Dance of Autumn WindThere are plenty of places to get food to eat outside around here, if one is wont to go looking. From the place I work, on can turn left or right and reach rows of food carts, panel vans and smaller things serving up food from many of the corners of the world. The busy people in those carts smile and wave, and dish up the food in foamed containers, and point to the stacks of white plastic silverware and disposable napkins sitting on the shelf. Where appropriate, there are disposable wooden chopsticks in a loose pile next to the chili sauces and the nam pla. I like those. I sometimes think I would be better served if I would bring them a ceramic bowl to fill instead, so that I could scurry away with it in my hands and eat my food with an element of civilization. I never remember to bring one.
Again, if one is wont to look, it is also possible to find good places to then eat, outside. It is perhaps because of the weather around here that there are so many public spaces under overhangs, sometimes with places to sit. I like to think that the overhangs came first from a strange and unexamined need for shelter from our skies, and the seating came along later as a pragmatic afterthought. I do not know. I find it thrilling, though, to eat a hot meal on a cold afternoon, under protection from what might fall from above and yet being thoroughly out in the air. I am fond of eating outside.
It is even better, through accident of local topology, to spend one's meal looking out on the tops of trees.
Message at the DepthThis time in the box, we have been gifted turnips. They are white, a soft, luminous white, a perfect white. There is a depth to their lustre, like cream, or skin, and they smell of snap and the clean air of Autumn. They speak of the season, and are absolutely lovely.
They have sent to us apples, too, a kind I did not know before. They call them of the kind goldrush. They are spotted and ashed, and glum with a matte skin. They are nothing to look at. Inside, they are crisp and firm and achingly white, sharp and true. They have a heady apple taste of sweetness under those thin skins. They go well with cheese. They are wonderful with cheese.
They sent us a jar of something.
Hey, Greg!Here is what you will need. You will need some French green lentils, those small lentils with a depth of color that I cannot describe well. You will need some good sausage; sweet or hot, I leave it up to you, but I like sweet. You will need some broth, and some onions, some oil and some salt. You will need a handful or two of good fresh spinach.
Get a pot hot and put the sausage in, perhaps a link or two, in a little bit of oil (prick the casing as needed, etc. - who knows whose eyes might cross these words?). Cut up two onions (or one monster onion), and throw the slices in on top of the sausage. Let that cook until the onions are happy. Occasionally add a splash of stock to get up the brown bits on the bottom. Pull out the sausage, slice it, and add it back to the pot.
Add a cup of the lentils, and three cups of stock. Bring to a simmer and cover; let it simmer for an hour or so. Wash and stem the spinach, chop it into bits and add it to the pot when there's fifteen minutes of cooking time left.
It goes real well over rice; salt to taste.
To Bet Upon The RecipeIn a way, a recipe is an oracle. Gather close, she tells you. Bring me your sacrifices of butter and sugar and flour, offer me leavening, the dried seed of a rare orchid. Her scarf is soft against your cheek. Follow my whims, she says. When you are done with me (and I with you) your kitchen shall be full with the smells of heaven, and perfection on the counter. Her hand is warm. Follow me, she says, and you will have reward. The seduction of a recipe is the promise of a better future, one with something tasty in it.
Real recipes generally gloss over this. They are mechanistic. Here is your list of things, and please check it twice. Put this in here and that on thus. Set this for such and adjust the other to the middle of that. There is no room for a missed course, no mention of what happens from step to step. Makes two dozen.
I recently made cabbage soup; as above, cabbage soup is very simple. Brown 1/2 a pound of sausage in a little oil in a large pot. Clean, core, and shred one head of cabbage. From the pot, take out the sausage, and add the cabbage, with a scattering of salt. Add a cup or two of stock to the cabbage. Slice the sausage, and add it back to the pot. Add some water. Cover and simmer until done, an hour or two. Serve hot. Makes 12 servings. Salt to taste.
To the above, I can add some advice.
Seek good sausage. If you have the luxury of a local butcher who knows their salt, be their patron. Get to know them, and make them give you the best sausage they can muster. My grandmother had an old world butcher two blocks from her home, and we never ate better sausage then that sausage (the fresh quality lard was also the reason her pastry was so good). Owing to the nature of cabbage, I would recommend a sausage that is seething with fennel, if you can find it, but most any good sausage will do wonderfully well. Using more sausage than the recipe calls for is never a mistake. Make sure it gets good and brown, and leaves all sorts of brown bits all over the bottom of the pan.
Seek good cabbage. Find a farm market, or a farm. Buy it in season. Look for tight leaves, and good weight. It should chop up crisp and wet. Note that it will expel a good seal of liquid as it cooks. Note, too, that at some point in the cooking the pot will emit terrible, terrible smells. They will clatter and crawl from beneath the lid, and sour the lemon balm on the sill, and scare the cat. This will be all right; the cabbage will then turn sweet, sweet.
If you like, caramelize onions with the sausage. Use more stock than water for a heartier soup. Use red cabbage or green. Add garlic, or more crushed fennel or cumin seeds, or hing. It is hard to beat it up so badly that it is no longer good to eat, if you're careful.
Serve by the lit wick of a tall candle, in a wide bowl on a winter's night. Eat with a favorite spoon. Go back for seconds. Enjoy.
The Doorbell is Yet BrokenSomeone is pounding on the door. I have fallen asleep under Juliet again on the sofa, and she is snoring lightly, face upturned. Our books have fallen to the floor, and I can see from here I have lost my place again. My leg is numb. I make effort to roll myself from under her, but I am clumsy with waking, and she tumbles over me into the sofa with a grunt. I stand up and try to shake sense into my leg.
"You've lost your place again," she says from the cushions. She is prone and soft, with a sleepy eye on me. There is someone pounding at the door. It does not occur to me that it is the front door, the unused door. I manage to limp there, and open it.
Outside in the moon's light is a ghost. He is tall, impossibly tall, with a drawn face that makes him look taller. He looks old in years and old in life. He is wearing white clothes: an older but smart looking coat, a bone shirt, rumpled white slacks. His skin is whiter still, and he hair is so light as to be nearly white, helped by the glim of the moon. He stands surprised still in a pose of knocking, making a murmer of a sound with his lips. I rub my eyes.
"Marco," he says. He drops his arm as he says it, breaking the spell. I see he is trembling a little. "I need to see Marco."
I do not know what to do with him. I have never seen him before, and such complete strangers are rare up here in these hills. I test the feel of Marco's home, to see if it is made tense by this man. I am made as mute by him as he is by me, and I wonder if I am dreaming. There is a clatter behind me; Juliet has gone to the kitchen to make tea. I am willing to bow to her judgement. "Come in," I tell him. "There's tea. Come in." He moves to me to take my hand, and holds it as if for strength. I lead him to the kitchen.
I have only managed to seat the man at the table when Marco comes in through the study door. "Jacobo!" The man has only enough time to stand before Marco has gathered him in his arms. Marco is happy to see him, and I am glad of that. Juliet is puring the tea. Marco steps back and grips the man's shoulders. He makes Marco look like a happy child.
"Jacobo," he says. He searches his face. "What is the matter?"
Jacobo starts to shake harder, and sits down again.
Hey, Aleecia!I do not really have a set recipe for Irish Soda Bread. When I need to make it, I generally flail around for a recipe; it is simple stuff, and the recipes are generally very similar. Google is a help here, as is Jeff Smith. When I have these reminders in front of me, I reach deeply into memory and soul, and bring forth from my ancestry the honed skills of cookery I carry in every Irish fibre of my being. Well. Let us instead be more accurate, and say instead that I play the most dangerous game when baking: I wing it. No matter; it always seems to work out.
Here's what I did for the most recent batch. The thing itself is very simple. Into a bowl, put:
- 2 1/2 cups whole milk
- 1 1/2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
I will note here that this bread is an excellent way to get rid of milk that has been in the fridge long enough to get a little off. Don't use milk that is obviously toxic, of course. I like apple cider vinegar to add the acid because it doesn't introduce any heavy flavors, but most any vinegar will do. Should you select rice wine vinegar, add a splash more than called for. As an alternate ingredient, you can replace the milk and vinegar with 2 1/2 cups cultured buttermilk (which makes a different bread, but it also quite good).
Into a big, big bowl, dump the following (you do not need to care about sifting):
- 6 cups flour
- 2 tsp. baking soda
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 3 tbsp. corn starch
- 1 tbsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 cup currants
- 1 tsp. ground caraway seed
Mix all that stuff up well with a wooden spoon. As to flour, you can use all-purpose just fine. That last batch I made was with high-test hard wheat flour, which works too. You can leave the currants and the caraway out, if you want to. That last batch used fennel instead of caraway, and I think that worked out okay. Etc.
Pour the wet stuff into the dry stuff, and quickly mix. Don't over mix; you don't need to. Instead, turn the mass out onto the counter and knead to a uniform dough (if you put currants in the stuff, you'll know you're good when the currants start trying to escape). Divide the dough in half, pat the halves into round, flattened mounds, and then let them rest under a towel for 10 minutes.
After resting, slash the tops of the loaves with a cross pattern with a sharp, sharp knife. Put loaves onto a baking stone in a very preheated 375 degree oven (if you don't have a baking stone, use an ungreased baking sheet). They'll be done in 40 minutes, or when they are golden brown.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Commentary accepted at pen@goob.com, although the traps are agressive and the pointy bits simply drip with dark liquour. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.