Bad Home Cooking

Artichoke Frittata...er...scramble

Dawn was once a yoga teacher and a Tai Chi chick. Dawn is an artist (every member of the Tilsner clan has a painting or print of hers on their wall) who is now moving into photography. Dawn is smarter than she should be. She reads science books for fun. Dawn also writes annoyingly well, for someone who isn't a "Writer." Dawn knows how to drive big, scary vans. Dawn thinks she is probably Ted Nugent's love child.

Dawn, as you can see, is one kick-ass gal. It's not her fault I can't cook.

The wrong spot

Synopsized from the film, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," (1981).

Indiana Jones and his Egyptian archeologist friend Sallah meet up with an old Arab man who will read inscriptions on their medallion, which will presumably tell them where the Ark of the Covenant lies buried. The Nazis, who are also looking for the Ark, have their own version of the medal.

OLD MAN: (running his finger around the medallion) This is a warning...not to disturb the Ark of the Covenant.

INDY: Just what I need...How' bout the height of the staff? Did Belloq get it off of there?

OLD MAN: Yes. It is here.  (we see his crooked finger reading the inscription along the bottom.) It says it is...ten jamirs high.

SALLAH: About 75-inches.

OLD MAN: Wait! I am not finished....(he turns the medallion over and continues to read:) ...And one jamir to honor the Hebrew God, whose Ark this is.

Indy and Sallah look at each other.

INDY: Belloq's staff is seven and a half-inches short...They're digging in the wrong spot!

If you're of a certain age, you know where the picture goes from here. I recreate this scene here, however, because it is a terribly apt analogy for what went wrong with a simple Alfredo sauce the other day.

It's all about reading the directions wrong. Or, put another way, it's about digging in the wrong spot.

Alfredo sauce is one of those basics any decent cook can whip up, given the proper ingredients in the fridge (and why else would you keep heavy cream on hand?). Indeed, even though it's a stretch to call yourself a decent cook, you yourself made it a few months back, to surprisingly lovely results.

Alas, the second attempt, made a few weeks ago, was not so successful. So spectacularly unsuccessful that one friend will laugh at you and make the comparison to the above-mentioned cinematic scene.

Here's what happened:

Because it was midnight and you were more than halfway through a bottle of wine, having yet another bitter disagreement with the handsome and passionate but often vexing man in your life, you probably weren't in the best frame of mind for assembling ingredients. Of any kind.

But he requested and you agreed, to make the Alfredo sauce. You lugged out Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and eventually found the pages you were seeking. The recipes for pasta with butter, sage and Parmesan and its variation, fettuccine Alfredo sit on pages 140 and 141 respectively.

You stared down at the open book for several blurry moments, and decided that the recipe for Fettuccine Alfredo, which starts...reduce the butter to two tablespoons...was a literal variation on the recipe for pasta with butter, sage and Parmesan on the other page, which calls for six tablespoons, or 3/4 stick of, butter.

So because you were drunk and upset, you dropped in a whole stick of butter. And you concluded that the words...reduce the butter to two tablespoons really meant, reduce the butter, as in, cook down, until your stick of butter is reduced to two tablespoons.

You never paused to consider whether this was actually possible in the physical world.

You managed to find your saffron, added two eggs and 1/2 cup heavy cream and one cup of grated Parmesan. You lost all track of how long you'd been cooking the butter, yet you continued drinking and yelling. Eventually you dumped all of the above into the boiling butter reduction and stirred vigorously.

You came up with something that looked like...well...like something you might find in a tomb that has been sealed for 2,000 years. You only dimly realized this was not edible, so you threw some Parmesan cheese over your grossly overcooked pasta and fed that to the guitarist sitting at your table. Then you staggered upstairs to pass out.

In the morning, you ventured back down to your kitchen to regard the horror of your own concoction. Two Advils and a cup of coffee later, you reflected on what it means to not follow instructions. And you considered why you continue to dig in the wrong spot.

Update: I really do fancy archeology. And the flamenco guitarist apparently, is not afraid to die. So I'm gonna dig in and make Fettuccine Alfredo again tonight. But with iced tea libation instead.  It's gotta turn out OK tonight, wouldn't you think?

Goodbye Mister

On the Volvo, left to right, are Niko, Rhona, Amir and Lulu.

These are kids who lived with me and my family at U.C. Berkeley's student family housing complex, which we knew as Section B in U.C. Village, or more fondly, simply as The Courtyard, circa 1999-2003.

The Courtyard held two dozen families from around the world, all at Cal to do graduate work. Our small apartments faced an enclosed courtyard with two grassy circles, cluttered with toys and climbing structures. Everyone had children. The children played all day and into the night. We adults adjusted to our cramped homes and learned to spend more time outside, embracing the communal. We spent most weekends sitting on folding chairs on the green, ignoring our chores, pondering life, watching our kids chase each other, holding each other's babies. We were from every state and nation. The potlucks were the stuff of legends.

The University tore down the Courtyard sometime in 2004 or '05 to make way for "nicer" student family digs. Read: More expensive. Our community had largely moved on anyway, graduating and scattering to the four winds. But we've all managed to keep in loose touch, no matter where we are: Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Utah, China, Singapore, Egypt and Australia. 

We've been closer, lately, on the news that beautiful, soulful Amir, aged 9, has crossed the river. The extremely upsetting details are here.

Amir was a beautiful fourth-grader in Berkeley. Long, dark curls. Honey skin. impish smile. And the saddest, oldest eyes you've ever seen on a child. I remember him most running around with the other small boys in his Buzz LightYear costume, wielding his Star Wars-issue light saber mightily. For about a year there, all we had were princesses or super heroes. His mother was a student at Cal. A young, single mom, living there with us in the Courtyard. She was very smart, perhaps too smart. And her demons were very bad. She loved her son, though. She took good care of him; kept him warm and well-fed. She called him "Mister," or "sweetpea." Stafford Gregoire, an English Professor who also lived in the Courtyard and knew Amir, writes about him on his blog, here.

Mental illness is outside the purview of this blog. Instead, I wanted to honor Amir, who was gluten intolerant, by hipping you to a very good, very popular blog, Gluten-Free Girl. Check it out for some A-1 recipes that don't include wheat gluten.

I'm just home from New England. I'm going to make my children something to eat for dinner and some honey tea. Please do the same for someone you love.

In memory of Amir Hassan - 1998-2007
Bye, Mister. We'll see you again.

Do you tofu?

Let's all be honest with each other. Nobody really *likes* tofu, do they? Nobody smacks their lips at the thought of eating a moist, quivering slab of tofu, like they would perhaps a delicious, tangy slice of feta cheese? Even the name tofu is an exotic masking of the unpleasant truth: What we're really eating here is fermented bean curd.

But we all want to like tofu. It's healthy! One of the most versatile foodstuffs around. And so Zen!

And yet, tofu has never worked for me. I ambitiously buy blocks of the stuff, intending to make economical and tasty dishes my kids might eat, such as stir fry, but too often I push 90% of the block into the deepest recesses of my fridge, where it turns into that-which-cannot-be-named, and I must use tongs to throw it out.

I have had some pleasant experiences with tofu. There was a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in San Francisco that made a delicious duck dish, (starring tofu as the duck), and in most better sushi bars they'll happily let you sample the tofu they make themselves; often it's creamier and tastier than what you can find in the stores. My mother-in-law in London marinates thin slabs of tofu in something or another before frying it up and making it actually sort of tasty, although I have never been able to recreate this result for myself.

I was once a vegetarian, and I have many vegetarian and vegan friends. They insist (often voraciously) that tofu is marvelous. I can live on beans and rice until my dying day. I will happily agree that salad can be made delicious. I could easily agree to never put another piece of meat in my mouth. But you can't convince me about the tofu.

In the end, tofu mocks me for not being up to its challenge. And I am resentful.

In a twist of irony, however, both my children seem to like tofu, especially when it's in small chunks floating in miso soup. Sometimes they come to blows over who gets more pieces. They have asked me what the brownish lumps in my stir fry are and because I can't think of a better lie, I admit that it's tofu. And they still eat it. Sometimes they ask for more.

Clearly they don't yet understand what tofu actually is. I am not going to be the one who informs them. Don't let me catch you ratting me out, either. Or I'll come over to your house and cook you dinner.

Julie's Sorta OK tofu stir fry

Get your wok out. Or a wide frying pan.

Buy a block of extra firm tofu. Cut one-third into little cubes, best you can. Wrap up the remaining two-thirds and put in the back bottom shelf of your refrigerator.

Pour soy sauce over the chopped tofu. If you've planned ahead, marinate this for a few hours in the fridge. If, like me, you don't believe in planning ahead, "marinate" for a few minutes before throwing it into the wok.

Get two tablespoons of peanut oil good and hot. Saute some garlic, a little ginger and a a couple of chopped green onions. Toss in your tofu.

Throw in some chopped veggies that are Chinese-ish in nature: Snap peas, red pepper slices, water chestnuts and those little baby corns you can buy in cans. Saute this for a few minutes.

Keep stirring. Add a tablespoon or two of soy sauce. Saute some more.

Serve over rice with kid-friendly chopsticks.

Yeah well?

Here's a contest idea: Make the Bad Home Cook like Tofu.

The winner gets the dubious honor of having me cook, botch, and write up your recipe on this very blog.

C'mon. Show me what you got...

 

Midnight sauce

Everyone needs to have at least one dish they can nail at a moment's notice, my mother-in-law used to tell me.

I took those words to heart. And in the years since she uttered them to me, I've tried hard to find that dish. I've tried to perfect Indian daal, roast chicken, Spanish tortilla, even lentil soup. Yet even when I memorize a recipe's ingredients and uncover the secrets to their best blending, I find I can't actually count on myself to make any dish at all on a moment's notice. I lack basic skills. I lack focus. I choke under pressure. Pick your reason..

Still, I embrace the ideal of the basics. Learn to do the basics well and the rest may well follow. Possibly. So naturally I was delighted to see that Adam, in his new book, The Amateur Gourmet, starts off with his favorite tomato sauce - the sauce that made him fall in love with cooking..."a simple assemblage of ingredients that within thirty minutes becomes something entirely new."

That's what I'm talking about! You can impress friends and family with a solid marinara. And this one is from a famous Crocs-shod celebrity chef. How could I go wrong? Here it is:

From Mario Batali's Babbo Cookbook:

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 Spanish onion, finely diced

4 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced

3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, or 1 tablespoon dried

1/2 medium carrot, finely shredded

2 28-ounce cans peeled whole tomatoes

Kosher salt.

In a three-quart saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and saute a bit. Then add the garlic. Cook for about 8-10 minutes or until soft and light golden brown. Add the thyme and carrot and cook for 5 minutes more. Dump the contents of your cans into a medium bowl, and with your hand, crush the tomatoes and add them, with juices, to the contents of the saucepan. Adam recommends submerging the tomatoes before crushing them, to avoid a tomato juice bloodbath, and I heartily concur.

Bring to a boil, stirring often, then lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the sauce is as thick as hot cereal. (What kind of hot cereal he never says.) When your whole house smells like Italy, season with kosher salt to taste. Serve with attitude.

I have already made this sauce twice. That's twice in the fortnight I've owned the book. It's my own little practice space. I have assembled the sauce by the book (more or less...I only had baby carrots, for example, and a zester. Ouch!), but the recipe is forgiving, and the results have been greatly pleasing. So now I'm experimenting with it. Like a real chef!

My own 10-year-old daughter pronounced this sauce: "Delicious. But you overcooked the pasta."

Late last night I made it for the flamenco guitarist, who arrived after a huge show needing a warm meal. I used a different kind of canned tomato I wasn't happy with, and I didn't get to simmer it long enough to get the desired oatmeal thickness.

Didn't matter. The guitarist was overcome with the aroma of thyme and tomatoes the moment he walked in the door, and he never recovered. "Better watch it," he warned, between bites of fettuccine. "What are you going to write about if you're not the Bad Home Cook anymore?"

Well. Let's not overstate things. It's not like I was going to open a cookbook and find a tomato sauce to experiment with on my own. Like a pre-schooler at her first swimming lesson, I needed to be pushed. Adam pushed me, and I'm hugely grateful. Yeah, I was an editorial snoot when reviewing his book, but look what his book is doing for my culinary life! I hurt because I love, baby!

My mother-in-law's going to be so impressed!

Book Review:The Amateur Gourmet -- Bad like me

Pearls of wisdom from Adam D. Roberts' new book, The Amateur Gourmet:

"Why burn my kitchen down if I can order Chinese?"

"The meek shall not inherit anything in the kitchen."

And my personal favorite: "Cooking gets you laid."

Adam is a fellow food-blogger and first-time author. He is also a kindred spirit, although we've never met. Both of us grew up on American cheese slices and Wonder Bread. Both of us came late to the kitchen. Both of us are from demographics that are expected to come equipped with basic kitchen instincts. Just as a killer vinaigrette is supposed to be in the playbook of every gay man, so too is it expected that every Mommy knows how to make a basic roast chicken and potatoes. And yet.

Adam's blog is on my blogroll for good reason. He's about five years ahead of me in his culinary education, and his observations as a budding foodie are devoured by a neophyte like myself. I learn basic skills. I laugh. I am entertained. He's a very creative soul. A talented writer, and wickedly funny. Impossible not to like. And he sings!!

I'm afraid I'm terribly in love with him. Alas. Even though I have a penchant for gay-ish straight men (my ex can handily belt out any Broadway show tune you know, along with choreography, while the flamenco guitarist hates sports but loves to shop for shoes), my love is doomed to be unrequited. December-May romances between two iffy cooks of different sexual persuasions tend not to work out in the long run.

So I watch and admire from afar. And was I purple with envy when I read he had a book coming out, based on his blog? Hell yeah. But in the spirit of camaraderie, I ran out to buy it. I coughed up full retail, picking up the lone copy at a chain bricks and mortar bookstore although I could have gotten it much more cheaply on Amazon.com. I wanted to support a fellow food blogger in his quest to earn out his advance, and to perchance experience some small measure of satisfaction from the crap-shoot that is American publishing.

The Amateur Gourmet: How to Shop, Chop, and Table-Hop like a Pro (almost), is a light-hearted, easy, enjoyable read. I guffawed out loud in public more than once. And I did learn several helpful, clueless newbie cooking tips that I didn't know before: How to dice an onion, for example. (OK, maybe I still don't quite get it, but at least now I have it in writing), or the fact that you can't cook fish en papillote in wax paper. The book is a series of connected lessons about what it means to be in love with food, its preparation, and its sharing, via anecdotes of his friends and family.

As a fan of his blog, I read it eagerly. But as an editor, I had criticisms. The book is loose and light, with an airy tone and lots of extraneous passages meant, I think, to make page count (I know. I've written a few light and airy books myself.) The writing is charming, but shallow. More style than substance. Time and again I was left wanting more. Yeah, you're at a farmer's market for the first time...what does it smell like? What's your mood? What does the apple farmer look like? Where do you have to go afterward....paint me a picture, damnit!!  A lot of his dialog seems superfluous, taking up space while not pushing the narrative forward. I get the feeling that he was rushed. That in the thrill of his first-ever book deal, he agreed to a six-month turnaround that left him little time to marinate his copy, and that with a few more months, he could have presented a tighter, more significant book.

His lunch with Gourmet editor and legendary foodie Ruth Reichl, for example, is a wasted opportunity, written like a meandering college essay. The dialog just takes up space. Where is his signature bitchy wit? His endearing self-deprecation?  His paper-cut observations? His chapter on cooking for a date could be so deliciously wrong...yet it falls flat. Why?

I was left feeling frustrated in the end. Because I so connected with the book's concept, and because he's such a likable guy, and because I have marveled at the talent displayed in his blog, I felt the book should  be stronger. I enjoyed it, but I wanted to enjoy it more. It's not unlike the feeling I have after working two hours on a soup that turns out meh...just OK.

I know this is his opening salvo. His test pancake, so to speak. It opens the door for more seasoned work to come. And I look forward to it. The flap copy says he's working on a novel (aren't we all) - but that's good news to me. I'll buy it eagerly. This guy is already good. But like a serious balsamic vinegar, perhaps he needs to age a few years more before he's ready to really kick our asses.

I'll tell you how his basic tomato sauce, the sauce that started it all for him, (thanks to Mario Batali) turned out for me in the next entry. Stay tuned.