Category: Food

Broiled tomato. Click on photo for larger version.

What are winter tomatoes good for? Not much.

But they are pretty good for one thing: broiling. The unnatural firmness of winter tomatoes actually becomes something of a virtue when the tomato is broiled, because the tomato holds up under the broiler and doesn’t collapse into a puddle. Broiled tomato adds a nice zing to a winter breakfast, not to mention a dose of potassium and lycopene.

Scotch broth. Click on image for larger version.

The best soup I ever had was a bowl of Scotch broth. That was in Edinburgh, in a second-floor restaurant where the waitress called me honey just like they do here.

Like all home cooking, there is no one way to make Scotch broth, and it varies widely. Some has peas, some not. Some uses a stock made from sheep bones. Some uses lamb and is almost a lamb stew. It pretty much always, I think, includes barley. And even though it’s called broth, it’s a thick soup.

I prefer Scotch broth with peas. Start with a good stock. Boil sheep bones if you want to, or some lamb. You want some onions, some celery, a turnip, some carrot, and of course some peas and barley. I have no idea how it’s done in Scotch home kitchens (maybe by simmering it all day?), but to thicken the soup I strain out about two-thirds of the solids, whiz it in the blender, and add it back to the soup. Even so, you’ll still need to simmer the soup for four to six hours or more, as slowly, slowly as possible. You can’t rush Scotch broth.

Though I don’t think it would be done in Scotland, where Scotch broth strictly involves winter vegetables, I like to add some tomato or even tomato paste.

Home-cooked slow grits with home-laid eggs and fake bacon

Periodically I have breakfast with friends at a roadside family restaurant in northern Stokes. I keep ordering grits, but I continue to get runny — bordering on watery — grits in a little bowl. Now maybe this is actually some folks’ preference in grits. But, to me, that’s not proper grits.

Grits should be thick, like thick mashed potatoes. They should be thick enough to hold a nice mound — never a puddle! — on the plate and support a well of melted butter. They should be served hot, but not so hot that they burn your tongue and ruin your breakfast. Grits should sit for 5 to 10 minutes off the heat after they’ve cooked, to thicken and cool a bit.

As for “quick grits” or — heaven forfend — “instant grits,” don’t even think about it. Proper old-fashioned grits take only 20 minutes or so to cook. As for how much water is required, about four parts water (or slightly less) to one part grits is about right. (But, like rice, grits vary, so there is no universal rule.) Just keep simmering and stirring, with the lid off if necessary, until the grits thicken. Erma Rombauer, in the 1943 edition of Joy of Cooking, boils the grits briefly, then steams them in a double boiler for an hour. I’ve never tried that, but it probably would work great. Grits require close watching, so a double boiler would give the cook a break.

People sometimes express surprise that I, having lived in San Francisco for so long, am a fan of grits. People often think that San Franciscans are too snooty to eat grits. But that’s not true at all. San Franciscans know about food from all over the world, so it would be impossible to keep anything as good as grits a secret. You can get grits for breakfast in lots of places in San Francisco. And I hate to say it, but the grits I’ve had in San Francisco are better than the grits I’ve had in these parts lately. I think it’s the same problem that afflicts all low-price “family” restaurants. They don’t have trained cooks, they can’t afford to use good ingredients because they have to keep prices low, and they cut too many corners instead of giving things the time and attention that good cooking requires. Grits probably “set up” in a slow-moving kitchen, and frequent fresh batches aren’t practical, so runny grits may be the only way to solve the problem in a slow-moving kitchen.

So we country folk, when friends meet friends for breakfast, have a hard time finding the good cookery that city folk take for granted. But we have just as much to talk about, and we live at a slower pace, so a breakfast can run — à la française — up to two hours. And most country restaurants even have WIFI now, because they’re on the main roads where the cables are.

For a long time, I’ve been scorning sandwich bread, and my loaf pans have gone unused. I can think of several reasons. For one, I’m addicted to hot bread. For two, I try not to rely too much on sandwiches. But sandwiches have their place, especially on busy days. And especially in the winter, there’s nothing like hot toast at breakfast. Sandwich bread is very convenient for making toast.

To me there are really two basic types of bread dough. First is the type of dough that leads to French bread. It has a complex crust and a stretchy texture. To get French bread, you need only flour, water, yeast, and salt. There’s nothing like French bread when it’s fresh. But it soon becomes useless. The French have a saying that goes something like: On the first day it’s bread, on the second day it’s toast, and on the third day it’s a doorstop. French bread must be used pretty quickly, or it becomes chicken treats — though it can be converted to bread crumbs, or used in certain puddings. The French call it pain perdu, or lost bread. In some French recipes, pain perdu is like our French toast — stale bread dipped in a sweet batter and fried.

The dough for sandwich bread is different. For sandwich bread you want milk in the dough, and butter or oil. This changes the crumb and the crust of the bread. The bread stays more moist. It’s more cake-like. It is tender and slices much easier. And it’s good for toast or sandwiches for three days, maybe even four. Sandwich bread, though, is not nearly as good when you want warm fresh bread to serve with supper.

As regular readers know, I almost never list recipes. This is because I never obey recipes. I find a recipe that I like and trust as a starting point, and I modify it to suit myself. Here is a good starting recipe for sandwich bread from King Arthur flour. I use olive oil instead of butter, I use a little less oil than they call for, and I use about two-thirds whole wheat flour. I also put it in a hotter oven for the first 10 minutes, then reduce the heat and adjust the baking time. I find that bread rises better in the oven if the oven is hot enough to give it a quick pop. Then lower the heat. Oh what I would give for a commercial bread oven, with steam. Actually that’s not true. I wouldn’t give what they cost — thousands of dollars even for a small one. So we have to do the best we can with the ovens in domestic ranges.

… leftover mashed potatoes with which to make potato cakes for breakfast.

A Trader Joe’s recently opened in the town where I do most of my shopping — Winston-Salem. It’s in the space where a Borders bookstore used to be, and it’s less than a mile from Whole Foods.

I had not been to a Trader Joe’s since I left California more than four years ago. In California, Trader Joe’s was often criticized by foodies for being the Walmart of the grocery business, and there is some truth to that. I did not have time on my first visit to check out lots of products in the store, but my first impression is that the produce was somewhat better than it used to be, and there may be a greater effort to avoid imports. Most of the produce had a “Product of the U.S.A.” label, but there seemed to be no effort to be more specific than that and list the state of origin.

To me, Trader Joe’s strength is in what I call “semi-perishables” — things like nuts, nut butters, cheese, condiments, wine, and so on. If Trader Joe’s has what you need, it will certainly save you money. I’ll confess that I even do some of my shopping at Walmart, if they have what I want and it saves me money. For example, Walmarts always have King Arthur flour (of which I use a lot), and it’s a dollar a bag less expensive at Walmart. I also buy organic soy milk at Walmart, because it’s cheaper there and they carry the Westsoy brand that isn’t flavored or sweetened.

I’ll continue to go to Whole Foods for some things, but Trader Joe’s is going to save me money.

Let’s hope it’s not as dry as it looks in this photo. There’s juice down in there.

This is prime pie season — one of the best times of the year for cooking.

My apples this week came from a roadside produce stand on U.S. 601 in Davie County. They said the apples came from Cana, Virginia, which is almost certainly true, because that’s an apple and trucking center. I also bought the pumpkin at the same roadside stand. It probably came from North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia on one of the produce trucks that run back and forth from this area to Florida, feeding many of the roadside produce stands.

Don’t even think of using a store-bought pie crust! Pie crusts are easy to make. I have used olive oil for years. You might think that olive oil would have too strong a flavor for pie crust, but I have never tasted olives along with the apples. I find that about 2 and 1/3 cups of unbleached flour makes a generous crust. For that much flour, half a cup of olive oil is not quite enough, and 2/3 cup is too much. I’ve found that it’s definitely possible to use too much oil and not enough water or milk in the crust. The crust will come out powdery rather than flakey. So I usually add half a cup of oil to the flour, then mix and add more until it looks right. One to two tablespoons of water or milk (or soy milk) is about right.

This is prime pumpkin-shopping time. I scorn the bright orange pumpkins with the ugly shapes. I only buy what I call “pink pumpkins,” the segmented pumpkins. Pumpkins are magical, so only a Cinderella fairy-tale pumpkin is proper. Making a pie with canned pumpkin in a store-bought crust is a crime for which you’ll lose your cooking license. It’s all about doing everything from scratch…

Ready for the oven

Guess who’s next…