minutes later, we flipped it again, and a few minutes after that, its sides were springy and we pulled it from the pan.

We split it immediately and discovered a beautiful array of holes, which we filled with butter and devoured. We were perhaps a little giddy with our success.

Our next goal is shapeliness. Rings might help the muffins be tall and circular. And then maybe we could altogether forego the shaping, let the dough have a third rising in the bowl, and just pinch off muffin-sized pieces as we fry them. This dough, after all, does not deflate very readily. And the shape of the rising rounds didn't seem to have much effect on the muffins' final shape.

Real, Raw Eggnog

2009-12-21T05:56:00.000-08:00

I can picture myself stricken with consumption, washed up on the pillows, pale but radiant with fever--can picture myself handed a cool, tall glass of eggnog. My pale thin fingers slip on the glass, but yet I raise it to my lips, and sip, eyes lidded with weakness. And as that silken custard touches my tongue, the luster returns to my hair and the pink blooms again in my fingertips. "Lissie," I say, "lace up my stays. I'm going to the Christmas ball tonight."

This is homemade eggnog, an unpasteurized festival of nutmeg-scented rum-rich cream. I wish I could drink nothing but eggnog from snowy dawn to early dusk, and all the long night through. But if I did, my skin would be so creamy, my eyes so bright and dewey, my hair so lush and wavy, that I'd have to dance with every man at the Christmas ball, and wear out my shoes with dancing. And I like my shoes.

Also the hens and gentle cows can barely keep up with me as it is.

This will make you a quart of eggnog. Since the eggs and milk are raw, I would not recommend making it with anything but eggs from the healthiest chickens. The golden yolks of those eggs will give it a creamy yellow hue and a richer, deeper flavor. If you only have access to storebought milk and eggs, make a cooked eggnog, or use lots of liquor to kill off bad bacteria. And the good bacteria in raw milk from healthy cows will actually kill off bad bacteria, should anything clinging to the shell of the egg find a way into the nog.

If you decide to drink eggnog daily, I would recommend using just six egg yolks instead of four whole eggs. Raw egg whites have a substance that causes biotin deficiency in the long term.

Raw Eggnog

Beat four eggs thoroughly. Add three tablespoons of maple syrup and a tiny pinch of salt and beat well.

Add some liquor--rum, brandy, bourbon--according to your taste. A few tablespoons will give you some flavor; a cup or more will give you a heady nog. Beat well.

Add three cups very rich raw milk, beat well. Grate nutmeg over it to taste. Chill for a few hours to meld the flavors.

Proper Weather

2009-12-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

This is as it should be.

The hens are fluffy enough.

Transcontinental Cornbread (Crumbfree)

2009-12-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

I always seat myself on the south side of airplanes. I like the sunshine on my lap. The clouds, too. Seen from above, their textures are so alien, surreal. They look like the puckering foam on top of bubbling jam pots. I know the bellies of the fatter clouds are indeed flatter from their close contact with the ground, but I'm never quite sure if these thin upper clouds actually have rougher tops than bottoms, or just look like it. From above, the low-angled sunlight highlights their texture so much that they jump into vivid dimensionality--and all we see from the earth is a muted greyness. I suppose clouds will always be smoother where the wind is faster and straighter. I guess that means the middles of thunderheads are all lined up straight, shooting straight up the middle like mushroom stalks or umbrella handles.

I'm heading home again, this time for my first Christmas home in four years. I've been home a lot lately, visiting Grandma, who dropped out of the nursing home to pursue the next life at her leisure. She's beautifully ensconced in a nook in my aunt and uncle's gracious old Lancaster farmhouse. There are cornfields and horses to see, and dry beef gravy, sauerkraut and pork, and molasses-tinted desserts on the tray by her bed.

That's what I think about as I nibble on my airplane food. Airplane food for me consists of last night's cornbread, several ounces of cheese, and chocolate. The cornbread was luxurious, moist, sweet, and toothsomely crusty, and I even baked it with air travel in mind. It's halfway to being baked polenta. No crumbs. And W. Crawford, who was under the weather and came reluctantly to the table, ate four slices last night, and three this morning.

It is imperative that the cornmeal be very fresh--very. Fresh cornmeal tastes of corn and sweetness, and will more than triple the goodness of any bread you bake with it.

Halfway-to-Polenta Cornbread

Mix three cups freshly ground, fine cornmeal with a teaspoon of salt. Bring three cups of water to a boil and pour it over the cornmeal. Stir it well and cover.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and thoroughly butter a well-seasoned #8 or 9 cast iron skillet.

In a small bowl, whisk together 1 cup flour and half a teaspoon of baking soda.

In another small bowl, whisk together a cup of buttermilk, sour milk, or sour half-and-half and two tablespoons of honey.

Check the cornmeal. I can't remember exactly how much water I used, so splash in some more if it looks more chunky than porridge-like. Add four tablespoons of butter and stir it until it's melted. Mix in the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture and pour into the skillet. Bake until the top starts to brown.

An Assortment of Adventures, in Photography

2009-11-19T10:28:00.001-08:00

It's a rainy day in Virginia. The bread's rising. I've downed my third hot beverage of the day, written a letter, and sat in the rocking chair. The cat thinks he wants to go out. Seems like time to dig through my photos and remember some of my California adventures (which are not over, sigh).

A good crumb of flaky flaky pie crust.

Note the "no charge" for my soup bone. Another reason to love Bi-Rite.

That soup bone made the stew so velvety, so deep.

A pantry mishap. The same blackberry wine now stays in its bottle to age, having learned the value of restraint after sowing its wild oats in its effervescent youth.