Mouth wide open : a cook and his appetite

482 Pages·2008·1.6 MB·English

by  Thorne

For David
best of friends
Contents
List of Recipes
Then and Now—By Way of a Preface
MOUTH WIDE OPEN
The Marrow of the Matter
Bagna Caôda
The Reviewer and the Recipe
Maximum Marmalade
Cod & Potatoes
Two with the Flu
Pepper Pot Hot
The Laughing Nut
Signor Minestrone
Conflicted About Casseroles
Real Italians
Wok Fragrant
THE COOK PREPARES HIS BREAKFAST
Beef Kidney
Bread-Cup Eggs
Scrambled Eggs with Chunks of Avocado
The Sensation
Eggs Baked in Cream
Rice Browns
Canned Beef Tamales: Q&A
Eggs Florentine
Fried-Corn-and-Onion Omelet
Return to Halloumi
Five-Month-Old Croissant
THE RUMINATIVE COOK
Falafel
Pasta with Anchovies
Sussing Out Satay
Mashed Potatoes
Go Fry an Egg
The Grist on Grits
Horiátiki Saláta
Fiore di Finocchio
Cooked Midnight
Fasolia Gigantes
Random Receipts
THE COOK CONCOCTS HIS MIDNIGHT SNACK
Baked Fat
Sautéed Spinach Stems
Bagel mit Wiener Salswasser
Sweet Corn and Milk
Mystery Meat
Khai Pen
Headcheese
Cilantro Sandwich
Hot Dog with Norwegian Potato Flatbread
Swedish Meatballs
Bok Choy
Smoked Kielbasa–Casing Po’ Boy
COOKING THE BOOKS
Have It Your Way
A Difficult Man
American Eats
Loose Canon
The Cook and the Gardener
Work Adventures Childhood Dreams
Bibliography
Author’s Note
Index
List of Recipes
Introductory Note
Anyone familiar with my writing will already know that, for the most part,
creating recipes is not something that greatly interests me, and I am even less
interested in curating any but the most historical. What I do is look for recipes
with the potential for a lively conversation—a friendly argument, if you like,
between two cooks. As I explain further on in “The Reviewer and the Recipe,” I
don’t follow recipes; I interact with them. Because of that, when a source is
provided (as it often is) for a recipe that particularly attracts you, consider
seeking out the original version. That way you can clearly see what the argument
was all about…and have two cooks to converse with instead of one.
As to the recipes themselves, one day last year I found myself balking when
typing “freshly ground black pepper” into a recipe ingredient list. True, when I
keyed in “black pepper” instead, the naked plainness insinuated that I might be
so boorish myself as to actually use an ordinary, vulgar pepper shaker.
Well, to tell the truth, I do use them all the time: very few of the greasy
spoons I frequent have gotten around to putting pepper mills on the table—and
the food doesn’t seem any the worse for it. True, I usually grind my pepper at
home, cook (even fry) with extra-virgin olive oil, and almost always prefer fresh
minced garlic to the powdered stuff. Still, look on my spice shelf and you’ll find
dried onion, leek, and bell pepper flakes, curry powder, and celery salt.
Elsewhere, there are cans of soup and corned beef hash, bags of frozen
vegetables.
Chances are, your kitchen is like that, too. Learning to talk isn’t simply
about mastering vocabulary and grammar, it also requires that we master one
way of talking to our parents and another to our friends, and, later, to our
teachers and our bosses. Even home cooking has its several dialects. So you
don’t need me nagging you to buy artisanal bread or to use unsalted butter when
you cook. Cooking changes best by epiphany; advice is best when it merely
prods these into happening.
In any case, so much of what we do in the kitchen is very different from
appreciating the best ingredients. In her autobiography, Zami: A New Spelling of
My Name, the poet Audre Lorde rhapsodizes about the smell of onions frying in
margarine. I knew just how sweet such a memory could be. Cooking is about
doing the best with what you have…and succeeding. The rest is nothing but
frosting. So I’ve done my best to winnow out those little peremptory qualifiers in
the ingredient list.
However, I do want to note that Matt and I cook with pure, coarse kosher
salt (which means if you substitute fine-grained salt—kosher or not—reduce the
amount called for in our recipes by half, and adjust from there). We use an
inexpensive but fruity extra-virgin olive oil from Spain, Greece, or Italy,
depending on the market, and prefer peanut oil by far when olive oil isn’t
appropriate.
We use a lot of chiles in our kitchen, sometimes fresh, sometimes dried and
flaked or powdered, ranging from mildly hot to mouth-searing. But we don’t
own any “chili powder,” the commercial blend of powdered chile, toasted
cumin, Mexican oregano, and other things. So, when we call for any kind of
powdered chile, we mean just that—the result of grinding up dried chile pods.
Other, specialized ingredients are detailed in the recipes that call for them,
including (where possible) ordering information. This was all updated when this
book was about to go to press, but, sadly, small merchants—especially—do
come and go, online and in situ. If you find this to be the case, get in touch with
us at [email protected]—we may have been able to find another
merchant.
A
Amato’s Italian Sandwich: see Sandwich, Amato’s Italian B
Baeckeoffe: see Casserole, Alsatian, with pork, lamb, and beef Bagel mit wiener
Salswasser (bagel dipped in German wiener brine) 319
Bagna caôda (chart of variations) 14
—Bagna caôda del omm borghese (bagna caôda for non-peasants) 20
—Bagna caôda con bistecca e peperoni (with strip steak and roasted peppers) 21
—Bagna caôda con funghi e scalogni (with mushrooms and scallions) 22
—Peperoni alla bagna caôda (on roasted peppers) 23
Beans, dried (gigantes plaki), with dill and green olives 285
Beans, dried (gigantes plaki), with garlic and thyme 289
Beans, green (Romano/Italian) (salad) 302
Beef kidney 169
Bok choy, fried, with sesame oil (snack) 326
Briami: see Casserole, Greek C
Casserole, Alsatian, with pork, lamb, and beef (baeckeoffe) 136
—Baeckeoffe with Munster cheese 141
Casserole, creamed chicken and macaroni (traditional recipe) 128
Casserole, creamy shrimp (Shrimps de Jonghe) 129
Casserole, Greek, with potatoes, zucchini, and tomatoes (Briami) 311
Casserole, Jean’s Two Meat Two Rice 134
Casserole, Macedonian, with gigantes, pickled peppers, and tomato (Tavche
gravche) 287
Cheese, Halloumi, fried for breakfast 176
Cheese, Kasseri, fried (saganaki) 312
Chicken liver spread on seasoned toast (The Sensation) 172
Chile paste, green, Yemenite (zhug, for dressing falafel) 193
Cod and potato bake (Dutch) 67
Cod baked on a bed of thinly sliced potatoes, Mediterranean style (el nazalli bel
batata) 68
Cod baked with olive oil, garlic, and potatoes 66
Cod, roast, on oven-fried potatoes 65
Corn, Peruvian toasting (maiz tostado) (descriptive recipe) 295
Corn, sweet, cut from the cob, in milk (snack) 320
Croissant, five months old 177
Cucumber salad, Thai 228
E
Egg, fried, in a tortilla pocket 240
Eggs baked in cream 172
Eggs, bread-cup 170
Eggs Florentine 175
Eggs, fried in coconut oil, with bananas, fresh chiles, and onions 246
Eggs, fried in olive oil, with capers 244
Eggs, fried, Mexican (huevos rancheros) 238
Eggs, fried, Spanish, with migas (croutons) 242
Eggs, fried, with garlic and mint 245
Eggs, fried, with oyster sauce, Chinese style 247
Eggs, omelet, with shredded zucchini and fresh marjoram (Richard Olney) 358
Eggs, scrambled, with chunks of avocado 171
El nazalli bel batata: see Cod F
Falafel, Slightly Unorthodox 187
Fish and brewis (traditional Newfoundland recipe of salt cod, salt pork, and
hardtack) 60
hardtack) 60
Fried rice: see Rice, fried
G
Gigantes: see Beans, dried Greek salad: see Salad, Greek
Grits, True (my way) 252
—cakes, made with leftover grits 254
H
Ham fat, baked (snack) 317
Hot dog with Norwegian potato flatbread (snack) 323
I
Israeli salad of chopped vegetables (for dressing falafel) 190
L
Lamb, slow-cooked shoulder of 307
M
Maiz tostado: see Corn, Peruvian toasting (descriptive recipe) Marmalade,
important notes about making 50
—Florida navel orange (variation) 54
—Key lime (variation) 55
—Maximum orange 51
—Meyer lemon (variation) 55
—Pineapple lemon 55
—Temple orange 53
Mayonnaise, handmade xxi
Menudo, Not-So-Pseudo (my version of menudo) 95
—Pozole rojo (menudo made with posole and red chile peppers) 89
Minestrone 113
—Minestrone alla Genovese 117
—Minestrone estivo (summer Tuscan version) 122
Mushroom Pot Roast (Russ Parsons’s recipe, with variation using leg of lamb)
37
N
Noodle beef (noodle-intensive beef soup) 75
Noodle chicken (noodle-intensive chicken soup) 73