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.

See, I told you so.

Hey, it’s me again, back on the blog wagon. I’ve enjoyed plenty of good meals in the last five months, not to mention a couple of really bad ones I could have told you about. But although I composed many a blog post in my head, somehow not one of them ever saw the light of day. What finally inspired me to sit down at the computer? Well, it's a rare thing for me to pass up a public opportunity to be right. And since my kids don’t believe me when I tell them something, maybe they’ll come around when they read it here. Everyone knows (especially school librarians) that young people believe anything they read on the Internet.

So there we were at the dinner table on Midsummer’s Eve, the usual four of us (some balancing spoons on their upper lips), plus son Kosta up from Berkeley, also my friends Mimi and Stephen and their little daughter Maddie. Because it was my birthday, the party had mustered their collective (and considerable) culinary talents in assembling a magnificent meal of barbecued tri-tip with Sicilian herb sauce, roasted potatoes, collard greens with bacon, and numerous other delicious things. Andreas had tossed together his signature backyard garden salad, a fanciful 21st century composition of baby lettuces, greens, scapes, shoots, tendrils, herbs, and flower petals. The appearance of this tasty admixture (in the dishy orange bowl, foreground) set off a discussion of good and bad salads. Mimi described a particularly awful occasion in England (which otherwise, I hear, has rather good food these days) upon which she had ordered a salad and been served some gruesome amalgam of apple and mayonnaise (and peas? I can't remember exactly).

So - it being my birthday - I took the opportunity to hold forth on the things that passed for salad in my youth, specifically “molded salads”. Faces around the table stared in growing disbelief as I described the unspeakable childhood horror of taking a spoonful of jello expecting - at worst - a canned fruit cocktail grape and instead getting a mouthful of crunchy vegetable suspended in aspic . “Um, we never had that in my house,” says my husband. Well, I suppose not, with them being immigrants and all. “That would be disgusting,” offers Mimi. What? This doesn’t sound like the voice of first-hand experience. Mimi’s husband Stephen, from Boston, remains silent. Kosta suggests that “maybe it was a Bay Area thing.” So I am left to wonder - does my "recollection" represented early onset Alzheimers? Or possibly this molded salad thing was a unique form of torture invented by Mom?

All is revealed. My mother might not have been the world’s greatest cook, but neither did she invent molded salad with vegetables. While clearing out some clutter from the storage room this week, I ran across Sunday Night Suppers, a small cookbook of World War II vintage that had belonged to my grandmother before being passed down to my mother and then to me. "The scattered remnants from the relish tray make sparkling molded salads" indeed. Thankfully molded salads are not hereditary - and I have the power to break this terrible cycle.

Just in case one of you fearless cookers just HAS to try this at home, here's the recipe, but I most emphatically do not recommend it. And you have to promise not to feed it to your kids.

Molded Vegetable Salad

1 package lemon gelatin

1 cup boiling water

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup cold water

1 to 2 cups vegetables (suggestions below)

Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Add vinegars, salt, and cold water. Chill. When sirupy [sic] in consistency fold in vegetables. Pour into any desired mold - loaf or ring. Chill until firm. Unmold on salad greens and serve with dressing. Serves 6.

Vegetable suggestions:

Shredded cabbage, celery, pimiento and green pepper.

Chopped cabbage, diced celery and sliced stuffed olives.

Shredded cabbage, diced celery and cooked peas.

Grated uncooked carrot, diced celery and diced green pepper.

Diced pickled beets, celery, pickles and 2 teasooons grated horse-radish.

Hey - don't forget to serve with dressing. [shudder]

The exceptionally frugal gourmet, part 2

Two more simple and ultra- economical pasta dishes from my notebook.

Vodka Penne

My son Kosta loves this dish.
It’s another one from the Patricia Wells’s Trattoria cookbook – a great source for quick and easy Italian food. It’s less do-able on an extremely low budget if you don’t already have a bottle of vodka. You only need two tablespoons, though, so you might be able to get a neighbor to donate to the cause. Or call a friend who has a full liquor cabinet and an empty fridge, and maybe you can do a barter.

¼ C olive oil
4 large garlic cloves
½ t crushed hot red pepper flakes
Sea salt
1 28 oz can plum tomatoes, or 28 oz can crushed tomatoes, or 28 oz frozen peeled homegrown tomatoes (thawed).
1 lb dried penne
2 T vodka
½ heavy cream
¼ C chopped parsley

In a large unheated skillet, stir to combine the oil, garlic, pepper flakes, and a pinch of salt. Cook over moderate heat until garlic is golden but does not brown (2 to 3 minutes).
If using canned or frozen whole tomatoes, chop them with their liquid in a food processor or put them through a food mill. In any case, add the tomatoes to the pan. Stir to blend and simmer uncovered about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile boil the penne in salted water until al dente. Drain thoroughly.
Add the penne to the sauce. Toss. Add the vodka, toss again, then add the cream and toss. Cover, reduce heat to low, and let rest 1 to 2 minutes. Uncover, add the parsley, toss again. Serve immediately with a green salad on the side.


Spaghetti with Browned Butter and Mizithra Cheese

We used to like to eat out at the Old Spaghetti Factory. In the days when we were traveling frequently to Oakland or Portland with four small children, it had exactly what we needed: noise, lots to look at, and an inexpensive kids menu with something everyone would eat. The kids ordered spaghetti and meatballs, but this dish was my personal favorite.

The menu still features it with the interesting assertion “Legend has it that Homer lived on it while composing the Iliad”. My first thought was, what was Homer doing in China? But I looked it up in Meals and Recipes from Ancient Greece and it seems those guys did have a kind of pasta - made of spelt, wheat, and water - which they served with sauce (don’t tell my husband, or we’ll never hear the end of it; like the father in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," he thinks the Greeks invented everything). Clever fellow, that Homer, composing orally with a mouth full of pasta while strumming his phorinx at the same time.

Anyway, I buy mizithra at the Ashland Food Co-op, where it’s $8.99 a pound. It is almost certainly cheaper at Costco.

This is about the easiest recipe you’ll ever find: Boil a pound of spaghetti in salted water until al dente. Meanwhile, melt and then brown half a cube of butter in a pan (watch it – golden brown is good, but dark brown will make it bitter). Grate the cheese – maybe about 4-6 oz. for this much spaghetti. When the pasta is done, drain it well and toss with the butter and cheese. Sprinkle some chopped parsley on top if you’re feeling fancy. Also good with a little ground black pepper. Serve with a green salad.

At about a dollar a person, no wonder the Old Spaghetti Factory promotes it – they charge $10 plate.

Poor planning

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
-Wilkins Micawber

Oops. The untimely confluence of UC tuition and co-op payments this week has resulted in a serious cash flow problem.

I’m no stranger to radical fluctuation in my bank balance, and over the years I’ve developed some pretty effective coping strategies for avoiding kitchen misery. Not that anyone is likely to go hungry around here, what with the 200 pounds of local organic meat in the deep freeze. But we do want a little variety and I like to provide it without breaking out either the credit card or the Top Ramen.

When I was a kitchen manager at Andres Castro Arms in the 70s, my profligate ways once caused the budget to run out two weeks before the end of the semester following a special dinner involving caviar, steak, and (aptly named) chocolate decadence cake. A letter went out to the 52 residents and 2 boarders that we were now on poor-house rations. No more Captain Crunch. No more pork chops. No more guacamole. Necessity is the housemother of invention, though, and new challenges for the resident cooks resulted not only in numerous interpretations of classic vegetarian Hippie Hash, but also innovative dishes like “Zesty Lymph Gland Whoopee” - a casserole of rice and tomatoes, onions, peppers, and chorizo (read the label sometime). Some of us revisited this infamous creation at a co-op reunion years later – ah, the memories.

In Washington in the 80s I discovered bulk potatoes, which at 10 cents a pound provided many a Thursday-night mashed-potato meal for me and my buddy Kelly after we’d squandered our weekly Commander Salamander commissions on Mary Quant eyeshadow and Betsey Johnson fashion accessories. Desperate times, desperate measures, but fortunately my housemate Ira never noticed the missing milk – at least he never mentioned it. Thinking back on an hour-long house meeting (presided over by Ira and endured by me and the four other residents) concerning the fate of a pot of soup left on the counter to cool, somehow I think he would have said something.

These days I’ve got a ready list of dinner possibilities for when the funds run out. As most everyone knows, pasta is ideally suited for such times. Here’s one of my end-of-the-month standbys, which you can make for under a dollar a person. It’s from Patricia Wells’s Trattoria.


Spaghetti con olio, aglio, e peperoncini

(note: kitchen manager experience taught me to bolster morale by making sure your bargain basement dinner has a fancy name)

1 lb dried spaghetti
½ C plus 2 T olive oil
6 large garlic cloves
½ t crushed dried red pepper flakes
½ C chopped parsley

Add the pasta to a pot of boiling salted water and cook to al dente. Drain well.
Meanwhile, in a large unheated skillet, combine ½ C oil, the garlic, the red peppers, and a pinch of salt. Mix it around with a spatula to coat the garlic with oil, and cook over moderate heat until the garlic just turns golden but not brown (2 to 3 minutes). Add the drained pasta to the sauce. Toss, add remaining 2 T oil, toss again, and cover. Let rest off heat 1 to 2 minutes. Add the chopped parsley and toss again. Serve immediately, with a green salad on the side.


Pasta 79 cents
Garlic 25 cents
Oil 50 cents
Parsley maybe 25 cents, or grow your own like we do
Salt, pepper flakes – under 5 cents
Salad (from a head of lettuce, with homemade Italian dressing) 1.25
For 4 people: 77 cents each. At that price, two of you can each have a glass of two-buck Chuck and still keep the average at just about a dollar apiece.



After dinner, make a bowl of popcorn, open up the latest red envelope from Netflix, and snuggle up with somebody to watch a movie. Don’t worry about the cashflow –as Mr. Micawber assures us, something will turn up.

I love Eric

Today’s post is not for vegans. My animal-loving friends, your hearts are in the right place, surely, but we’re unapologetic omnivores here. We love animals… for dinner.

I am not without ethical scruples, however. I would much rather eat a chicken that's seen a little bit of life, been around the barnyard a time or two; a cow that’s spent some time in a grassy field and been spared the horrors of the feedlot and slaughterhouse; a lamb that's enjoyed quality time with mom. So my strategy is to go with local, sustainable producers. I sleep easier, and we certainly don’t regret the difference in flavor.

Apparently the law makes it difficult for beef ranchers to sell individual cuts by the pound to the consumer. Instead, you need to place an order with the rancher for a whole, half, or quarter animal. A few years ago I got my hands on a 5-foot freezer that a co-worker was giving away. This made it possible to really buy in bulk.

The way it works is you call the rancher (if I'm buying beef, that’s Larry Martin in Central Point) and tell him what you want to order (quarter, whole, or half beef). He’ll give you a rough idea when the meat will be available; this depends on whether the animals are ready, the kill dates, some time for aging, and processing (cutting, wrapping, and freezing). He’ll give you a per pound price and an approximate weight so you’ll know about how much it’s going to cost. If you're buying a half or quarter, he will have to arrange for the other parties who are going to buy the rest of the animal before he can proceed. He’ll also quiz you about what cuts you want: how thick to make the steaks, what percentage of fat to put in the hamburger, how much you want as stew meat versus hamburger, and so on.

The first time I bought beef I got a quarter, to see how it went. We used it all within a few months, so this year I went with a half beef, yielding about 200 lbs. After the animal goes to the processor (Larry Martin uses Jerry’s Custom Meats in Central Point) he will call with the price, which depends on the final weight. For my half beef this year I sent Larry a check for $880. A week or so later when I picked the meat up at Jerry’s I wrote a second check for $250 for the processing. The price works out to about $5.65 per pound. It may sound expensive, but I’ll tell you that included in the deal was a gigantic 18 pound rib roast. We cut that roast beast in half for a family feast on Christmas and then had a second one for guests on New Year’s Eve, easily $200 in prime rib if I’d bought it at a retail meat counter.

In addition to the Martin Ranch beef, I have purchased lambs each of the last two years from Tim Franklin of Yale Creek Ranch in Jacksonville. Lambs are small and yield about 30 lbs of meat after processing. For our current lamb I paid a $100 deposit, then $180 more to Tim when the meat was ready. Price of processing was included, so there was no additional payment when I picked the meat up at Jerry's. That works out to $9.30 a pound, close to the retail meat counter rate but so much tastier.

It's kind of cool to know that all the meat you're serving is from the same animal. It's a sort of personal relationship that might even inspire you to give the critter a name. Ours is Eric (as in... Eric the half a beef. OK, I guess we're are not as repectful as we might be).


Breaking news... as I was googling for a web address for my pork source, Bickle Family Farm, I discovered this - which apparently came out January 18 but vanished into the recycling bin before I had a chance to see it. Check out the article for a rundown on the health benefits of natural meats, as well as contact information for local producers, including all those I've mentioned in this post.


If you want to argue with me about the meat-eating thing, I highly recommend Jonathan Safran Foer's book. It will give you plenty of ammunition. But remember, I've got 200 pounds of frozen meat. With a small trebuchet - or some homemade sauce Bernaise - I am prepared to defend my position.