Bad Home Cooking

Crap crepes

I have no idea how she learned about crepes. It could only have come from her father. She says it the English way. "Creps."  "Mummy? Can we make creps tonight?"

"Creps?" I put down my beer and stared at her. "Creps? Do you mean Crepes?" Crapes.

"Yeah, you know, those pancake thingies. But they're thinner. And you put Nutella in them."

Now she was sounding normal, like my side of the family. Those pancake thingies.

Why not, I said. With no other dinner plans in mind, it was looking like breakfast cereal or canned soup anyway. Why not crepes?

As it happened, I had a recipe for them sitting in the yellowing pile of newspaper recipe clippings I keep on a serving plate in my cookbook shelf. I'd always intended to study it and try my hand, and as always I'd never get around to it unless I got a little nudge.

Crepes and me go way back. Back to my first days in San Francisco, anyway, when the dot.com boom was kicking into overdrive, the rents were high and the apartments scarce. We stumbled onto a little creperie in sunny Parnassus Heights that sustained us for several weeks as we got settled. Growing up as I had, on TV dinners and frozen Eggo waffles, my first roasted red pepper and feta crepe was a revelation. And that was before I had the Nutella crepe.

At the time, a restaurant called Ti-Couz did bang-up business serving rude buckwheat crepes to an adoring Mission-district crowd. More worldly friends shrugged. Crepes are sold out of street carts in France and elsewhere. But to a naif from the backwoods of suburban Los Angeles, discovering crepes felt much like discovering the wheel. Since then I've associated crepes with a European sophistication that I can never approach, only worship from afar.

But this recipe, and an entire page of exegesis, from the L.A. Times, promised otherwise: Making delicious, delicate crepes: It's easier than you think. That's probably why I cut it out a year ago.

It sounded easy enough. Flour, eggs, milk, sugar and butter. Chilled for an hour, then spread thinly into a hot crepe pan. I could even make the buckwheat galettes like they served at Ti-Couz.

So I used up the last of my eggs, wondering only in passing about what it would do to my cholesterol level.  I whipped the whole thing up by hand because my blender no longer works properly and I still haven't worked up the gumption to buy myself a food processor. I chilled the blend for one hour per the instructions. I do not have a crepe pan, but why do I need that fancy hi-falutin' crap? My Target-bought non-stick pan, the one that lovingly bears my tortillas, would do just fine.

And it did. How wrong can you go with eggs and flour and sugar? I mean if kids are going to eat it? I made, er, pancake-like crepes, and covered them with sugar and lemon juice (and several with only Nutella), and the kids were delirious with pleasure.

But I can see it's an art that needs a lot of fine tuning on my part. I need to practice the details so my crepes will be the sort of paper-thin wrappers I can then stuff with all manner of savory or sweet delights. (I'll worry about how exactly I plan on making those later). And one day, when I'm a competent home cook, I'll be able to whip up a mess 'o crepes any old time I feel like it.

And oh, how cool would it be if I could make crepes? My daughter would never go abroad and act the unsophisticated rube I did. At least she's already got the poncy pronunciation down. But if she calls them those pancake thingies again I'll have to take away her Nutella.

Cod cakes redux: A lot of work for bland

In as much as I have an "audience" for this blog, a lot of you have asked me with a sort of knowing wink and conspiratorial nudge, whether I don't embellish my culinary screw ups for the sake of fodder.

To this I say, come over and let me cook you a meal. You will be underwhelmed at best, and at worst, forced to accompany me to the corner Panda Garden and pay for half the Kung Pao chicken take-out.

In other words. I still suck. I don't make any of this up.

Take Friday night, for example. I got it into my head to try my hand at cod cakes again. The flamenco guitarist told me the right way to do it, the Andalucian way, was to make them without potato. That was the way his father had done it. I took the bait.

I found the right kind of cod, the sort they sell in a little wooden box at a big price  I bought good olives and the fixings for a salad. Since I was at the fancy store, I bought a $6 loaf of bread with walnuts and cranberries. Through it all, I was imagining a delicious and simple tapas meal; a lovely way to kick off the weekend. When I came home, I searched the internet for a recipe that didn't include potato. I came up with one from the Food Network's Emeril Live show. I came up with a few others, including one in a Spanish cookbook. Every recipe offered a slightly different way of cooking the cod, so I decided to wing it.

Let's cut right to the chase, shall we?

First, I over-soaked the cod.

Generally, one must soak salt cod in water for at least 24 hours (preferably 36) changing the water a number of times, or else the fish is simply too salty to eat.

Because I stopped paying attention around Valentine's Day, I soaked my cod for almost three days. I didn't think it could hurt. But I realized my gaffe after I'd cooked the stuff and found it almost entirely tasteless. I'd say like cardboard, except that I imagine cardboard has better flavor. Perhaps it's not my fault. Perhaps I'd purchased inferior cod. I am too inexperienced in this realm to say.

Perhaps. But I bet you've never met someone who soaked all the salt out of the salt cod. Now you have.

The experiment went downhill from there. I didn't have the right kind of parsley. I played fast and loose with this recipe, which I'm not even going to detail here, which was easy enough except that I'd already cooked the cod, per another recipe. Then my blender wouldn't blend the ingredients correctly for some maddening reason that I chalked up to growing negative energy. (I realized after the fact that it's missing a piece). The "dough" didn't seem right, but I pressed it into little tablespoon-sized balls and dredged what I had in heavily seasoned flour, hoping to add some flavor back in. I heated the better part of a new bottle of olive oil in a heavy saucepan.

The result: Cod turds hardly worth the effort of chewing.

Tony had arrived after sitting in traffic for two hours. L.A. traffic is a lousy appetizer, and nobody was in a good mood anymore. My kitchen was wrecked. There was very little wine. And now this.

Don't look so glum, Tony said after trying one of the miserable nuggets. These taste pretty good, considering how bad your last try at cod cakes turned out.

The final insult. He'd ranted over how good those were at the time, since at least they had the flavor and texture of potato covering my mistakes. These wretched little mistakes were greatly inferior, and I knew it and he knew it, but he was not prepared to cop. All I could do was smile weakly and accept the platitude. At least there was salad and bread and olives to supplement. Maybe now was the time to chug the last of the two-buck Chuck.

The weekend ultimately improved, although the remaining cod turds did not, even after resting in the refrigerator overnight.

I've resolved to do any further experimentation in secret. And when I can bring it up to edible, I'll unleash my efforts on those brave enough to try. In the meantime, I'm not cooking anything but pasta for the household. Everyone involved should be greatly relieved. 

My heart on a plate: Sorta shortbread valentine cookies with jam

I didn't sign up for this housewife stuff.

Self-employment when you're also a mother is often confused with being a SAHM (that's "stay-at-home-mom," for all of you not in the parenting universe, if any. It's the more politically correct term for the outdated "housewife.")

I'm not a housewife. Take one look at my house and you won't disagree. Besides. I'm just not worthy of the title. A woman who can manage home and hearth, cook, clean, budget, schedule and raise  kids is worth far more than rubies, as the saying goes. I'd say more like somewhere in the high six-figures.

I can't do any of that. Or certainly not well. But that doesn't keep me from trying sometimes.

My friend Lynn (worth $350K a year plus bonus if she can learn to pronounce several important Pokemon names), was making these Valentine's Day cookies the other day. "It's so Martha," she shrugged apologetically as she cut perfect heart shapes out of a perfect dough. "I can't stand her really, but she's got a lot of good ideas. My husband and the kids love these."

I avoid direct contact with Martha Stewart media, much like I avoid staring directly into the sun. But I agree that her ideas are often clever, when they're not totally over the top. And because I'm always looking for new ways to prove to my kids that their mother loves them, even though she can't cook or bake, I scribbled down the recipe from Lynne's photocopy and brought it home to try myself.

Here it is, in abbreviated form.

Shortbread Raspberry heart sandwich cookies

1 cup softened unsalted butter (that's two sticks. I find that kind of detail useful)
3/4 cup confectioner's sugar, plus some for dusting
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
seedless raspberry jam for filling

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in vanilla. Beat in flour and salt a little at a time.
Form the resulting dough into discs, wrap them in wax paper, and chill them for at least three hours.
Preheat the oven to 300. Roll out the dough and cut out your hearts, half with an additional heart (or whatever you have) window in the middle. Cook for 10-15 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes before moving to a cookie rack. Warm the jam, and spread on the whole cookie. Place the cookie with the cutout window on top, for a little sandwich with the jam showing.

Or something like that. My hearts were uneven and sloppy. I think I let the dough get too warm, or I handled it too much, or I didn't roll it out right. Pick your reason. It would seem I need one of those newfangled  silicone baking sheets. After a lot of effort and the best intentions, the final product just wasn't what it could have been. 

But the kids didn't much care.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Rosemary red soup with alien heads

I had two bundles of beets on my counter, marinating in their own dirt in a plastic bag from Ralph's. Pondering them, I knew they could go two ways: abandoned and left to rot before being thrown into the trash, or cut up and made into a soup of some sort.

It was a few days after my Soup Swap, and the pressure had receded enough for me to consider the latter option: Time to try my Rosemary Red Soup again.

I had another epiphany as I chopped off their greens: Beets are alarmingly fleshy, like body parts. And they bleed.

I called in my seven-year-old son. "Look," I said. "Alien heads."

Tony looked up from the paper and rolled his eyes. "Great. Like I'm gonna eat that now," he said.  The drama-Tween in the next room shrieked. "That's disgusting, Mother!!"

But the boy was piqued. My master-plan is to turn him into a young man who cooks. I've already shown him how to make an omelet, currently his favorite dinner, and he's showing a real interest in the alchemy of creating food. He ran in to watch me decapitate the remaining beets with great interest. "If you eat enough of them," I said, "you'll pee red."

He was unimpressed by this last detail. After a few moments of watching, he snatched a head and ran through the house holding it by its tendon-like bottom, eventually chasing his sister outside and down the block.

Having thusly distracted the children, here's how you make Rosemary Red Soup:

3 medium carrots, chopped
2 beets, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
1 cup red lentils, washed and picked over
2 bay leaves
6 cups water or stock
2-3 tablespoons lite miso

Saute the diced onions in oil, add carrots and beets and saute five minutes more. Add the herbs, lentils, bay leaves and stock. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer 40 minutes or so. Remove bay leaves. Let cool a bit, then puree soup in a blender, in batches if necessary. Dissolve miso in 1/2 cup water and add to soup. Reheat and serve.

You'll remember that you need RED beets for this. The results are quite pleasing, when you do it right.

Unfortunately, my likening this delicious vegetarian soup to a blood pudding made with alien heads backfired. Tony balked at tasting it. The girl wouldn't even enter the kitchen. And the boy wanted a glass of the stuff to play with outside.

I ate a bowl, patted myself on the back for finally having made it correctly, and gifted the rest to my friend Joey, an avowed vegetarian and soup-lover who I knew would appreciate it more than anyone. Alien heads are vegetarian, you know.

Mon Dieu! Soupe a l'ail aux pommes de terre

Everyone is sick. Everyone. Half my kids' class. Their teachers. Friends, neighbors. My daughter was sick all last week, briefly recovered, and then this very evening was felled by another passing ailment. 

I'm not sick. But just in case I decided I'd better take preventative action.

When tout le monde is sick, what better than to attempt a garlic soup?

And not just any garlic soup. But the one memorialized in Julia Child's famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Yes, even I have this classic (thanks, Babs!), although in the four years it's been on my shelf I've been far too intimidated to try anything within its pages.

I have a vague, ill-thought-through plan to teach myself how to cook better by going through the classic tomes, starting with the basics, and working my way up to scarier things, like, you know, Supremes de volaille en chaud-froid, blanche neige, or Diplomate pouding de cabinet.

But not this week. Tonight, soupe a l'ail aux pommes de terre (garlic soup with potatoes) seemed just within my abilities. I mean, it's garlic and water, potatoes and some herbs. How bad could I mess it up?

Shhh! Don't answer that. Here's what you do:

Separate a head of garlic so that you have about 16 cloves. Drop them into boiling water for 30 seconds, rinse with cold water, and peel.

Drop them into your lovely soup pot, along with:

2 quarts water
2 tsp salt
pinch of pepper
2 cloves
1/4 tsp. sage
1/4 tsp. thyme
1/2 bay leaf
4 parsley sprigs
3 Tbspns olive oil

Boil slowly for 30 minutes. Strain it, and return to the saucepan. Add about 3 cups of diced "boiling potatoes" (I used Yukon Gold) and a good pinch of saffron to the broth and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Correct the seasoning (whatever that means), and serve with French bread and grated Parmesan cheese.

Naturally I played fast and loose with the herbs. My fresh bay leaves were apparently purged by the Flamenco Guitarist in the course of cleaning out my fridge (he still gets the purple badge of courage for taking on this ugly chore), and who has parsley laying around? But I had thyme and I had sage and I had cloves, and it was all smelling pretty good after a few simmery minutes. Oh yeah, and the saffron. I almost forgot the saffron. I redeemed myself at the last minute.

I'd like to tell you that I ruined this experiment. It's not out of the question, you know. I wondered how it would turn out even as I peeled the garlic cloves. But I'm happy to report the opposite: The soup was  golden and flavorful, delicious even. I had even had the foresight to buy a baguette earlier in the evening, and small bits of this, torn up and thrown into the bowl to soak up the broth, and with a little Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top of the whole thing...a delight I was not expecting this particular evening. I ate two entire bowls. The boy, when I could pry him from his Nintendo, ate one. He said, and I quote, "I kind of like it OK."

The girl, sadly, was in bed, and not to be roused, although her brother kindly brought her up a bowl and put it at her bedside. She was already beyond the help of even Julia Child's garlic soup. The question now is, am I? Stay tuned.