Category: Food

Tomato pudding

I rarely make tomato pudding. But, when I do, I wonder why I don’t make it more often. It’s a comfort food.

Irma Rombauer’s recipe from the 1943 The Joy of Cooking is very basic. It’s canned tomatoes, bread crumbs tossed in melted butter, and brown sugar. The pudding goes into the oven for 25 minutes, tightly covered to keep it moist.

The pudding in the photo is dark, because I used dark bread and roasted tomatoes. The Joy of Cooking is a white-bread sort of cookbook, so its recipe calls for white bread crumbs.

I have never made bread pudding, but the tomato pudding made me think of what a fine winter comfort food bread pudding could be. Irma Rombauer offers multiple versions of bread pudding — bread pudding with meringue, caramel bread pudding, chocolate bread pudding, lemon bread pudding, pineapple bread pudding, bread pudding with spices and dates, apple bread pudding, and rhubarb bread pudding.

The bread pudding with spices and dates sounds pretty good. The recipe uses milk, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, pineapple juice, chopped dates, nut meats, egg, and day old bread. It’s comforting just to read the recipe.

Those outer leaves of cabbage

A good head of cabbage is almost two separate vegetables. There are the dark green outer leaves that are difficult to shred for slaw. And there is the cabbage head after the outer leaves are removed. It’s easy to waste the outer leaves, but it’s a shame to waste that intense green.

A solution is to wash each of the outer leaves separately, then roll each leaf into the tightest cigar-shape possible and cut it into strips. The cabbage above is going to be sautéed for egg foo yung.

Lucky for me, I live in good cabbage country. Cabbage grows well in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Also lucky for me is that whoever buys produce for Lowe’s Foods, which has lots of stores in this area, knows what good cabbage is like. Whole Foods, however, almost always has sorry-looking cabbage — white and with no outer leaves. A proper head of cabbage should be loosely contained in a lot of intense green outer leaves, and the head itself should be as heavy and hard as a ball of marble. The green color fades into pale green as you get closer to the stalk, but cabbage should never be white inside (except for the stalk).

Two parts snobbery per eight parts coffee


An imaginary 1938 espresso machine, in Italy. Image created by DALL-E 3. I could not find an image of a classic espresso machine that was in the public domain. But if you search for something like “classic Bezzera” you can see what they look like.

Given any good thing — wine, Scotch, or coffee — there are those who will happily settle for merely good and those who are willing to spend a great deal more for something better. But where does good taste end and snobbery begin? With espresso, my guess would be that the price of real espresso snobbery starts at about $2,000. But merely good can be had for considerably less.

Judged by the shockingly low American standard for coffee, I suppose I have been a coffee snob for many years. I make my morning coffee with the simplest possible method — hot water poured from a kettle into a cone filter, with the coffee going into an insulated decanter. My niece, who has an expensive coffee machine, said, “Wow. You’re old school.” But she liked my coffee. I would argue that the most important factor with coffee is the quality of the coffee itself. The machinery that one uses is less important, as long as one does not use one of those dreadful, ubiquitous coffee machines with which most Americans ruin their coffee by heating it — and thereby scorching it — after the coffee is brewed.

But not until recently did I start to think about how nice it would be to make espresso. Espresso requires a machine, something that can heat the water and send it through the coffee grounds under pressure.

Anyone who likes espresso or who wants to make it at home should read this excellent piece in Smithsonian Magazine — “The Long History of the Espresso Machine.” There are several things in the article that are important to know. First, that the earliest espresso machines were for making coffee, and that they were invented only for the purpose of making lots of good coffee, fast, in European coffee shops. Second, before too long it was discovered that coffee made under pressure was particularly good for some reason. The foamy “crema” that a pressure machine produced was soon seen as a virtue, not merely as scum that was some sort of byproduct of pressure brewing. Third, as snobs went to work and started searching for perfection no matter what it cost, it was discovered that more pressure was better, and that a pump was required, because the amount of pressure that could be safely produced inside a boiler was not enough.

Pressure can be measured in “bars.” One bar is the everyday atmospheric pressure. Two bars is about 28 pounds per square inch. Two to three bars of pressure was all the first espresso machines were capable of. The current consensus of espresso snobs seems to be that nine bars of pressure is ideal for espresso. That’s 130 pounds per square inch, an amount of pressure that is more than sufficient to cause the tires on your car to explode. Espresso snobs love to write about what makes a perfect espresso, and there are many factors beyond nine bars of pressure. But those are the factors that make the difference between espresso machines that cost a mere $400 versus the machines that cost from $2,000 up.

Because I’m perfectly happy with my morning coffee brewed in a cone, I’m not sure that I want to spend even $400 on a machine. There’s also the issue of counter space. As I Googled to educate myself on the snobberies of espresso, I learned that there are simple machines that can make coffee using boiler pressure. Espresso snobs will be quick to point out that, if it’s not made with nine bars of pressure, then it’s coffee, not espresso. Fine. But two to three bars of pressure will make a very fine shot of espresso-like coffee and a respectable amount of crema. Plus you get the ability to steam milk for cappuccino. My little Bellman coffee maker cost about $25, used, on eBay.

For what it’s worth, for years I’ve bought my coffee at Whole Foods from the bulk coffee dispensers. It’s an organic Italian roast and costs $10.99 a pound. I use the same coffee both for morning coffee and for low-pressure espresso. The word “espresso” means only that the coffee is made using pressure. Espresso can be made with any coffee, roasted light, medium, or dark, as long as the beans are ground fine enough to work properly in the pressure-brewing process.


⬆︎ My bare-bones Bellman coffee maker


⬆︎ Espresso snobs would find many faults with this cup of cappuccino — that there’s not enough crema, that the microfoam isn’t micro enough, and that my artwork is primitive. It no doubt will take years, and a good many hundreds of dollars, to make a real espresso snob out of me. For now, merely very good is good enough.

Hot and sour soup


Next time: More mushrooms!

I’m pretty sure that I had never made hot and sour soup before. I’m not sure what made me think of it. But the soup was so easy, and so good, that I’ll do it again soon.

As usual, I use recipes only to get the concept, then I improvise. I almost never measure. There are many recipes for hot and sour soup on the web, and if you look at a bunch of them you’ll see that they vary quite a lot. My take on it is that hot and sour soup is a kitchen sink sort of thing. Some elements are necessary, and other elements are left to your imagination and what’s available in your kitchen.

I’d say that the essential elements are a savory stock, vinegar, tamari, a little thickener, toasted sesame oil, a pepper paste, mushrooms, tofu, and the egg (added last). Then deploy whatever vegetables are handy. Carrots are good. I don’t think I’ve seen recipes that called for cabbage, but cabbage works well. I think that Quorn would make a good substitute for chicken. Color and crunch in the vegetables are to be desired. Shitake mushrooms are the usual rule, but I think any brown mushrooms would work.

It’s a quick soup. And it will definitely knock the chill off on a winter day. Unless you live in a city with an excellent Chinatown, you can surely make a better, and a healthier, hot and sour soup at home.

Carrot-top pesto

Pesto

The young farmers from whom I bought vegetables this summer are now getting their fall crops. On Friday I picked up carrots, sweet potatoes, and curly kale. The carrots had been pulled that same morning. I’d never before heard of carrots being grown in this area, and I’d never had fresh carrots with the tops intact. It seemed like a crime not to use all those green leaves, so I made pesto.

My basil is almost gone, but there was enough to give the pesto a hint of basil. I also used extra garlic in case the carrot tops had any flavor that needed overpowering. But there were no off-putting flavors in the carrot tops. The carrot tops made a dense, hearty, very green-tasting pesto.

Mozart!

Saturday’s live stream from the Berlin Philharmonic was all Mozart. It was thrilling — the overture to Così fan tutte; Symphony No. 35 in D major (the Haffner symphony); the Concertone for two violins and orchestra; and everybody’s favorite Mozart symphony — the Symphony No. 40 in G minor. The conductor was Riccardo Minasi.

Is something going around in Berlin? I’ve never heard so much coughing from the audience. But it wasn’t because they were bored. In fact they were on their feet at the end of the 40th. I know most of that symphony by heart. The first classical recording I ever owned, age about 11, was Mozart’s 40th. I listened to it over and over, and I’ve continued to listen to it over and over all these years. Though the 40th is in a minor key and is often described as dark, I understand why so many people in the audience were smiling as they listened. It was because the performance was so superb, and maybe because it was the first time they’d ever heard it performed live.

It was a very warm day with sun streaming in the windows, so I listened with headphones so that Lily could snooze in the sun.


Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Highlands

Waverley

I finished reading Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley last week. There is much that I could say about it, but I’m at risk of becoming a Walter Scott boor. But for anyone who is curious about the odd sort of readers who still read Sir Walter Scott, I recommend the lecture below. It’s the literary historian Jenni Calder speaking to the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club. Look at all those gray heads in the audience! I had a look at their web site. They hold black tie dinners. Princess Anne attended one of their meetings. I can only say that it makes me happy to know that somewhere in the world (though probably only in that one place) there is a Sir Walter Scott club.

Pumpkin-barley bread

Once you’ve got some cooked pumpkin goody in the refrigerator (it’s October, so you do, don’t you?), then pumpkin bread is easy. Probably any recipe for banana bread would work, using mashed pumpkin instead of mashed bananas. And there are many recipes for pumpkin bread on the web.

This pumpkin bread was made with barley flour from organic hulled barley. Plain barley bread would be a heavy bread. But the pumpkin makes the bread very soft and moist. I used date sugar instead of sugar-sugar. Not much sugar is needed. There’s also an egg, some olive oil, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The proportion of pumpkin to flour is such that the pumpkin, egg, and olive oil are the only moistening ingredients needed for a thick batter. That’s lots of pumpkin. And of course don’t forget the baking powder or soda. Bake it at 350F. The bread is done when the internal temperature reaches 200 degrees F.

Pumpkin is sometimes listed as a super-food. The combination of pumpkin, barley, and date sugar is a feast for the microbiome. I need to go get more pumpkins while they’re still easy to find. I’d like to have enough to last most of the winter.

As I’m sure I’ve said before, every kitchen should have a means of grinding flour. I use a vintage Champion juicer with a mill attachment. One of the easiest ways to go would be a KitchenAid mixer with a mill attachment. Amazon sells organic hulled barley and date sugar.

Pumpkin-oatmeal pudding


Pumpkin-oatmeal pudding sweetened with date sugar

I could break down and make a pumpkin pie, but then I’d have to eat it all myself — a huge calorie load. I settled on pumpkin-oatmeal pudding, because I could make it in a modest quantity, and pudding avoids all the calories and carbs in the crust.

For a year or so, I have been experimenting with date sugar. Date sugar is nothing but dried dates, ground fine. It’s expensive, but obviously it’s much healthier than sugar-sugar. You can buy it on Amazon.

To make it: You don’t need a recipe for pumpkin-oatmeal pudding. I used old-fashioned oats that I had already cooked. Mix the oatmeal and pumpkin, add a beaten egg, some sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a touch of cream. Put a couple of pats of butter on top before putting the pudding in the oven. I’m sure that raw old-fashioned oats would work fine, if you allowed for the absorption of liquid. Or, better yet, toast the oats before adding them to the pudding. How long you need to bake the pudding will of course depend on how much pudding you made. Thirty minutes at 375F worked great for my pudding.

A good-size pumpkin will make enough pumpkin goody for a pie and a couple of soups. To cook the pumpkin, don’t even think of boiling it. Cut around the top of the pumpkin, like a lid. Scoop out the seeds. Throw the seeds into the yard for the birds. Put the lid back on and bake the pumpkin at 350 degrees. How long to bake the pumpkin will depend on the size. But it’s done when it starts to sink, the skin is softened, and a small quantity of pumpkin juice is oozing into the pan. After the pumpkin cools, pour the liquid inside the pumpkin into a jar and save it for soup stock. Scoop out the goody. Throw the skin into the yard for the possums.

To use canned pumpkin ought to be a felony punished with prison time. Don’t Americans bother to cook and eat fresh pumpkin anymore? I don’t know anyone but me who uses fresh pumpkin. And who doesn’t like pumpkin pie? I will certainly make pies at Thanksgiving and Christmas when I’ll have some expert help eating them.

Brown = umami = Maillard reaction

It would be easy to believe that the secret of cooking Chinese at home is as simple as using too much salt. That’s not it, though Chinese dishes certainly like salt. The real secret is the brownness. That’s where the umami flavor comes from. When foods are browned during cooking, that’s the Maillard reaction. Whether we’re talking about toast, grilled meat, roasted peanuts or even toasted marshmallows, every good cook must take advantage of the Maillard reaction.

Here’s an experiment. For years, I couldn’t figure out how to get fried rice to be brown. Just pouring some soy sauce into the pan did not seem to be the answer — though those umami-rich sauces are necessary as a finishing touch. I suppose that even rice, if it was in a skillet or a wok for long enough, would start to turn brown. But it’s much easier than that.

Brown your onions. Even after the onions come out of the pan, they’ll leave some of the brown behind in the pan. Your other stir-fry vegetables, as long as you don’t let them become watery, will add to the brown in your pan. If you’re brave enough not to be afraid of a little monosodium glutamate near the end of the stir-fry of your vegetables, it will triple the amount of brown (as well as the amount of umani). Remove the vegetables from the skillet or wok, then add the rice. The rice, as you toss it, will lift the brown off the bottom of the skillet. Not only is the rice now brown, it’s glazed with umami. If you can avoid it, never waste umami by leaving it in the bottom of a pan!

This deglazing is the same thing that cooks do when making gravy in a pan that was used to cook meat. Pour off the grease, and make the gravy in the roasting pan such that the brownness is recovered from the bottom of the pan. That brownness is a cook’s gold.

Some recent eats


Egg foo yung with stir-fried sweet-potato leaves

I buy good eggs from pastured chickens and then forget that I have eggs. I think it’s because I’m so content on a plants-only diet, until I start to worry that I might not be getting enough B-12. Then I remember how good egg foo yung can be.

You don’t need Chinese vegetables such as bean sprouts. Plain old cabbage (with a bit of onion) works great. The key to good egg foo yung is umami, and that means brown. The umami is partly in the sauce, with some Better Than Bouillon and soy sauce. But the cabbage and onion also need to be browned. I’ve written here in the past about how I think monosodium glutamate is not harmful in small quantities. It’s made from yeast. Study after study has tried to prove MSG guilty of something, anything, and have mostly come up short. After all, our own bodies make glutamic acid, and it’s found naturally in many foods such as tomatoes and cheese. Like salt, it’s something that should be used sparingly. But its ability to add umani is a kind of miracle. When MSG comes into contact with hot oil, it immediately turns a beautiful brown, revealing what it truly is — pure brown umami (though it’s as white as salt) stabilized with a sodium molecule. Oil and heat transform it back into something brown.

Monday morning, because the day was cloudy and somewhat cooler, I made my periodic trip to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s in Winston-Salem. I feel pinned down by the weather of July and August, and I don’t get out much. As a kind of mini-vacation, I went to Reynolda Village, where there is a Village Tavern. Reynolda Village is adjacent to the campus of Wake Forest University. The place was built in 1916 as a mansion and working dairy farm for the R.J. Reynolds family (think tobacco, and Winston and Salem cigarettes). But since 1965 it has belonged to Wake Forest University. The house is a museum. The grounds and gardens are a park. All the many outbuildings, all of which have a lot of charm, have been turned into little eateries and boutiques. At 11 a.m., Village Tavern had just opened for lunch. The large patio was empty, with big yellow umbrellas and twinkle lights, overhung by enormous oak trees. The waitress assigned to the patio had no one to accommodate but me. How could I resist a nicely cooked lunch, since I rarely eat out?

Incidentally, what is the appeal of fast food other than that it’s (somewhat) fast? It’s not even cheap. A few months ago, I went to a Chick-fil-A for the first time because I was curious about their cauliflower sandwich (a temporary offering; they no longer have it). As I recall, that sandwich cost more than $11. And yet the grilled salmon plate with healthy fixin’s at Village Tavern didn’t cost that much more — $18 — and in a far more pleasant setting. I might eat out more often but for the fact that Winston-Salem, about 45 minutes away on winding roads, is the nearest place with civilized eateries and trained cooks. Here in the sticks, it’s all country cookin’ with shockingly sorry ingredients, cooked by cooks who couldn’t cook their way out of a ham biscuit.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I esteem country cookin’. One of my grandmothers was a master chef of provincial Southern cookin’, by any standard (and she had a big farm to supply her). But these days few people know how to do it or have even tasted anything that meets the standard. And rural restaurant food is always inferior because of the necessity of sorry ingredients, stingily deployed by untrained low-wage cooks, to keep prices low. Southern provincial cookin’ is like a dying language that a few native speakers are trying to keep alive.

I started out talking about egg foo yung, didn’t I? But of course there are many methods that all good cookin’ has in common.


Grilled salmon at the Village Tavern, Reynolda Village in Winston-Salem

To heck with the news. Let’s talk about food.


Barley biscuits with pinto beans, okra-tomato sauté, and green beans. Click here for high resolution version.

The news is exasperating. Even as Trump makes madman threats, including threatening people such as Mike Pence, who is sure to be a witness at Trump’s trials, the media are doubling down on the horsewash idea that Smith won’t be able to prove the charges against Trump and that Trump will get back into the White House in 2024. Never mind all that for now. In time, it’ll all get sorted out. Eating well is the best revenge. But never forget how the media have tried to scare us to keep milking Trump for clicks and ratings.

For barley biscuits, you can adjust the proportions of unbleached wheat flour with hulled barley flour to suit your taste. At a ratio of one part barley flour to five parts wheat flour, all you’ll notice is some some extra (and delicious) flavor. With five parts barley flour to one part wheat flour, the biscuits will be a bit crumbly, and it will be hard to keep them moist (using buttermilk will help). Everything in between is worth experimenting with.

Until this summer, I didn’t know that sweet potato leaves make good greens. But you can eat them either cooked or raw, as a salad green. No wonder the deer like them so much. And though most lettuces don’t like high summer, sweet potato greens love high summer, even though the sweet potatoes won’t be ready until fall.


Sweet potato leaves stir-fried with garlic; fried rice with cashews and summer vegetables; and tofu. Click here for high resolution version.