A cup of twee

The famed Oregon Shakespeare Festival is based in the little town of Ashland, just eight miles to the south of us. OSF is the 57.14-stone gorilla of Rogue Valley tourism, drawing in many thousands of theater-loving visitors who stay in Ashland's bed and breakfast inns and eat in Ashland's numerous fine restaurants (OSF's total annual economic impact for Oregon in 2008: $168 million).

Shakespeare is the original reason for our theater season, and even though these days more than half the festival's productions are authored by diverse playwrights and include many new and multicultural works, Ashland does tend toward an English theme. Heraldic festival banners line the main street, and there is enough faux Tudor architecture to please a faerie queen. Downtown awnings sport business names like Puck's Doughnuts, Shakespeare Books, The Crown Jewel, Bloomsbury Books, Black Sheep British Pub (do check that place out if you're in town), Unicorn Gifts, and even Renaissance Chiropractic. Not to mention all those B&Bs: A Cowslip's Belle, A Midsummer's Dream, Albion, Tudor House, Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Arden Forest, Romeo Inn, Shrew's House, Stratford Inn, Bard's Inn, Winchester Inn, Windsor Inn, and Under the Greenwood Tree.

So when an old friend emailed me last spring about starting a reading and study group dedicated to Shakespeare's plays, it was an easy choice. What else can you do when you live in a hotbed of anglophilism?

For our first meeting, Sue invited us to bring our families to her house for dinner and a viewing of the new Royal Shakespeare Company Hamlet - two of us had drama-major children who were home for the summer, which made for a lively and informed discussion.

For our regular summer meetings, though, it seemed the best time for just the three of us to get together was going to be late afternoons. Teatime! (what a book geek, I can't look at that word without hearing Teh-a-tim-ay in my head.)

Anyway, teatime. When my sister and I hitchhiked through Britain in 1981, we (like a lot of first-time visitors) fell in love with afternoon tea. We made it a point to sample tea rooms all over the island. So civilized! We marveled at the clotted cream, sugar tongs, and doilies in Devonshire, Cambridge, and Harrod's in London - and we swore we'd have tea every day at 4:00 when we got back to California.

Like the old gods, such pledges don't transfer easily to the New World. I did find a good recipe for scones, and I've often made them for breakfast with company and to bring to Unitarian coffee hour, but I never did get around to hosting a tea party... until now.

Shakespeare certainly never indulged in a formal afternoon tea - in fact, he would not have drunk tea at all, since it wasn't popular in England until the late 1600s, long after he died. And tea as a light late-afternoon meal wasn't invented until the Duchess of Bedford desired a way to relieve "that sinking feeling" when dinner was still hours away, in the mid-1800s.

Be that as it may, in Sara's garden for our second Shakespeare meeting, a table loaded with tea sandwiches, scones with strawberry jam and lemon curd, and a delicious flourless chocolate cake accompanied our serious examination of Henry IV part 1.

This month it was my turn (for Twelfth Night), and we agreed on tea again. I polished the antique silver candy dish, cut some roses from the garden, and brought out my grandmother's china. Then I made egg salad sandwiches on buttered bread (with the crusts cut off, of course); banana bread; and a summer pudding (for recipe link see this post) with creme fraiche.

Sara arrived with a basket of her poppyseed muffins (made with white flour grown and milled right here in Medford, at Dunbar Farms! An important piece of information for our upcoming Eat Local week - more on that another day); Sue brought a tray of adorable little openface cucumber sandwiches. Add plenty of Earl Grey with all the accompaniments (milk, sugar, lemon) - and we did eventually get around to talking about the play.

How very civilized indeed. But that Duchess of Bedford must have had some metabolism. For my part, I think I'm going to skip dinner.

Here's my grandmother's recipe for banana bread; I've been making it since I was 8 years old and it's still my favorite. Shakespeare didn't any more eat banana bread than he drank Darjeeling, but I hear both are popular choices at tea time in England these days.

Banana Bread

2 C flour

1 t baking soda

1/2 C butter (or margarine, if you must)

1 C sugar

2 large eggs

2 average size overripe bananas, mashed

1/3 c buttermilk, or 1/3 C milk curdled by adding 1 t lemon juice or white vinegar

3/4 C chopped walnuts (optional, but I always add them)

Cream butter and sugar well; blend in eggs. Mix in mashed bananas.

In a separate bowl, stir baking soda into flour.

Add dry ingredients and buttermilk to creamed mixture, in halves, alternately. Do not overmix.

Bake in a greased loaf pan at 350 degrees for 60 to 70 minutes.

Burgertron

The Victorians gave us the Bunsen Burger...

the 20th century saw the advent of Burgermatic...

now, in 2010, we are witness to the dawning of the age of

BURGERTRON

Last weekend we went to visit our boy Kosta in Berkeley, where after one more semester he will graduate with a double major in physics and astrophysics. Definitely the brains of the family, that one.

We caught up with him late Thursday night at Lothlorien Hall (which, as a long-held bastion of vegetarianism in the Berkeley co-op system, seemed an unlikely venue for this sort of activity) Kosta and his friend Nick were doing the final tweaking of Burgertron 2.0.

The Burgertron started as a final project for Nick's Basic Semiconductor Circuits class last semester. Kosta was in on it from the beginning, though, and the two of them collaborated on both the hardware (mostly scrap wood, two old toaster ovens, bicycle chains, lots of little relays, and wire) and software (LabVIEW).

So the idea is, you put a raw hamburger patty on a little metal flap, and the two halves of a bun on another little flap, and then you push the start button on the computer screen. Through the magic of computer programming and electronic gadgetry, the flaps drop to deposit the components onto a conveyor belt which then carries them to the heat units. They broil for the programmed period of time, then continue on to the end of the line where they slide down a ramp and are automatically assembled in the familiar bun-patty-bun configuration.

You MIGHT be thinking, why spend hundreds of hours inventing something that the fast food industry perfected decades ago? And which can be accomplished better and faster with a barbecue grill and a spatula?

Well, you MIGHT be a no-fun party pooper. Kosta says it's worth it just to see people's looks when he wheels the contraption across town in his free-piled jogging stroller (scavenged specifically for the purpose).

"Hey man, is that a TIME MACHINE?" It's a point of pride to be able to garner funny looks in a seen-it-all town like Berkeley.

This week the Burgertron was transported to its new permanent home in Kingman Hall, where it will debut as the guest chef at an upcoming barbecue.

An early trial run, in the physics lab on campus. The young man you see in the video is Nick - Kosta and some other students are the off-camera voices.

Aioli

Mmm... aioli. It's like a hollandaise sauce, only Provencal-style, made with oil instead of butter (so it's good for you!) and a lot of garlic. I love the stuff as a sauce for grilled or poached fish or for roasted potatoes. And it's fantastic at the center of a platter of vegetables for dipping. You can also use it on sandwiches, like mayonnaise.

When I first started making aioli in the 80s I made it by hand, mashing the garlic with some salt in a mortar, then whisking the oil in by droplets. Now I cheat a little bit and use the food processor. Yes, the texture is slightly different (that little blade goes much faster than my whisk ever could) but the flavor is the same. And I get a whole lot less upset if the sauce breaks and I have to start over.

There are plenty of recipes for food processor or blender aioli on the Internet. Just don't fall for anything that's made by mixing garlic paste into store-bought mayonnaise. It is not the same thing at all - mayo in a jar might be tasty in mom's potato salad, but it's a far cry from its French namesake.

This size batch will work best if you use a small food processor. The recipe will be fine in a larger machine if you double it.

Aioli

Two raw egg yolks
Three large cloves garlic
1/4 t salt
1/2 t lemon juice
1-1/2 C oil (I like 1 C canola plus 1/2 C extra virgin olive oil)

Blend the egg yolks, garlic, salt, and lemon juice in the food processor until light lemon yellow and there are no more garlic chunks. Have the oil in a container with a pouring spout (like a Pyrex measuring cup) so can easily regulate the amount you pour. With the food processor going, pour the oil in through the feed tube in the thinnest possible stream. Keep going until the oil is all in. The result should be a thick, semi-solid substance. If it is too thick for your purposes you can thin it with a little water. You can also add more lemon juice and salt to taste.

Sometimes the sauce "breaks", meaning that it curdles and separates. This will happen if you add the oil too fast, but it can also happen for more mysterious reasons: I've read that too much humidity in the air can cause it. If the sauce does break, you should be able to fix it. Take everything out of the food processor and put it in a bowl. Put another egg yolk in the food processor and blend it by itself. Use a strainer to fish out the more solid bits from the broken sauce and blend them into the egg yolk. Take the liquid portion of the broken sauce and put it back in your measuring cup and add it like you did the first time, in a very thin stream. That should do the trick.

For a delicious variation, make rouille: add 1 t Hungarian sweet paprika, 1 t ground cayenne pepper, and 1/2 t saffron threads to the yolks along with the garlic, salt, and lemon at the beginning of the procedure. The result is an addictively spicy orange-pink sauce that is traditionally served with bouillabaisse and other Provencal fish dishes. It's great on swordfish.

(Note: There are raw eggs in these recipes, so be careful about where they come from - those factory farmed eggs aren't just bad news for the chickens)

So long and thanks for all the fish (part 2)

Seafood status: It's Complicated.

I'm sure you've noticed the changes at the fish counter. Where there used to be the local catch of the day, now the fish is flash-frozen and flown in from all over the world. Once-familiar varieties are missing or have skyrocketed in price. Many of the fish are farm-raised. There are new kinds of fish you've never heard of before. Plus there's all the news about mercury, and maybe the President feels confident eating Gulf shrimp, but I'm not so sure I want to drink BP's milkshake. What does all this mean? I knew I was woefully uninformed, so I recently started looking into it. I can't say I like what I've learned.

It was my plan today to do a whole polemic about gillnetting, longlining, and irresponsible aquaculture, but I decided to spare you the gory details, dear reader. If you want a clear explanation of different types of fishing methods their impact, check this out. And if you want to read some really good arguments about why you shouldn't eat fish at all, I refer you again to Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.

But I don't want to give up fish any more that I want to give up beef. And (unlike beef) there are lots of good reasons, mostly to do with health, for eating fish - maybe not the big slow-growing fish like tuna, that accumulate heavy metals, but at least the little sardines and anchovies and - what else? I don't actually know. Guess I'd better do some more research. I'm going to start by reading Paul Greenberg's book Four Fish, about how we all need to expand our seafood palates for the good of the oceans. Here's the author being interviewed on NPR.

Also, here's a handy database with a search function for checking if a food fish is a good or bad choice. It seems like a tool like this should make things very simple, but the matter is complicated by the fact that you still need to know how the fish was caught or raised. While fish packaging now is required to show the country of origin as well as whether it was farm-raised or wild, the labelling doesn't get into enough detail. This is where the politics come in. I'm thinking that it's important to ask a lot of questions at the supermarket so they know that this stuff matters to their customers.

Here's an interesting document from Greenpeace that shows how well different large supermarket chains do in terms of offering sustainable fish. Surprisingly, Target comes out on top (it would never occur to me to buy fish at Target, and there are some excellent reasons to not buy anything there at all right now); Safeway is doing well, though I think it's important to remember that this is an average number, and not everything there is OK. I was surpised that Trader Joe's did so poorly, though they are showing a lot of improvement. Costco, not surprisingly, earns an epic fail.

I was pretty excited a few weeks ago when I discovered the packages of salmon bits and pieces at $3 per pound at Food 4 Less. I bought a load of them when they were available and stuck them in the freezer. We've been using them all summer in stirfry and to make burgers - but now I see that they are farm-raised and therefore seriously uncool. Sigh. Well I'd bought them already, and so I used them. I guess now I'll be asking at the fish counter where the wild salmon bits and pieces can be found.

Those last salmon ends got made into salmon burgers, served on toasted baguette slices with homemade aioli, arugula, tomato, and red onion.

Making salmon burgers is really easy. First (very important) get some wild salmon, or some salmon raised in tanks with recirculating systems. Make sure to remove any bones and skin then chop the salmon by pulsing it in the food processor. Mix in some dijon mustard and some minced garlic, and a little salt - you can use other ingredients, too, like onions, spices, lemon, parsley, sesame oil, teriyaki sauce - then grill on the stove or barbecue.

(This post is) so long, and thanks for all the fish (part 1)

Last night during dinner there was a knock on the door.  It was Jeff Golden canvassing the neighborhood to tell folks about his campaign for county commissioner.  I complain about small-town Medford a lot, but the flip side is that it's nice to live in a place where politicians come out to talk to you personally.   And when they'll sit down at your table and share your tomatoes (one of Jeff's big issues is strengthening the Rogue Valley's local food network) I'm all for that.  We didn't see this happening in L.A.

We'll vote for Jeff - he's a good guy.  He has to share lawn-sign space in our yard with Lynn Howe, who is running for state representative.  Andreas volunteers regularly on Howe's phone bank but I don't do very much political volunteering these days - I just attend the occasional rally or fundraiser.  But I used to be pretty involved in political campaigns.

Thanks to a speechwriter friend, in the summer of 1982 I landed a job on the Washington staff of Walter Mondale’s doomed bid for the 1984 presidency.  Remember Fritz?



I started my short career in D.C. as a researcher for Mondale's political action committee, the Committee for the Future of America.  CFA disbanded when the campaign got rolling and soon I was hired on at Mondale for President.  Job title: Messenger.  It was probably the coolest job I've ever had. 

Every morning I walked from my digs at Dupont Circle all the way out to the Mondale offices in Georgetown.  There I'd get a list of assignments - deliver this, pick up that - that took me to offices on the Hill, mansions in Chevy Chase and Georgetown, newsrooms, consulates, law offices, everywhere around metropolitan Washington.  I travelled on foot and by taxi.  I usually checked in at HQ at noon to pick up a round of afternoon jobs.  It was a blast. 

All good things must come to an end. Eventually the operations boss worked out that it would be cheaper to get me a car and driver than to pay for all those taxicab rides.  Sadly, I didn't so much enjoy spending my whole workday with Al-the-Driver and so I asked to transfer to an indoor job in the fundraising department.  That was fun, too - lots of parties - but not quite as good as being out and about in the city every day.

During my time as messenger there were a few assignments amid the routine rounds of senators and press offices that stood out.  One made me laugh out loud when I saw it in my in-box, because it came with no explanation.  Yes sir, I'll get right on that...

I took a cab over to the Mondale's house, where Mrs. Mondale met me and handed me a package wrapped in white butcher paper.  I hopped back in the waiting taxi and sped off to the designated address.  A uniformed housekeeper answered the doorbell.  I informed her the package was from the Mondales, and she took it away (to the kitchen, I hope).  Mission accomplished.

A good undercover agent doesn't ask questions, but I'm not a good undercover agent (one of my housemates at that time worked for the NSA - we used to tease him to try to get him to tell us what he did at work that day, but he would smile his tight-lipped little smile and say "sorry."  I would have caved right away).  It turns out that a fish caught by the former VP had been auctioned off at a Democratic fundraiser (Mr. Mondale is an avid fisherman), and Mrs. Abell (who once upon a time had been President Lyndon Johnson's social secretary) had placed the winning bid.

So that was a pretty roundabout way of getting to today's culinary topic, which was going to be fish.  Because, like everything else these days, fish is political.  But now I've nattered on so long that I think I'll save the fish part for tomorrow.  It's kind of depressing, anyway, so be forewarned.

Porrata

My friend Kim called me the other day to talk about leeks.  She had gotten a recipe from her cousin and was trying it out for the first time.  The recipe was for a savory tart with a bread crust that Kim remembered their grandmother making many years ago. She said she'd bring me a slice if it turned out well.

A couple of days went by and I didn't hear from her.  I called and asked about the tart.  Kim said she wasn't happy with it; the crust wasn't like she remembered.  Then she emailed me a different recipe for a leek tart that she found in the Silver Spoon cookbook (Italy's answer to The Joy of Cooking, it came out in English for the first time about five years ago).  This one sounded just like a quiche, with cheese and cream mixed into the leek and egg filling, and a pate brisee crust.  I started looking on the Internet for more variations.  In Italian the dish is called  porrata or torta di porri (leeks are porri; interestingly, it's the same etymological root as puree and porridge which were both originally always made with leeks). I found other examples similar to quiches, and also some with yeast crusts, some with cheese, and some with prosciutto or pancetta in with the leeks.  I sent a couple of those back to Kim.  We noted that some of the reason behind the variety was probably local ingredients, with the creamy, soft-cheese, butter ones from the north, and the olive oil and bread types from the south (where her people are from).

After all that recipe-reading, I had to try making one myself.   Kim said that this one sounded closest to what she remembered.  I just now took it out of the oven and it's late at night.  I'm hoping Kim will be home tomorrow so I can bring her a piece.  With luck, it will be more like the one Nonna used to make.

Addendum:  You would think, this being the second post I've done in a year on the topic of leeks, that I would be a little more on top of the progress of the leeks in our own garden. 

They're as tall as I am.

This is what you get when you neglect to harvest your leeks: a haven for Whos.  Hey Horton, I think they're over here...

If the bran doesn't do it, let's try wheatgrass.

While researching Parade magazine for the Thursday posting, I found this Julia Child tidbit from 1982 that ties in perfectly with my smelly-gym-socks Icebox Paradox of August 8.The Internet works in mysterious ways.

It's the column at the lower left, about the Evil-Smelling Refrigerator - sorry, I don't have a decent photo editor to clip and enlarge it with, but you can click on it to make it bigger.

What do chickens want?

They started off as sweet little fluffballs in a galvanized tub.

Andreas and the boys built them a perfectly comfortable chicken coop.

But now they loiter on the back porch, eyeing us through the screen doors.

I think the chickens are Up To Something.

                                                                            Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine, 17 Jul 2009

FYI: In The Saturday Evening Pearls: A Pearls Before Swine Collection, Stephan Pastis lists 19 Facts I've Always Wanted to Reveal About Myself But Have Never Gotten the Chance Because Nobody Asked. Fact No. 5: "I am Icarian, meaning that my family is from a tiny island in Greece called Ikaria.  It is named for Icarus, the character in Greek mythology who ambitiously flew too close to the sun and died.  If I am lucky, this will not be a metaphor for my career."  Therefore Pastis is Andreas's cousin (yes, the island is that tiny).

Berry nice

At the Grower's Market today

We're deep into berry season here in southern Oregon.   I adore berries; I'm happy to eat them just plain (often while standing next to the berry bushes in the garden) or with half & half or cream.  Strawberries were the only fresh berry I ever had as a child, and I'll always remember the very first time I tried raspberries and cream, out of a champagne glass one sunny Berkeley morning.  Served with a sly grin and a flourish by a handsome man I was completely infatuated with, no wonder they're still my favorite. Still, I'm always on the lookout for new ways to make use of the delicious summer bounty. 

"Slabs" - love the name (not)

This week a new idea came via Relish Magazine, one of the freebies that arrives monthly in the newspaper.  There are several similar publications now, and more all the time. It started with Parade magazine. Julia Child and then Sheila Lukins wrote for Parade, bringing a cachet to their populist mission that I think is missing now under Bobby Flay. The Publishing Group of America, which is behind Relish, also produces the beyond-lame American Profile whose recipe offering this week is an unfortunate Chicken Milano: "Long the favorite of college students in the United States, ramen noodles are a perfect base for this substantial chicken dinner." Eww.  But I like Relish.  You may have to avert your eyes from the lurid advertising that makes these free magazines feasible (Marshmallow Pebbles Slabs is this week's gross-out award contender) but the featured recipes can at times be both adventurous and accessible.

Anyway, that was a long digression; the Relish recipe for English summer pudding is right here. Don't expect me to make any jokes about British food. The thought of a dessert of boiled berries in a soggy bread is perhaps not immediately appealing, but my whole family will back me up when I say this is a keeper (I'll admit, I wasn't going to bet on their approval, and I halved the recipe to make a one-quart version - perfect for using up my half-loaf of day-old La Baguette challah).

I did a little poking around on the Internet and found a couple of more recipes - it seems that red currant is considered an important ingredient, and also it is more authentically served with clotted cream. For comparison's sake,  here's a version by an Englishwoman transplanted to San Francisco; and another from the London Times.

I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that the Mail Tribune doesn't ditch Relish in favor of Dash, Parade's new newspaper food magazine, set to launch in September with the tagline “Simple. Fast. Delicious.”  The first two, probably - the third, we'll see.

Our daily bread

Our Nik has a weekend job delivering bread for La Baguette in Ashland.  He drives all around town in a van full of buns and baguettes destined for the various markets and restaurants, replacing yesterday's loaves with new ones.  He often gets to bring home day-olds, so we tend not to buy much bread at the grocery store anymore. Not that I did anyway, these past three years, at least not in the summertime, thanks to New York Times "Artisan Bread". When there are no La Baguette rejects, we favor this ridiculously easy to make rustic round loaf. 

This recipe created a huge sensation among home-cooking foodies when it first appeared in the New York Times in 2006.  Since then, many variations have turned up in various cookbooks and magazines.  It deserves all the attention. With only four ingredients to stir together, and no kneading involved, it truly is revolutionary.  And it works out to about 26 cents a loaf - sure beats the $4 or $5 you'd pay for a good loaf of bread at the bakery (with no disrepect intended toward La Baguette et al - it's the overhead, I know).

The only drawback is the timing.  While it only takes five minutes to mix up the dough, you have to plan ahead to ensure you'll be home 18 hours later to turn it out, then two hours after that to bake it for 40 minutes.   Also, because the rising takes place over 18 hours, people who do not heat their houses at night in winter (like us) have to settle for store-bought - or a different recipe with a shorter rising time- in the cold season.

Here's the recipe, just in case the NYT link doesn't work for you.

Artisan Bread

3 C. flour (I use half bread flour, half regular unbleached white flour)

¼ t. fast-acting (“bread machine”) yeast

1 ¼ t. salt

1 1/2 C. warm water

18 hours later

Mix all ingredients together. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let rise 18 hours in a warm room.

Turn onto a floured surface and fold over twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest 15 minutes. Gently shape into a ball. Dust a smooth cotton cloth generously with flour, cornmeal, or bran and set the ball of dough on it. Cover with another flour-dusted towel and let rise 2-3 hours – now it should be more than double in size.

This old Dutch oven is perfect for the job

While the dough is rising (the last 30 minutes of the rising time), heat a heavy covered Dutch oven or other deep heavy pot with a lid in the oven to 450 degrees.

When dough has risen, remove the top cloth, then pick up carefully by the cloth underneath and dump the dough out into the heated Dutch oven (it’s all right if it has stuck to the cloth and so is not perfectly smooth; just scrape any stuck dough off and toss it in on top). Bake with the lid on for 30 minutes, then uncover and bake about 10 minutes more, until nicely browned. Remove bread from pot to cool. After it has cooled completely, you might want to store it in a plastic bag so it doesn’t dry out too quickly.

The odd lump on top is a little piece of dough I scraped off the cloth and tossed in the pot.  It will still taste good!

Fenikia

This classic cookie is served all over Greece. In some parts of the country they call them melomakarona, which means "honey macaroons."

On Ikaria and the other southern islands, and in the Peloponnese , they are called fenikia - "little Phoenicians." Apparently when Cadmus and crew were spreading their culture around the Mediterranean in 800 BC, they offered cookies along with the alphabet lessons. Today's pastries are still named for the ancients who invented them. Greeks have long memories.

The first time I made baklava, I was sure I'd written the recipe down wrong. Was it really telling me to pour hot wet syrup all over the tray of pastry I'd spent hours on, carefully layering and slicing up into little symmetrical diamonds, then watching closely as it baked to the perfect shade of golden brown? I was convinced it would be ruined. But my husband Andreas said to just have faith and dump that boiling liquid on there. I did, and they turned out great. So with years of baklava experience behind me, this fenikia recipe didn't scare me at all. Boil those crunchy cookies in honey? I'm on it.

Andreas's Aunt Koula is the queen of Greek pastries. She shared her recipe with me last summer. I'm giving her equal billing with the Phoenicians.

Thea Koula’s Fenikia

3 C liquid shortening (cooking oil – see note)
1 ½ C melted unsalted butter
1 ½ C sugar
1 ½ C orange juice
3 T baking powder
10 ½ C flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Stir together oil and melted butter. Mix in the sugar and orange juice. Sift the baking powder with the flour, then add the dry to the wet ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Batter/dough will be quite oily.

Shape dough in small ovals (about 2 ½ inches long and 1 ½ inches wide) on baking sheet. Bake 10 minutes at 400 degrees, then lower temperature to 325 and bake 15 to 25 minutes longer. Keep an eye on the cookies – they should be well browned but not burnt.

While they are baking, make the syrup:

1 lb honey
2 C sugar
1 ½ C water
Juice of ½ lemon

Boil all ingredients together for 15 minutes. Keep warm.

When cookies are baked, bring the syrup back to a simmer. Immerse the cookies in the syrup 7 or 8 at a time (or however many fit easily into the pot). Leave them in the syrup 2 to 3 minutes, then remove and place on tray. While hot, sprinkle with:

1 C walnuts, finely chopped

Let the cookies sit out overnight before serving.

This recipe makes a lot of cookies: these are traditionally served at weddings, memorials, and large holiday gatherings. The recipe works fine if you halve it.

Helpless in Medford

I will admit to a brief moment of insecurity with regard to refrigerator hygiene before I figured out that it was the feta causing yesterday's problem. It’s not like I don’t clean my fridge regularly. Honest. I take everything out and wipe the inside down with vinegar water every two or three weeks, which seems like it ought to be enough. But inevitably some rogue lemon half or dab of leftover fish stew gets shoved to the back and starts to make its presence known, and I'm off on yet another full-scale cleanup operation.

But I don't know about these things, not really. I grew up with a housekeeper and so never had to clean anything at all until I was all grown up and it was too embarrassing to ask how. I'm like the southern white ladies in The Help (my book club's selection for July), except I'm from California. This has given me a better attitude about civil rights, I hope, but I'm still a little grumpy about the cleaning thing.

Good thing there is the World Wide Interweb to show me the way. Check out this less than helpful tidbit from the OCD advice lady at Arm and Hammer (make sure you click on the "Fresh Fridge Solution" video.) Hah. A case of baking soda. That'll be the day. I'm not THAT insecure.

(Whoa... I just checked my Arm & Hammer link and noticed that I don't always get the "fresh fridge solution" option. Oh well, maybe you'll get some even better bicarbonate of soda tips)

Icebox paradox

My family often complains that there is nothing in the house to eat. I tell them that this is a logical impossibility. There is enough food, measured by weight, in our kitchen and garage freezer to keep this family alive for months. When the zombie wars come to Medford, I feel confident that we will survive securely barricaded in our home fortress until the whole thing blows over.

The truth behind the paradox, and the reason the kids are whining, is that this tremendous repository of foodstuffs contains very little in the way of MREs. There are generally carrots, and celery, and fresh fruit of some kind. With luck there might be some leftovers to snack on (unless I've marked them with the little red sticker that means "don't eat this, it's for dinner.") Other than that, they're going to have to make it themselves.

So I might be willing to concede a point to the complainers. Today, while trying to locate the source of a certain dirty-gym-socks aroma, I was struck by the large number of jars occupying the refrigerator that would fail to fulfill the desires of a midnight forager.

Now here's an apparent non-sequiter, but just stick with me, because it's important background information...

A couple of months ago I offered daughter Alekka (age 13) a cash prize if she would memorize the Tom Lehrer song in which he lists all the elements of the periodic table (as of 1959) to a tune from "The Pirates of Penzance." She learned it, and if she can overcome her camera-shyness, I'll eventually get it on video and post it here. Meanwhile here's Tom Lehrer.



(and yeah, I know the difference between silicon and silicone. It's still the most entertaining rendition of this song on YouTube)

So getting back to the fridge, it occurred to me that the contents of my icebox might make a good patter song. Turns out condiments don't make for easy lyrics - I was consistently "bothered for a rhyme" - and I took a little liberty with the way the verses go by alternating 8-syllable-line stanzas with 16-syllable-line ones. But I'm still pretty chuffed about how it turned out.

Periodic Table of the Condiments

There’s ….
Kosher dills, sweet honey mustard, mango pickle, pesto, brie
Mint apple jelly, feta cheese, slab bacon, prunes, pine nuts, sel gris

There’s oyster sauce and peanut butter
Dried figs and cheap yellow mustard
Capers, currants, dates, dried figs
And bacon from organic pigs.

There’s
Tamarind chutney, soy sauce, mayonnaise, bleu cheese dressing, gorgonzola
Gyoza sauce, aioli, crème fraiche, almonds, Kalamata olives

Wasabi oil, molasses, yeast
Exotic curry blend - Far East
Green peppercorns and lemons (ten)
Some spices Ethiopian.

There’s
Homemade jams of apricot, rose petal, orange, and loganberry
Half and half, mixed relish, hot fudge, vinegar from oak-aged sherry

Tabasco, Tapatio - hot
Sriracha – we like hot a lot
There’s rennet used for making cheese
And honey from some nice Greek bees.

Tahini, chili paste with garlic, leeks, horseradish, and mizithra
Hoisin sauce, some eggplant, pumpkin butter, goat cheese and harissa

Green tapenade, fresh ginger, lime
Half bottle of some awful wine
That I’ll put in a sauce sometime
And even more that does not rhyme.How about some pomegranate glaze with those sundried tomatoes, kids?
(by the way, the culprit behind the toxic miasma was the feta cheese. It has been contained.)

Here's a picture of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan drawn by my brilliantly eccentric friend Wahlgren. He's a historian and a cartoonist as well as a huge Gilbert and Sullivan fan. This is just a little detail - the big picture shows the major characters from all their operettas.

That's not a billboard, it's a banana

I would like to go on record as saying that I am opposed to the sale of advertising space on fresh food. It makes it seem so much less... wholesome. Yes, I know that the stuff they sell at Safeway is all produced by gigantic multinational agribusiness corporations complicit in exploitation, corruption, and contamination.  I can be fond of my illusions.

Opa!

If you've been following this blog, you might recall a post from last November, when Andreas and I went up to Portland to help initiate Northwest chapter 27 "Mesaria" of the Pan-Ikarian Brotherhood of America. Andreas got himself elected treasurer, and I (under the influence of some nice people and good Greek wine) volunteered to host this year's Ikarian Independence Day party.

July 17 rolled around and we put on the feast.

We served...

Pita with melitzanosalata and hummus; olives
Ouzo
Retsina

Souvlaki hirino
Hortopita
Tiropita
Dolmas
Tzatziki
Moussaka
Horta with olive oil and lemon
Ikarian potato salad
Horiatika salad
Feta
Bread
Red wines

Baklava
Fenikia
Watermelon
Greek coffee
Metaxa


If this list looks familiar, it might because it's basically our standard Greek party menu. While I wouldn't want anybody to think that this is the extent of my Aegean repertoire or - worse - that this is all there is to Greek cooking, I do revisit these dishes regularly when company calls. The beauty of this menu is that not only are they popular foods, but they can be done almost entirely ahead. Several take time and effort to prepare but don't require much last-minute attention, enabling the cooks to enjoy the party, too.

So with the able assistance of all five of our children - called in for the occasion - we grated the cucumbers, picked the greens, squeezed the lemons, layered the phyllo, rolled the grape leaves, dipped the cookies, and generally had a blast over two days of kitchen prep.

With summer coming so late to us this year in southern Oregon, the timing worked to get many of the ingredients out of our own garden. The tomatoes and eggplant still aren't ripe yet, and the potatoes won't be ready until fall, but from our back yard we harvested the greens (horta), cucumbers, purslane (for the Ikarian potato salad), herbs, and (most unusual for this late in the year) the grape leaves.

Ikarians are the consummate locavores; they never stopped eating that way. Not only is there no fast food on the island, there is very little processed or commercially canned food. It simply costs too much to ship it all the way out there. Thank goodness.

When we were visiting the island a few summers ago I wanted to try the local stuffed grape leaves. I didn’t see them on any restaurant menus so finally one night at a cafe in Evdilos I asked the waitress. She looked at me in such a way that I knew immediately I'd said something stupid. "You have to come in the spring for grape leaves”. Duh. In America they come in jars...

Here's my recipe for dolmas. It's more fun if you can get some helpers together to roll them with you.

DOLMAS

1 C. olive oil
2 lb. brown onions, chopped (about 3 large onions)
1/3 C. chopped fresh dill
1/3 C. chopped parsley
2 C. uncooked long-grain white rice
1 C. pine nuts plus 1 T. olive oil
2 8-oz. jars grape leaves, or about a pound of fresh leaves (see note)
4 t. lemon juice

In a small pot, bring 2 C. water to a boil. Add the rice, cover, and cook over low heat for 10 minutes. Uncover and remove from heat. The rice should have absorbed the water and will be partially cooked.
While rice is cooking, lightly brown the pine nuts in a skillet with the 1 T. olive oil. Stir and watch them carefully because they burn easily.

Heat ½ C. of the oil in a large skillet; add the onions and saute until soft and beginning to brown. Remove from heat and stir in the dill, parsley, rice, and pine nuts.

Prepare the grape leaves by draining (do not rinse), then cutting a little “v” in each to remove the stem end. If any leaves are torn or have very deep separations between the sections, use those to line the bottom of the pot in which you will cook the dolmas.

Roll the dolmas: place one leaf on the work surface with the stem end toward you. Put about 1 T. (more if the leaves are large) of the rice mixture at the center bottom of the leaf. Fold the two sides over the rice, then roll it up away from you. The rice will expand a little as it cooks the rest of the way so don’t roll them too tightly, but don’t leave any open holes, either. If you have a jar with lots of substandard leaves, it is possible to overlap two or more leaves and then roll them up.

Arrange the rolled dolmas snugly in layers in the pot (make sure to line the bottom of the pot with a few leaves so they don’t stick). Avoid stacking them in more than 3 or 4 layers, because the ones on the bottom may break open from the weight. You may need to use more than one pot. Sprinkle the dolmas with the lemon juice and pour the remaining ½ C. olive oil over them. Fill the pot with water just to the top of the dolmas. Place a heavy plate right on top of the dolmas to hold them down. Simmer very gently, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.

May be made a day or two ahead; keep refrigerated. Serve cold or at room temperature.
Note: to use fresh leaves, wash them and then blanch for 20 seconds in boiling water (until pliable). If you use fresh leaves instead of jarred, add about a teaspoon of salt to the filling (or to taste).

By the way, you can pick young grape leaves and freeze them for later use. Blanch the fresh leaves briefly (about 20 seconds) in small batches, dry on paper towels, stack and wrap in plastic and then foil. Freeze flat. Use them just as you would the ones that come in jars, only you might want to add more salt to your recipe as commercially preserved ones are quite salty.

Night of the living salad

It's the undead. The molded salad has returned, zombie-like, to terrorize humans in 2010.

My daughter Alice called me this morning as soon as she saw this in the new issue of Saveur magazine.




AAAAACK!

Actually, I have to give credit to Sara Dickerman for her otherwise edifying and entertaining article "Gelatin: A Thing of Beauty." I can't wait to try making the chocolate marshmallows, and as Alice said about the raw oysters with shiso, ponzo, and apple-wasabi gelees, "I would totally eat that." But lemon gelatin with pimiento, bell pepper, and cabbage: never.

Here's the Saveur recipe, in case you want to try this updated version (but like last time, you can't say I didn't warn you).

Perfection Salad

Refreshing molded salads like this one were wildly popular when a version of this recipe was first published, in Knox Gelatine: Dainty Dishes for Dainty People (Knox, 1931). Serve the dish in slices as a side for grilled meats or salmon.

1⁄2 cup sugar
1⁄3 cup rice vinegar
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp. unflavored powdered gelatin,

 softened in 1⁄2 cup cold water
1 tsp. kosher salt
2 cups chopped celery
1 cup finely shredded cabbage
2 jarred pimentos, minced
1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded,

 and minced
Canola oil, for greasing


1. Stir together sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, gelatin, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat until gelatin dissolves; chill 30 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients.


2. Grease a 12" x 4" x 2 1⁄2 " loaf pan and transfer gelatin mixture to mold. Chill until set, about 6 hours. 



3. To release salad from mold, slide a knife along the edge of the mold; set mold in a bowl of hot water for 5 seconds. Invert salad onto a serving dish.



But here's what I want to know. How did this confluence of ideas happen? I mean, before last month, when was the last time you read about 1930s molded salads? Did Sara Dickerman read my blog post? I seriously doubt it. (Sara, if you're out there, say something!) I guess it's just one of those things that's in the air. Weird.

Sitting on a cornflake

On Saturday night we went to see the Fab Faux at Britt. The Fab Faux, in case you didn’t know, are known across the universe as one of the best Beatles tribute bands out there.

Our good friends Gary and Terry came down from Washington for the show (Gary’s in a Beatles band himself and likes to check out who’s doing what), and since the day-trippers had to travel that long and winding road, I volunteered to bring the dinner if they’d bring the wine.

I spent part of Friday planning a theme picnic dinner – you all know how much I love those. Any excuse, really. But I started to think through the possibilities and, well, what are we talking about here? A first course of oats, like the ones Doris got? Something to honor the Egg Man, or maybe Sergeant Pepper? I considered something from the octopus’s garden, but skip the pilchards from “I Am the Walrus.” There are some really unappetizing lyrics in that one. And what the heck is Uncle Albert’s butter pie, anyway? (even the Beatles weren’t sure: “butter pie? – the butter wouldn’t melt so I put it in the pie”)

So I put out a request for a little help from my friends on Facebook. Got some good ideas for a sheet cake topped with a strawberry field, a marshmallow pie (thanks, Hindey), a wild honey pie (Mandee), a coffee dessert - yes you know it’s good news (Steve). "Savoy Truffle" lists numerous other sweets as well. That would take care of dessert at any rate. And tea, always tea.

I almost went for some yellow submarine sandwiches (it’s that mean Mr. Mustard that gives them their color, you know) with some caramelized glass onions, but in the end it just didn’t come together. I wimped out and assembled some non-themed salads: orzo and green olive with pine nuts, watermelon with feta and mint, caprese, Mediterranean chicken with nicoise olives and green beans, cucumber and purslane from the garden. Along with some crusty baguettes it made for a pretty tasty picnic. Hey, maybe I’m a loser, but I feel fine.

It was a fantastic concert, by the way. We were on the lawn directly in front of the stage, where the audience was half the show: lots of aging fans (for many in the crowd, 64 is no longer something to plan for) singing along and dancing, having the best old time, and kids and grandkids right there with them (thank you Beatles Rock Band). I’ve got a feeling it’s the closest I’ll get to the boys from Liverpool in my life.