Tired? Try fish sticks!

The kids are back in school, paying work is coming, which means I'm just not thinking about food in the same way. The list of things to do on Thursday was just too long for the day, so I found myself cruising the aisles of the co-op after supper. As I pushed my cart past the freezer case on my way to the dairy case (or soy, as the case may be), a row of yellow boxes called out to me. Over here! We're wheat-free fish sticks!

Now, I appreciate a lovely poached sole or grilled salmon as much as anyone else, but sometimes a fish stick is just the thing, if only as a vehicle for tartar sauce. And fish sticks, well, I admit to a soft spot for them. My mother adamantly refused to buy them (we lived in the Bay Area, c'mon!), but my future husband had never met a fish that wasn't square and breaded. Southern Germany is landlocked, you see, so the only fish that makes it down there has been pretty heavily processed. So, if I wanted fish in Freiburg, it was fish sticks. Indeed, the first romantic dinner in our apartment, I fell in love--with the convection oven. It did a terrific job on fish sticks and oven fries.

Now, the food at the co-op was particularly vocal this evening, and before I could get to the checkout, a little tub of chocolate mousse jumped into my cart. It was nearly as good as the stuff I married my husband for, and get this, it was made with tofu instead of eggs. I'm happy to report it went quite well with the bit of champagne left in the fridge.

Which might explain why I was so tired that I made fish sticks for dinner.

Clay pot

Rice night, and I'm not going anywhere near Asia for inspiration for dinner. It's just too close to the curry rut. Instead, I dug out my Römertopf and put it to work.

With slow cookers all the rage, these relics of the sixties are poised for a comeback. Indeed, any recipe that works in a slow cooker will work in a Römertopf equally well: soak it, put the ingredients in, put it in a cold oven. Set the start/stop time (you do remember how, don't you?), and the oven does the rest.

The premise is simple: Romans used to "wrap" their meat in clay before they threw it in the fire, then break it open when done. The meat inside was tender, juicy and flavorful, as the clay both insulates against extreme temperatures and keeps all the moisture in. This modern take is a two-part shell that you soak in water and put in the oven--a slow cooker without the cord.

When I was a girl, my mother bought one of these odd clay bakers, with its poorly translated recipe book. We thought she was nuts (hey, we were teenagers). But after one meal, we were sold. Mom used it a lot, especially when she had some activity that would keep her from being home in time to cook dinner. I bought my own when I was a student in Germany, and used it extensively: it was perfect for days when I was writing and didn't want to stop to fix dinner. I could throw stuff together and leave it in the oven until we felt like eating.

So, last night, I filled my Römertopf with water, rice, garlic, dill, lamb and tomatoes and baked it for an hour and a half. Our dinner of Umqua Valley lamb and tomato dill risotto was quite tasty.

Peas in the pod

When I was a little girl, one of my jobs was shelling peas for supper. My mother would give me the bag of peas and the Corning ware pot with the blue flower on it. I would sit in front of the (black and white) TV and watch Superman (the real one, with George Reeves) and shell the peas, stopping to eat the smallest, sweetest ones. Then I took what peas remained to the kitchen, and fed the shells to my guinea pigs. One time my second-best friend was over when my mom handed me the bag of peas. I plopped down and started shelling. My friend looked at me with widening eyes, and then, after a few minutes, said, "what are those?" It seems she had never seen peas in the pod.

There's been a huge amount of press coverage for Seattle's new Olympic Sculpture Park, but the Seattle Times had a little sidebar article on the café: Cafe fuses taste with a socially responsible menu. It's relatively new territory, trying to apply the same kinds of sustainability principles that you might find in upscale restaurants to a café grab-and-go scenario. They're doing quite well, having spent a lot of time on packaging. But this quote really got me, "...they're moving on to other issues, such as sourcing their own baby carrots to accompany children's sandwiches -- real little carrots with greens on top, pulled from the ground, not the standard commercial versions shaved down from larger vegetables."

Imagine that, carrots with tops!

This is not cooking

I opened a pouch of Trader Joe’s Dal Makhani for supper last night. And I reheated the dread curry, just to try and get rid of it (I would have suceeded, too, if Number One son hadn't contracted stomach flu). For the record, real food does not look like this:

The Dal had some good heat to it, but I really should learn how to make it myself. Especially since I read this morning that Indian is the new Chinese.

But I did actually cook a bit: I started some Meyer lemon marmelade (it needs to sit overnight) and made a Meyer lemon tart with a wheat-free pâte brisée (a recipe I found by searching French gluten free sites). The crust didn’t add much, but it didn’t detract, and even looked rather nice.

Red vs. purple

Monday, January 15, 2007

My German part of the cookbook shelf is mighty handy on potato day, but is proving useless for rice day. What do they eat in Marrakesh when it snows? OK, maybe not there, but it snows in Tokyo. Maybe I should learn to make sukiyaki, one of my father’s few positive memories of the Korean War.

At any rate, I made red cabbage Monday night. Why we (and the Germans) call it red, I’ll never know. It really is purple, even more so when you cook it. I like the way the red cabbage matches the colored page borders for the vegetable section in my Dr. Oetker Schulkochbuch perfectly.

1 kilo Rotkohl. I chopped my cabbage, without weighing it, since I want to use the whole head. 3 mittelgroße saure Äpfel. Apples here are much bigger, so I grab the wrinkliest one out of the bottom of the bowl and chop it up. 2 mittelgroße Zwiebeln. Again, one hunking American onion will do the trick, and it too submits to the knife. All this chopping is doing me good, as I contemplate how I will get to orchestra rehearsal—can I walk 2 miles with a violin on my back? It’ll make a great story/guilt trip for my grandkids.

50g Schweineschmalz. Sorry, Herr Doktor, the best I can do is bacon. (I love the way this classic vegetable dish has now lost its vegetarian status.) I always start with the onion and bacon so I can get them sizzling while I chop the rest and dig in the cupboard for all the odd things that follow. I’m not kidding, it really is a hodge-podge of things that make you wonder how they ever came to put them all together: 1 Lorbeerblatt (a bay leaf), 3 Gewürznelken (cloves), 3 Wacholderbeeren (juniper berries—I found these in a supermarket in the UK), Salz (salt), frisch gemahlenen Pfeffer (freshly ground pepper), Zucker (sugar), 2 EL Essig (vinegar, I use apple cider vinegar), 3 EL Johannisbeergelee (currant jelly, but I usually use lingonberry), 125 ml Wasser (water) to simmer the whole thing in.

Winter. Kale and roots. Cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, potatoes, beets, carrots. I’m leaning toward roots—and dreading rice days (think of all the world cuisines that are rice dominant, then think about the sunny factor). Perhaps I’m attracted to roots because underground is a great place to hibernate, and this weather makes me feel like hibernating.

How to be a cool mom

1. Build a snowmom. Put long hair on her.
2. Build a snow duck. Remember, the beak is flat.
3. Bring a big thermos of cocoa out to maximize snow time.
4. Have steaming hot spaghetti ready when they finally come in.
5. Put the mittens in the dryer while they eat said spaghetti.
6. Repeat.

The meaning of January

It’s snowing. Again.

Not that we’re alone in our misery. The Midwest is slammed, and the entire West Coast, including California, is getting it pretty badly. The LA Times reported this morning that a large percentage of California's orange crop has been destroyed by the record cold. The fact that the cold has had a stronghold for so many days means its effect is that much more damaging.

Now, in an effort to get out of the curry rut, I’ve been delving into my shelf of cookbooks. I reached in randomly, and pulled Der Norddeutsche Küchenkalendar off the shelf, a wedding gift from my Darling Husband’s Dance Partner (before I assumed that coveted role). The book traces the year through the kitchen in northern Germany, and since it feels like we’re living above the Arctic Circle these days, it seemed apt. Each month is considered in its own chapter, with its particular needs and offerings. The not-too-terribly Teutonic author outlines the following as good in January:

Rosenkohl. That’s Brussels sprouts to you and me. I’ve been slowly discovering them, since they’re one of the few fresh, local products I see at the grocers this time of year. I don’t think I ever had them even once growing up. What I didn’t know is that they’re not old-fashioned, but a fairly new cultivar. They’ve only been around for about 150 years, originally cultivated by the Belgians—thus, Brussels sprouts.

Rum. I hardly think of booze as seasonal, but apparently the cookbook's author has a strong association with living in Hamburg, where it’s so cold the river freezes, and the different warm and warming drinks this beverage serves as base for. Perhaps I should learn how to make rum toddy if this weather keeps up.

Schwarzwurzel. Literally, “black root,” but we’ll call it by its proper name, salsify. I first met salsify in France, at one of our favorite restaurants. The eatery was situated on an island in the middle of the Rhine, called, appropriately enough, “l'Ile du Rhin,” but accessible only from the French side. The restaurant itself was called “Le Ranch” because it was attached to riding stables. Indeed, from the dining room, we could look out into the indoor riding ring. If this had been the US of A, they probably would have served burgers and (freedom) fries. But being French, they prepared real food, served up family style. That means the waiter waited patiently while we all decided to have the same thing, and brought big serving dishes and a stack of plates to the table. The evening in question, I forget what the main course was (rabbit or veal, perhaps?), but one of the side dishes was a gratineed vegetably somethingorruther. We had to ask the waiter what it was twice before we finally figured it out. It was heavenly, not stringy, but full-bodied and warming, and creamy white, in complete contrast to the black beast in market. I think I may have identified my quest: the vegetable and a good recipe for it. I'll have to shovel the driveway first, though.

Linsen. We’ve already decided that a pot of lentil soup is what we will offer to British Neighbor’s husband for his birthday later this month. He was so enthusiastic about the pot we shared after they took our boys innertubing up at Snoqualmie Pass, and we need to make up for ambushing him with snowballs this morning as he walked off to work.

Rote Bete. Red beets. Our naturopath waxes poetic about their cleansing properties, and the boys love the way their tongues turn color when they eat them. We’ve discovered they’re sweet as candy when we throw them in the roasting pan with potatoes and chicken. We also like the golden yellow beets, tossed warm in lemon juice, olive oil and cumin. They’re on the if-I-ever-get-the-car-out-of-the-garage-again shopping list.

Orange. Imagine Europe without all the crops resulting from various imperialistic ventures: oranges from China in the sixteenth century, tomatoes, potatoes, corn and chocolate from the new world. Interesting that Northern Germans should consider them their own. I’m a Californian by birth, and I remember fondly picking lemons and kumquats from the garden in winter. This is the month I instinctively search for Meyer lemons, and concoct desserts to feature them. Then there are those tiny key limes, just waiting to make the zingiest pie filling that ever was.

Which brings me back to the LA Times: “In addition to citrus fruits, growers are reporting damage to leafy greens, avocados, strawberries and blueberries.”

Do so many people see strawberries and blueberries as staples in the winter? To me, they epitomize summer—indeed, I have jars of jam on my shelf reflecting different sun-drenched outings, with the attendant sunscreen and bug repellent, to gather obscene amounts of berries and simmer them in huge pots. We make the jam for exactly this time of year, and call it summer in a jar.

Winter is not meant to be a time of bounty: historically, we should be living off food preserved for this season. But I too am modern in my expectations; I shall miss plentiful avocados, which have become one of my indulgences. I have a few in the freezer, but when those are gone, we shall have to wait for spring and the new crop, yes, from California.

E coli, round two

Here we go again. The Seattle Times reported this morning that two more E coli outbreaks are being traced to “prepackaged iceberg lettuce from California.” This time the outbreaks were in the Midwest and on the East Coast, but they traced it back to—yup, the Salinas Valley. It looks like the excess sewage saturating the earth from a cattle farm may have contaminated a field of lettuce, and shared equipment exacerbated the situation once again.

With my resolution to buy heads of lettuce rather than pre-bagged salads, I’ve hit a snag. We’re snowed in, and if we want fresh food, we have to walk out to get it. Trader Joe’s is a reasonable two miles away, so we went there (the only other option is Uwajimaya, an Asian supermarket, but they just tilt their heads and look at you funny when you ask if they have local or organic anything). But Trader Joe’s only sells prepackaged produce. Okay, so they now sell loose bananas and apples, but everything else is hermetically sealed against nuclear holocaust.

I managed to find organic romaine hearts, so even though they’re bagged, they still resemble a head of lettuce. And no matter, either, since we ended up popping even more champagne corks at the neighbors this evening, only noshing to keep the bubbly from going straight to our heads, rather than really eating.

We did put a bowl of spaghetti into the boys before we trundled them off to bed. (Are there parents out there without a microwave? How do they do it?) We'll have salad in a bag tomorrow, or until I can get out to the coop for real veggies.