Sunday, January 31, 2010

"Nachos Here, Get Yer Nachos Here"

I've been thinking about nachos all week.  Actually, perhaps "thinking about nachos" isn't exactly right.  More accurately, I've been "hankering after nachos" since last Sunday.  What is about Sunday that puts nachos into the mind?  Football?  God?  Perhaps there is no connection between nachos and Sundays.  Perhaps there is also no connection between nachos and sauteed, shredded kale.  That is, there was no connection until I did it.  I put some kale on some nachos, and the world shook, just a little bit it shook.

 
The beautiful thing about these "healthy" nachos---actually, screw the quotes---is that while they are indeed healthy nachos, they still taste like stadium nachos, like nachos from a gas station whose cheese comes from a pump, thanks in large part to the pickled jalapenos.  But let's get back to this healthy business. 

I started by deep frying some really nice corn tortillas.  When I was visualizing these nachos, I didn't see the typical nachos with their melted cheese and their burnt chip edges.  I saw nachos with cheese sauce, pickled jalapenos, and shredded lettuce.  Ah, but shredded lettuce is so predictable!  So forget shredded lettuce, I thought to myself.  Kale!  I will saute shredded kale and garnish my nachos with it.  It will make the junk food lovers roll over in their graves!  And I'll add some spicy beans, too.  But they won't be black beans because, again, black beans on nachos is too predictable.  Let them be kidney beans!  And let me cook them with some sauteed onion and crushed chili, and let me simmer them in beef stock. 


 As you can see, like the great pyramids of Egypt, I built these nachos in tiers.  One of the problems with inferior nachos, such as you can find in places like Buffalo Wild Wings, or pretty much anywhere else in this blasted sports-bar world, is that the cooks don't bother to properly build the nacho pile.  They just chuck stuff onto chips and call the pile nachos.  Strictly forbidden.  My healthy nachos would not be chucked together.  Like the Louvre in Paris and the Arc de Triomphe (also in Paris), these nachos would be built, and built to impress.  It has been said, that when a duke lays eyes upon a poorly built pyramid of nachos, he imposes a mandatory punishment on all the denizens of his dukedom---that is, he cuts of everyone's hands.  Not that pleasant.

This is a single, kale nacho (to emphasize the cheese sauce):

To make the cheese sauce, you must first learn to make bechamel.  To make bechamel, you do this:

Cook an equal part of flour in some oil (or oil and butter combined); when the flour is fully cooked, it will either be "blonde" or "brunette."  (I prefer brunettes.)  Once this happens, add some milk and bring the milk just to a boil.  Then, turn down the heat and slowly add your shredded cheese(s).  You might also want to add some paprika.  Finally, keep doing this until you've got a cheese sauce that's cheese sauce consistency.  And that's pretty much it.  Now, go forth all of you, and build some nachos. 

Saturday, January 30, 2010

shoe string fries (and tuna mayo)

When you miss someone, and that someone is in a city known for good food, and you are in a small town that likes to think it's known for good food, and you are sitting around in your apartment, and you wish that that someone was with you, right now, sitting beside you and digesting her food, apart from endlessly browsing pictures of her on the internet, there is one sure-fire thing you can do to bring her closer: you can make shoe string french fries to go along with your tuna mayo (and that's English for tuna salad).

 
First of all, let me say that the new blogger is awesome!  Look how huge that photo is!  Look at those shoe string fries!  No matter where you are, you cannot get shoe string fries like those at any restaurant anywhere.  Not in Paris and certainly not in New York City. 

Now it just occurred to me that I don't have too much to say about this lunch, except this: tuna salad in a buttered and pan fried, split-side hot dog bun is way awesome.  The particular bun pictured above is maybe too wimpy for tuna mayo, but that is not important.  What's important is that the someone mentioned above will take one look at my lunch, and a small magnet will rotate inside of her.  A small magnet will rotate inside of her and, like a Muslim stopping and turning east at the call to prayer, she will stop in her tracks somewhere and, for a moment, as if pulled by the magnet, face home.  At least, I would like to think so.


 

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Recipe request: How to make good pizza dough

So I got an e-mail from Paul.  Paul lives in L.A.  Paul used to live in Chicago, and I used to live with him, and when we lived together I used to make pizza once, sometimes twice a week.  Paul, BTW, is an awesome chef who has worked with Roland Liccioni at Chicago's Le Fracais and Old Town Brasserie.  He currently caters parties for the ultra-rich and famous.  Anyway, here's our e-mail exchange:

this is what your dough ball should look like before you let it rise: smooth n round

> Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:18:18 -0800
> From: Paul@xxx
> Subject: pizza
> To: Jono@xxx


> what's up my friend? i just made a couple pizzas for [earl parker] and i and they sucked. still. i've tried several recipes and going recipeless and using my soul and nothing works. will you please tell me the instructions i should follow in order to emulate your beautiful doughs? my pizza stone only "unbrowns" the crust and i get better results on a baking sheet. i have an old gas oven that gets nice and hot, no convection option though. yo joe.


Pauly

This is what you do:

First, my new habit is to proof the yeast.  That means I mix the warm water with the yeast and a touch of sugar, and then I let it stand in a warm place, like on top of the oven that's heating up, for about ten minutes or until it foams.  There is nothing more annoying that thinking you're gonna eat pizza and then discovering that you've made dough with dead yeast.  When that happens, I call my local pizza shop and beg them to sell me dough balls.  Anyway, avoid that.  OK, here's the recipe I use; it makes two dough balls that turn into two 12" pizzas or bigger, depending on how big you stretch them:

about 1 TBS yeast (if you get your yeast in packets, use one packet)
1 cup warm water (for a while I figured hot water would be better, but it's actually worse because it can stunt the yeast, I think)
1.5 tsp sugar

2.5 cups AP flour
2 TBS olive oil
1 tsp salt or one good pinch

So you proof the yeast (yeast, water, sugar in a measuring cup) and then, once it foams, you stir in the salt and the EVO.  Then you dump that mixture in your bowl of flour and mix it until it's ready to knead.  Then you knead it a bit, divide it into two balls, if that's what you want to do, and then you knead it until it's really smooth and hard.  Then you have two options:

Option 1: let the dough proof up a lot in a warm place, like near the oven, then punch it back down, let it relax enough so you can work it, i.e. toss it out, then you toss it out onto a surface (I still use those flat-rate US Mail boxes) dusted with cornmeal.  Then top it quickly, just in case your dough is a bit sticky, though it shouldn't be, and slide it into a hot ass oven, ON THE STONE.

Option 2 (and this is the better option): once you have made the dough and formed the balls, pop them directly into the refrigerator overnight.  This means you need to plan pizza one day in advance (or eat one dough ball on the day you make it, and then use the other the next day).  Resting the dough in the fridge will give you a better flavor because the yeast will develop more.  Dough that does not rest a day or two turns into really bland crust--even if you brush the edges with EVO.  IMPORTANT: if you choose this option, make sure you tightly wrap (double wrap) your dough in plastic wrap (or in a strong freezer bag with the air all sucked out) before putting it into the fridge.  It happens that I made dough yesterday for pizza today, and so, this afternoon, when I came home from the dentist--eight cavities--and looked in the fridge, I saw that my dough had proofed so much that one of the balls burst a hole in the cheap-o freezer bag, and so there was this crusty, puffy nub on the outside of the bag.  It looked like a wart. 

Anyway, that's what you do.  Some other important tips:

Spend the money on good mozz.  I buy fresh, hand-pulled mozz and I pay about 8 bucks for one ball, which is enough for two pizzas.  And I don't shred the mozz.  I cut the ball in half, and then I slice (rather thickly) the halves into half-moon-ish shapes; then I lay the cheese down (some people put the cheese down first and then sauce around it), so that the pieces of mozz are near each other but not overlapping.  And naturally, I put an ample amount of shredded parm on there for salt purposes.  I also make the sauce a touch on the salty side.  And use your stone!  Pre-heat the oven with the stone in it for at least 45 minutes at 475 degrees.  You want that stone wicked hot. 

Later dude, send me a postcard from L.A.

Jono 

p.s.

Monday, January 25, 2010

pasta e fagioli? pasta fazool? pasta and beans?


It rained heavily all morning. When I drove home from campus, I drove through deep puddles. The fields along Cemetery Road were completely submerged. In the summer, corn and winter squash grow in them. Today, they looked like a marsh. I could only see the gold tips of the cover crops. Everything else was under water. Then, I drove home and made pasta and beans.

Pasta and beans goes by many names. Pasta and beans is only one of them, but here, its monikers are not what interest me. What interests me is food and how the poor feed themselves, not just the Italian poor with their pasta e fagioli, but the poor around the world. What I'm saying is that pasta and beans is world staple. It's pasta and beans in one place, beans and rice in another place, beignets and beans in still another, and beans on toast in yet one more. The point is, pasta and beans is beans and a starch, and it's everywhere. Even here in Northampton.


That's some leftover American Chop that I added some beans to. It was pretty good. In fact, it was really good. It was so delicious that, when the leftover American Chop ran out, I went in for some straight-up pasta and beans. I decided to go with campanelle instead of elbow macaroni, though when I say "decided," I mean I had some Barilla campanelle in my pantry.

beans on toast (nice, Hungry Ghost toast)

Anyway, I just went onto the Barilla website and they don't recommend pairing their campanelle with beans. They recommend pairing it with some nice Barilla pasta sauce, which isn't a huge surprise.

Lastly, if you want to learn how to cook dried beans, see my post called Beans, Beans, Beans. And if you don't know how to cook pasta...







Friday, January 22, 2010

Stone, Old Guardian, Barley Wine Style ale


I just poured myself a glass of bourbon (pictured left) and popped open a 22 oz. bomber of Stone brewery's Barley Wine Style Ale.

I like the beers Stone makes. This one has a really good nose. It reminds me of walking down a mountain trail with a bunch of honey tucked into my rucksack. Here and there I pass some mountain laurel and think about picking a sprig for my love, here and there I dunk my canteen into a stream and pop in an iodine tablet so as to avoid getting Giardia. It's a very pleasant experience, and by the time I am at the bottom of the trail, I am quite drunk on the mountain air. Some alpine dairy farmers seem to be having a pow-wow behind the chalet, and when I listen closely it seems that they are talking about how I will become the next president. I plunk my ass down on a moss covered rock and write poetry. I hear the various and sundry sounds of hand-hammered cow bells pinging off the snow-capped peaks, and then I get out my little leather journal and compose a couple sonnets about wildflowers and mountain streams, and the ethereal nature of romantic love.

Actually, I don't do any of that, and so I say goodbye. Here are the stats on Stone's Old Guardian Barley Wine Style Ale:

$7.99 per 22 oz. bottle; 11.3 percent alcohol by volume; round, "honey-like" taste, somewhat bitter, somewhat sweet; also, kind of like eating flowers; starts out prickly on the tip of the tongue, then gets kind of hoppy around the mid-tongue, then relaxes into something mellow (and again the honey), and then fades into something nice and bitter.

Overall, I probably won't buy this beer again, though I do approve of its high alcohol content very much.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

American Chop Suey

left-over American Chop in a bun

To inaugurate the New Oil Changes, I decided to do the classic, old-school stand-by meal my mom would feed us once a week, American Chop Suey, or "American Chop" for short. Back then, when I was a tyke, I didn't understand household management and being busy. I only understood feed-me-now. Well, American Chop is one of the best feed-me-now meals because it's super easy. I also recently learned that it's a Yankee classic, that its origins are here in the New England. Basically, it's hamburg, otherwise known as ground beef, elbow macaroni, condensed tomato soup or diced tomatoes, diced onions and green peppers (my mom hates green peppers and thus they never showed up in our American Chop), and some seasonings: dried mustard and oregano. However, for this inaugural post, I decided to crank it up another notch, make it fattier and more delicious. Stay tuned...

American Chop, standard, unbaked version

At this point it is of the utmost importance to mention, just once, the pure comedy value of the name: it is hardly possible (for me) to even say "American Chop" without laughing. It's a completely ridiculous name. Like, just in case you were about to confuse it with Swedish Chop or Armenian Chop, well, it's American Chop and don't you forget that, buster. So the name is ridiculous and, to be honest, the meal is kind of ridiculous, too. Which is why we always had a cheap-o salad to go with it. To make it less ridiculous. Any-hoo, I decided to one-up mom by making Baked American Chop. That means a crusty top made from hot dog bun "croutons," scallions, and, naturally, cheddar cheese.

topped and ready to bake

But the innovation didn't stop there! Oh no, along with the diced green peppers, I decided to add (cover your ears mom) some diced jalapenos! Now, it just occurred to me that I should have told the entire Yankee civilization to cover its ears because, as well all know, everything is spicy to a Yankee, even plain yogurt.

Right. Uh, this meal really is very easy to make. If you're still interested, just follow these simple instructions:

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef or "hamburg"
1 medium onion, diced, and same quantity of green pepper, diced
1 box elbow macaroni, cooked (you should cook it)
1 can Cambell's condensed tomato soup or one can diced tomatoes
jalapenos (if yer crazy enough to use them)
and
mustard powder, dried oregano, salt and pepper

Procedure:

Cook your hamburg with your onions and other vegetables. Bang some dried oregano into the mixture. When the hamburg is browned, sprinkle in some dried mustard. How much? I don't know. Use your head.

Meanwhile, you should have cooked your box of elbow macaroni (and here, you could be a dare devil and use some other pasta shape; I've even heard tell of people using wagon wheels--or even those novelty shaped pastas available at sex shops!). In any case, add your pasta and condensed soup to the meat. Then, Einstein, you stir it all together and season it with salt and pepper to taste.

You have now created the base for your Baked American Chop. If you are satisfied with un-baked American Chop, DO NOT CONTINUE READING!!!

The topping:


Cut up some hot dog buns or other unhealthy, cheap white bread and drizzle melted butter over the pieces, tossing until each piece has some butter on it. Then pop the pieces into a low oven--200 degrees or lower--and cook the hot dog bun pieces until they are dried out but now browned. To these you will add some green onions, sliced, and the cheese. Here, if you want to substitute straight-up American cheese for the the cheddar to be more patriotic, do so. That'll work just fine. Finally, put your American Chop into a casserole dish and top it with the hot dog bun croutons, green onions, and cheese. Then bake it until the topping is all melty and delicious. Serve with a salad, preferably iceberg.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Goodbye Old Oil Changes, Hello New Oil Changes

When some Polish entrepreneur attempted to hijack my blog by leaving a commercial link as a comment on who-knows-what food post I made, I started to think about monetizing this blog. I mean, if some scrappy Polish upstart thought he could divert my traffic to his site to make some money by doing that, well, my ears pricked up. The truth is, my traffic has been climbing. If you're among my closest fans, you may have even heard me bragging that certain Google search queries, for instance, "cream of carrot and potato soup," rank my Oil Changes post as number 5 of 840,000! That's ahead of all the bastards on the Food Network, including the fat Emeril Lagasse, and the geeky Alton Brown. The point is, Oil Changes has been on the up and up, and I have been on the broke and broke. Before I continue, however, to talk about the changes you can expect to see in the near future, here is a picture of my dinner:


Those are some really nice re-fried bean tostadas. I made them this afternoon upon my return from Duffy's Front End Repair (the auto mechanic's shop that's in my hood). And that's a little clue for all you astute readers: a visit to the mechanic, the decision to run ads. In any case, Oil Changes will, as the name allows, undergo a change very soon. By the end of this coming weekend, you can and should expect to see some content-related ads on the sidebar of this blog and at the end of each post. Hopefully they will not turn off my loyal readers and friends. You see, it works like this: someone clicks on an ad; I get a penny. Maybe I get two pennies. At this point, I don't know. Here's a classic pic of some mac 'n cheese to tide you over before I talk about the other changes you can expect to see:


So, in order to actually make this work, the content of my writing will change, too. That is, the content of some posts will change. Unless things get really crazy, my regular readers can still expect to see many unprofitable looking posts, i.e. posts that are so casual or so grumpy or fuzzy or so whatever that nobody outside of my inner circles would ever really bother reading them. What I mean to say is that this blog will still function as a kind of lunch diary. On the other hand, periodically I may turn into a kind of product plugging machine. Well, maybe not that, but you can expect the posts to look more and more like actual food writing--i.e. I will resume actually telling the reader how to make the food, rather than what I normally do, which is take a picture of my lunch and then write whatever the hell I want. My hunch is that this may actually be a perk for some of you; I mean, at one point some fans did actually like the teaching cooking aspect of the blog. That is, until I totally canceled that aspect. Anyway, the point is that this blog is going pro, and I just wanted to give you all head's up before a bunch of ridiculous ads start appearing on this blog.

Thanks everybody, and be sure to check back regularly,

Jono

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Best Chili Ever

Chili is so contentious. Or rather, people get so contentious about chili. You either make the best chili or you know where to get the best chili. Therefore, it logically follows that, by the definition of "the best," everyone who either (a) claims to make the best chili or (b) names some other place or person as the source of the best chili is, by logical necessity, DEAD WRONG because I make the best chili. I will explain why.


That is not the best photograph of the best chili, but it will serve our purpose. Our purpose is for you, the reader, to learn how to make your own version of the best chili ever.

To start, you absolutely must make a very good beef stock. I use oxtail bones, and I make sure to select pieces of oxtail that have a huge amount of pure, white fat around the bone part. I trim this fat, put it into a sauce pot, and melt it in "a low oven," i.e. at 200 degrees or lower. This is called "rendering the fat." By rendering the fat you turn it into a usable cooking fat. First, the fat melts, then it cools and solidifies, and finally, it goes back into the bottom of your chili pot (we'll get to that part later). Meanwhile, back to the oxtail bones.

Make a stock with your oxtail bones and your mire poix (2 parts onion, 1 part celery, 1 part carrot). When the stock is fully cooked, strain out the mushy vegetables, pull out the bones and reserve them for later. At this point your stock will probably be a light color, like the color of a lager, and since you'll be wanting to make the best chili ever, you should reduce your stock until it is much darker, not as dark as a stout, but more like the color of a good ale. (This process, including the fat rendering, will make your kitchen smell outrageously awesome.)

bernard clayton's Complete Book of Soups and Stews (some good chili talk here)

So, now that you've got your rendered, chilled fat and your heavily reduced oxtail stock, the next thing you'll be wanting to do is this: get your chili ingredients in place:

ingredients for the best chili ever:

killer oxtail stock and rendered fat
a good pile of kidney beans, cooked to perfection*

*note* you must start with dry beans; canned beans have inferior texture and flavor; see my post, Beans, beans, beans for help with that

a 15 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes
a medium onion and some garlic
assorted, dried chilies (dried chipotles are really nice)
spices & herbs (cumin and/or toasted cumin, maybe some crushed coriander, chili powder as necessary, dried oregano, bay leaf)

optional: red wine or beer

***YOU WILL NOTICE THAT THERE IS NO ACTUAL MEAT IN THE BEST CHILI EVER, ONLY AWESOME MEAT FLAVOR***

And this is how you do it:

Put your rendered fat into the bottom of your pot (along with some olive oil if you didn't get a good quantity of fat) and heat your pot to something like medium heat. Toss in your diced onions and cook them until they get some nice color. (Here, burning them a bit is not a problem; in fact, it will lend some smoke to the flavor.) Then add your dried herbs and spices until they become aromatic. (Cooking dried spices in oil or fat helps to release and spread their flavors.) Then add your garlic until it becomes aromatic, about 30 seconds. Then, bang in your can of whole peeled tomatoes---oh, be sure to get good tomatoes---deglaze the pot as necessary, bring to a boil, toss in your various dried chilies + bay leaf, reduce and simmer. (Your tomatoes will break apart own their own, but you can help that process along with a fork.)

At this point you will have a dark, thick, spicy tomato broth. Keep this cooking until all the flavors have developed and melded. Then add some of your dark oxtail stock. This will produce a less dark, less thick, spicy, beefy tomato broth, and that's the foundation for an awesome chili.

OK, let's say that you've got your foundation to the exact color, thickness and flavor that you desire. The next thing you'll want to do is add your beans. Here, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to use a ton of beans. You want this chili to be 70% beans. (Hence, the importance of really nice beans). Right. Now you can go ahead and dump in your beans AND some of that gorgeous and flavorful, dark and ruddy bean cooking water. Once this is done, simmer the pot for a bit, salt and pepper gradually to taste, and then simmer a bit longer.

If you have done everything right, you should have some really nice chili.

Monday, January 18, 2010

The Friendly Toast

Sometimes it is one in the morning and you are on the phone with a goober, and you say to this goober, "Goober, what do we do tomorrow?" and the goober answers your question, and you say a bunch of other things, for instance, you might say, "do the scales of the moon really produce cream cheese?" Or you might say, "If I was living in an epoch of mashed potatoes, but I had no butter, and I had no potatoes either, and if every time I tried to say anything true and meaningful, if what came out of my mouth was instead the broken components of a power steering linkage or a battery with a corroded terminal, would you hang up the phone right now?" No. Fortunately, goobers are not phased by this kind of talk, and so the conversation continues well into the night, and in the morning you find yourself a little under-slept and on your way to Portsmouth, NH, to dine at The Friendly Toast.


The Friendly Toast is what happens when a chef with all the skills and delight for perfection required to run a fancy pants, frou frou, pretentious French place decides instead to run a really killer breakfast joint.

The Friendly Toast is the best diner-style breakfast I have ever eaten. Period. I had the Mashed Mexican Meal, a big band of spicy mashed potatoes with two big hunks of killer homemade bread, two eggs over-easy, some chorizo (though, I must admit, they served me kielbasa), and some chipotle sauce. The side of black beans was excellent. The beans were not from a can. As for the goober, she had the Guy Scramble (also good) and a Shirley Temple.

About Shirley Temples: I am not personally into drinking pure, cherry sryup at lunch, but I'm sure it was good, too.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA

The last two times I made pizza at home, I failed. Both times, the dough did not rise. My first failure disappointed me. It was New Year's Eve and I wanted to fill my belly with homemade pizza so that I could drink a lot of alcohol. My second failure just pissed me off. I had company! Romantical company. I felt like a jerk. I did manage to conjure a pizza, and it tasted good, but I still felt like a total loser. What went wrong? I'd made pizza many times before.


That is not the failure pizza. That is the pizza I am eating right now. It is delicious. The dough proofed up nicely. Then I smacked it back down and tossed it out. I can toss dough like a pro. Anyway, I have one theory about what went wrong: I used hot water instead of warm water (dough recipes call for warm water to activate the yeast), and I killed or greatly stunted the yeast. I did not stunt the yeast this time.


There's my dough ball, proofing up nicely. Once you've mixed, kneaded, and formed your dough into a ball, you should set a cloth onto it (I use an old work shirt from Pizza Express) and let it proof up. See how nice and round that is? There is gas in there! Go yeast!


There she is, almost ready. Really, you should not open the oven door and stare at your pizza while it is cooking. That lets heat out. You should be patient. You should also invest in a pizza stone if you are a serious, home pizza maker or intend to become one. The stone makes a huge difference.

Anyway, pizza at home is really easy. If you make spaghetti sauce, you can make pizza sauce (I make a cooked sauce). They're about the same. I simply make my pizza sauce hotter, saltier, and more thoroughly spiced than my spaghetti sauce. I also splash out for very nice fresh mozzarella. Don't be a cheap-o; it'll show.

basic, friggin easy pizza dough recipe

1 packet dry active yeast
1 cup warm water (110 degrees; that's slightly warmer than body temp)
1.5 teaspoons sugar
2.5 cups all purpose flour
1.5 - 2.0 tablespoons olive oil, aka EVO
1 whopping teaspoon of salt

1) Add yeast to warm water. Add sugar. Mix. Let stand 10 minutes until frothy.
2) Add salt to flour. Mix
3) When the yeasty water is frothy (froth means the yeast is alive), add the EVO to the mixture.
4) Dump the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix. Knead for about five minutes until your dough is smooth like a baby's butt. Then cover with a cloth and let proof at least 30 minutes.

p.s. It's actually better to make dough one day in advance, and then set the dough in the fridge. The yeast will develop more character and the dough will taste better.

THAT'S HOW YOU MAKE PIZZA.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Beans, Beans, Beans

part 1: about beans

What a morning this is! I mean, what a morning this really is! My beans arrived last night. A great big hill of beans in a flat-rate box, right there in my front hallway. This morning I busted them open. I hunted down my French pocket knife and busted them open.


I suppose I should start with the obvious: beans are totally beautiful. As objects, they are beautiful. A single bean is beautiful, and a pile of beans is beautiful. I am not saying this because I had a beautiful phone conversation this morning, and I am not saying this because my expatriate, best friend is coming today, too. I am singing the praises of beans because any fool can look at their speckled and streaked, and spotty, and perfectly curved little bodies and know that the world is capable of producing marvels--and we have not even cooked them yet! We have not even begun to talk about what beans really are, about how versatile they are, about what beans really do, for us and for themselves, there is so much.


This is how I started my morning, a frothing pot of beans. Last night, before I discovered the mountain of beans in the flat-rate box (and here I begin talking about cooking), I put a pot of beans on the stove to soak overnight. If you want beans tomorrow, think about them today. That, my friends, is an original quote. Keep it in mind. You will be seeing it spangled all over the billboards of the future. You see, because, in the future, the world will run on beans. Beans will power the senate and beans will power our cars. When we are in love, we will sleep on the little, white eyes of beans and dream, and when we are lonesome and weary, we will curl up and be comforted by their slender arches. Beans, my friends, will provide for us. But I was talking about cooking.


If you want beans tomorrow, think about them today. I thought about beans yesterday. I went into my pantry and selected some nice, maroon kidney beans. I dumped them into a pie plate and sorted through them, dump by dump, looking for little stones, little clumps of dried mud, moldy beans, anything that I did not want in my pot. Then into the pot of water they went. And onto them went the cold water, and then a rinse, and then another rinse---rinse rinse rinse---and then to bed. I put on a movie about Mama Roma's struggle to raise her son against the hard odds of post-war Rome while my dry beans swelled. Then I went to bed myself.

part 2: cooking beans

So you've soaked your beans overnight. Good. That's done. Now it's morning, or the middle of the day, or whatever---it doesn't really matter if you over-soak your beans; just don't under-soak them---and now you've got a pot full of swollen beans and a bunch of bean-juice infused water. Don't pitch that water down the rat hole! Save it. It's valuable. It's nutrient rich. It will give you the most horrendous gas, but your houseplants don't get flatulent. If you have houseplants, pour your bean soaking water into a jug. Then water your plants with it. They'll love it. It's just another side-marvel of beans.


Some people like to add a commercial product called Bean-O to their beans when cooking them. It's supposed to make them less, uh, aggressive. I don't use it. I just make sure to thoroughly rinse my beans after I've drained them, and then, once I've covered them with fresh water, I add one bay leaf and two cloves of garlic that I've whacked with the side of my knife. Maybe some crushed black pepper, too. Whatever I add, I DO NOT ADD SALT. If you add salt to your beans before they are fully cooked, you will ruin them. The salt will turn their skins leathery. You don't want to eat leather, you want to eat beans.


So now you are ready to cook them. Bring your beans to a full boil (see the frothy business above); let them boil for a bit, and then reduce the heat to a simmer. I tend to cook them at a very low simmer because, if you cook them in water that is simmering too vigorously, you will bust their perfect shapes. You'll get good flavor, but poor shape. So cook them low.

Stir your beans periodically, and check them every once in a while for doneness. Spellchecker says "doneness" ain't a word, but I say spellchecker is full of beans. Anyway, when your beans are fully cooked, gradually add some salt. Bit by bit, add your salt. When your beans taste perfect, lid them and let them cool. You can use them immediately or store them in lidded jars in the fridge. Properly salted beans will keep for about a week.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

ravioli and truth

I have a confession: I hate making ravioli. I have another confession: that was a lie.

Truth is a dubious thing. You think you've got something right, and you go about your life, secure in your knowledge, but then you learn something new, and you realize that, what you'd thought you'd had right, you actually had pretty wrong. This is more or less the story of me and homemade ravioli. Until yesterday, I pretended that I loved making ravioli, and I'd make them for people, you know, to show off, but really, they were always a big pain in the ass because my technique was all wrong, the technique I'd thought I had right, and so making them was not a joy but a kind of masochistic punishment. I'm so over it.


These beef ravioli were actually fun to make. They weren't so fun to eat, because the filling was a touch too salty, but they were fun to make. They were fun because, after two years of bad technique, I'd finally learned how to handle the dough properly.

For those of you out there who (a) own a pasta rolling machine and (b) have the inclination to make ravioli, I will supply this piece of advice: if the manual tells you to fold the sheet of dough length-wise into thirds, and then roll it with a pin until it is thin enough to pass through the widest opening of your roller, and then to repeat this process nine more times before proceeding to thinner openings, DO IT. And by all means, do not fold the dough width-wise because folding it length-wise seems counter-intuitive. That's what I did. I assumed the instruction manual that came with the rolling machine was wrong, that the Italian manufacturer hired a translator on the cheap and thereby the manual got botched. I carried that truth around with me for way too long.


And there's the too-salty filling. Salt, unlike some other things, has an absolute truth value. When there's too much, there's too much. In this instance, there was just a little too much, and I was able to eat fifteen ravioli without needing to drink a gallon of water between each one. But there's a parting trick for you: if you over salt a bit, just keep a big glass of water handy. You'll be okay. Everything will be okay.