When you say a sauce is a Béchamel, it conjures up a fancy something-or-other. This sauce is anything BUT fancy. It’s a simple butter-flour-milk gravy with the only added ingredient being some tomato paste. Claude Monet called it a Tomato Sauce, but I’ve re-named it.

When I went to my account at Eat Your Books, I put in “tomato sauce” and began perusing through the dozens and dozens of them from all my cookbooks – looking first at the list of ingredients. There’s no quantity, just the major items named. I looked at Italian style sauces mostly, since I wanted to put something on the eggplant rollatini you see above. After I’d studied about 20 or so (with the usual list of ingredients like onion, garlic, fresh or canned tomatoes, basil, parsley) this one stuck out because of its lack of canned tomatoes and because of the milk. A plain tomato sauce from canned tomatoes just sounded so blah to me – or something that might easily overwhelm the subtle cheeses in the rollatini.

You didn’t ask for a history lesson about Claude Monet, but you’re going to have one anyway, since he was quite a foodie. Years ago I purchased the book Monet’s Table : The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet, and eventually found the companion book, Monet’s Cookery Notebooks both written or compiled by Claire Joyes. I’m embarrassed to tell you that until now I’d never cooked anything from it. The first book (above) is mostly lavish photographs of the property and his paintings with stories about the entertaining Monet and his family did at Giverny, his home for so many years. The 2nd book has more stories and photographs of the interior of Giverny, and recipes (not all that many). He shared the home with his 2nd wife and his mistress, who was married to another man (Monet supported her and her family – husband and children – for many years – most likely so he could have this other woman [Monet’s mistress Alice], by his side). I’ve read several books about Monet or the Impressionists, including  Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet. I really liked that one. The other one about Renoir was Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland.

Monet was always interested in food – and even when he and his first wife Camille (who died very young, soon after their 2nd child was born) were nearly destitute and living in a hovel in Paris, they would not only have food, but they’d share it with others – mostly other starving artists like he was. He didn’t become famous until some years later – after his wife had died. He caused a huge stir by painting Camille on her deathbed – not when she was alive, but once she had passed. He was inordinately proud of that painting. That kind of thing simply wasn’t done back then. He kept the painting nearby for the remainder of his life, even after he remarried. Once a few of his paintings sold he was finally able to buy a home, first in Paris, then later outside Paris and he spent nearly all of his remaining years at Giverny. Monet didn’t cook at all – or nearly so – but he was passionate about food, which is why there are recipes attributed to him. Maintaining a nice home with servants was just part of his history – if you were a gentleman in that time, you just did. Once he established himself at Giverny he had enough wealth to have servants. He made most of the decisions in the family about what they would eat and when. The Cookery Notebooks book is filled with recipes, and more stories about the entertaining style. Monet was well-traveled and he fell in love with food in many places he visited. Likely he served dishes that were sometimes unfashionable only because they were not French or even known to most French.

Being a fan of the Impressionists in general, I have always liked Monet’s paintings. Dave and I have sought out his paintings in museums around the world – in addition to most of the other Impressionists too. The most notable was a small room at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, where they house 43 Renoirs. We were on a tour of the museum and the guide, a very dour young woman, gave us 20 minutes to see the entire room. Most of us were very unhappy about that! But they would not allow us to linger longer than that.

For many years I had this van Gogh painting hanging in my house. A very, VERY cheap copy of it. It was the only picture in my daughter’s bedroom when she was a baby. There weren’t many baby-oriented wall decorations back then, and I used it because of the yellow color scheme I did in her bedroom.

So now, let’s get back to this tomato sauce, huh? There was nothing to it – making it – I melted some unsalted butter, added some flour, stirred and cooked that for a minute or two, then poured in whole milk that I’d heated just to boiling. The sauce thickened almost immediately. I seasoned it with salt and pepper, then added some tomato paste out of the tube I have in the refrigerator. I did this half an hour before I was going to plate our dinner, so all I had to do was re-heat it on the range and add some chopped up tomato. The fresh tomato in and on top was not in Monet’s recipe, but I really did think it needed a little spark of color. I had some vine-ripened tomatoes which worked perfectly.

What’s GOOD: it was very easy to make. This sauce isn’t a sauce for pasta – it doesn’t have enough heft, in my opinion, but was perfect for the nuanced eggplant. It would be nice on cooked vegetables, on fish. You could put some cheese in it – like Gruyere or Parm and give it some different flavors. It wasn’t anything extra special, but it fit my need perfectly.

What’s NOT: no problems or dislikes.

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Fried pork chops. Yes! They’re marinated in a buttermilk mixture, then dipped into panko crumbs, then fried ever-so-briefly in canola oil for 2-3 minutes per side and these are DONE!

I don’t fry meat very much. I don’t really fry chicken, although I did make that once and post about it here. I don’t fry fish at all. I don’t fry much of anything – sauté in a little oil, yes, but these are almost – but not quite – deep fried. What I had were thin-sliced pork chops, and didn’t really know what to do with them. Usually I have thick-sliced pork chops, but no, these were truly thin. I searched on the internet – I was sure I’d seen a recipe recently for thin pork chops, or watched some show about it, but couldn’t find a record of it. My online search for it didn’t result in much. Then I modified the search and found this recipe from The Hungry Mouse blog, which was just wonderful!

First the meat was trimmed of most visible fat – if you don’t, you’ll have all those edges with big bites of gloopy fat and that I didn’t want. The chops I had did have a thick edge of fat which I trimmed off almost completely. In a small plastic bag I combined an egg (I made half of the below recipe for 2 large, but thin pork chops), buttermilk, garlic powder, salt, black pepper. I did not have dried parsley, and fresh parsley would have burned, so I added in some dried sage instead. The meat was squished around with the marinade a bit and I let it sit for about 30 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, I’d prepared another plastic bag with nothing but 1/2 cup of panko crumbs in it. Once the rest of my dinner was ready – you DO want to have everything else ready before you start this because it comes together in a hurry – I heated canola oil (I didn’t have pure olive oil as recommended in the recipe) in a frying pan that was about 8 or 9 inches across. Big enough to hold the 2 pork chops with just a little bit of wiggle room. Just remember when you add oil to the pan, use less than you think, because the pork chops will displace the oil. The oil reached the top of the chops barely – not covered it – but just to the top edge, so I used too much.

Briefly drain – just by holding each chop out of the marinade – then one by one add them to the panko bag and hold the top tight while you toss the bag some. The panko will just perfectly cling to the egg-buttermilk marinade. As I finished that the chop went directly into the hot oil. The recipe said not to fry these unless the meat caused bubbling, so I did exactly as suggested – I dipped one edge of the chop into the oil – it bubbled nicely, so gently I slipped it into the oil. Then I repeated it for the second chop. I didn’t time it – 2-3 minutes per side is what it said. Very gently with Teflon-coated tongs I lifted up one corner of a chop to see if it was golden brown. Yup! Also very carefully, I lifted and turned each one. When you turn them over they’ll bubble up furiously, so it was time to turn down the heat. Way down, actually. I thought they were going to burn, but they didn’t. Another 2-3 minutes per side and they were done. I drained them very, very briefly on paper towels and served alongside some asparagus tossed with lemon juice and little butter, a green salad with veggies and a big honkin’ biscuit you read about a few days ago, Paradise Biscuits. Delish.

What’s GOOD: how quick they were to make. Nice flavoring, tender – amazing when you consider they only cooked 2-3 minutes per side. They might have been nice with some kind of sauce, but I didn’t have any, so they were served plain. If I’d had my druthers, I’d have served them with mashed potatoes and gravy, probably, but I almost never make that kind of meal!

What’s NOT: well, these probably aren’t all that healthy, but the experts say that if you do fry food, if the heat is kept consistently at a fairly high temp (over 375°) the meat and coating will absorb barely any of the oil. With the panko, I suppose it did take some, but believe it or not, these were not greasy.

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There isn’t any cream in this, but because the dressing emulsifies, it just looks like it contains cream or sour cream or something dairy. Except for an egg – a raw egg. It does contain peanut oil and olive oil and the acid is from red wine vinegar.

Every so often I get a yen to try a different salad dressing. Nearly every time I do, I revert back to my favorites, but I get tired of the similar flavors in them (garlic, Parm and usually a little bit of blue cheese). So I venture away as I did this time with something unusual. I found the original recipe in a favorite cookbook of mine, A Cook’s Tour of Sonoma by Michele Jordan. Her version contained one thing I didn’t want – green olives – so I substituted capers. And I used extra virgin olive oil – instead of the pure olive oil. I also added garlic – just because I like it. About the oil – I used extra virgin because I don’t HAVE any pure olive oil. I should, but my goodness, I don’t know about you, but I have bottles and bottles of different kinds of oils in my pantry. Way too many, and I rarely use the pure olive oil. The author has a revised edition of the book available too – The New Cook’s Tour of Sonoma which I understand from reading about it, contains a lot more touring information – food purveyors, tours about food, cheese, etc.

To make this, you just start adding ingredients to the blender. This recipe (in its original form) came from a restaurant in Santa Rosa, and was enough quantity to feed about 100 people. My recipe software easily scaled it down and I have about 1 1/2 or 2 cups of dressing which must be used within 3 weeks. Reason? It contains raw egg. The original actually called for one egg, and I truly didn’t know what I’d do with part of a raw egg, so I just used a whole (very small) egg for the quantity I made. It has in it some Dijon, Worcestershire, soy sauce (so you don’t need any salt) and a bunch of dried herbs – but all in very small amounts. Oh yes, it has a tiny pinch of curry powder in it too. I love that hint – if you didn’t know it was there I don’t think you could taste it. Then you slowly pour in the peanut oil, olive oil and lastly the red wine vinegar and it’s done. Other than gathering up all the herb and spice jars, it took little time to make.

If time permits, do let it sit out (in a sealed jar) for several hours to let the flavors marry before you use it to dress a salad, or pour over some spring asparagus. It would also work over cooked pasta (as a salad, not an entrée). I did let it sit out for awhile, then put it in the refrigerator for several more hours before I used it on the green salad you see above.

What’s GOOD: it’s easy to make, it’s creamy, and full of all kinds of interesting herb flavors. Love the miniscule hint of curry powder in it (you could easily eliminate that if you don’t like curry). It’s definitely different! We both liked it very much.
What’s NOT: it does contain raw egg – I don’t have a problem with that, but many people do. It also – because of the egg – doesn’t keep as long – the author recommended no longer than 3 weeks.

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Can you vaguely see the indentations that I made before I baked these 6 gigantic biscuits, so I could more easily pull them apart? Healthy these are not. Delicious, yes they are!

Biscuits. What’s there not to like, other than the fact that they’re white food, high in carbs, pretty much empty calories (i.e. no healthy nutritional value) and high in calorie. But oh well, sometimes there’s just nothing like them. When we want comfort food, isn’t that what we turn to, things that may not be good for us, but they taste good and they just plain make you “feel” better. Kind of like ice cream. And mashed potatoes. Even meatloaf satisfies my comfort meter.

I was going to cook up some barley for dinner, but I got a little flash in my brain that said biscuits sounded a whole lot better. I have a digital cookbook in my MasterCook recipe program that is just filled with internet-found ideas.  They’re sorted by category, so it took little time to scan through all the Bread possibilities (which also included some quick sweet breads). The recipe has been in that file for awhile, but has a story.

Apparently there used to be a restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, called Lynn’s Paradise Café, and the owner, Lynn, made these glorious biscuits. The restaurant closed, but the owner gave the recipe to someone, and it’s available in a couple of places online. These biscuits are big. I mean HUGE. Usually they’re made in a 9×9 pan – and the recipe below IS for that size. I didn’t want 9 of these gigantic biscuits, so I made 2/3 of the recipe and used a bread pan instead. We ate 2 and I froze the other 4 1/2 in foil so I can pop them out for a future dinner.

At the Louisville Courier’s website their recipe calls for White Lily flour (not easily found out here in the Wild West, although I have read even recently that some cooks believe White Lily is absolutely the best flour – I wouldn’t know since I’ve never tried it) and shortening. Theirs were baked at 425°. I used regular all-purpose flour and unsalted butter. And baked them at 400°. They’re a buttermilk biscuit, but rich with unsalted butter AND heavy cream. Yes. So they’re tender from the buttermilk, flaky from the unsalted butter you cut in, and rich with the heavy cream. Technically you shouldn’t need butter on them. I’ll leave that up to you.

My opinion is that perhaps these biscuits could/would be just fine with a bit less fat. The next time I make these I’m going to use all buttermilk, and no cream. Or maybe a higher proportion of buttermilk to cream. I’ll let you know how that works. I suppose I could hold off posting this recipe until I’ve tried it, but since this one below isn’t my recipe, I’ll let you decide whether to try these as is, or wait until such time as I get around to trying a revised recipe.

What’s GOOD: the biscuits are tall, no, they’re deep and extraordinarily rich. Not like a scone – just like a rich biscuit. I think I’d like them not quite so high, yet I don’t have a pan that would be just right for that. I’ll have to think on that. The texture is rich. Not flaky, not exactly dense either. Good texture, buttery texture for sure! It’s possible the substitution of butter for shortening has an effect also. Maybe I should try them with the non-hydrogenated shortening I have. The biscuits don’t need any butter, but if you take a big mouthful, they might be a bit too dry without something on them – gravy, jam, honey or gosh, butter! I splurged and had butter on the very last bite of the half a biscuit I ate. They’re also easy to make – the usual drill with dry ingredients, cut in the fat (butter or shortening) then pour in the wet ingredients. Stir and press lightly into the pan. You hardly have to get your hands dirty!
What’s NOT: they do take awhile to bake – longer than ordinary biscuits since they’re SO thick.

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We visited friends who live in Pasadena 2 weeks ago – had a wonderful dinner with them at the Arroyo Chop House (steak). Wow, was it ever good. And we shared two bottles of Silver Oak Cab. Oh my! 1992 Alexander Valley and 1993 Napa Valley. We all agreed the 1993 was the better one, but both were enjoyed.

Lucy, about 4-5 years ago, decided she wanted to have chickens. In the area where they live it’s zoned so she could, and she had someone turn her cute-as-a-bug greenhouse into a chicken coop, with about a 10-12 foot “run.” Most times we visit I go out there and take a look at all of the special chicken varieties she has – every one is different, with and without topknots, or puffy feathers on their legs. Different colors and combinations.

Anyway, as we departed for dinner Lucy handed me the the above egg tray as a gift. Lucy is always so thoughtful. Anyway, it’s been nearly 2 weeks since we had dinner with them and I’ve not wanted (hardly) to break these eggs because they’re so darned cute. I know that’s silly, because a chicken egg is, really, just a chicken egg. I love the green ones, and the speckled ones. When I made the chocolate loaf cake a couple of days ago I finally did use some – the recipe called for 3 eggs. These eggs above are relatively small, so I used 4 eggs. So now I’m down to 8 eggs. I love, love, the ceramic egg carton tray – I’ve always wanted one of those – but convinced myself that I’d not use it enough to warrant buying one. But now I do have one.

For Easter this year we are having 10 for dinner. I rooted around in my garage freezer and found the ham from our Kurobuta (Berkshire) 4H pig. It’s not huge, but I hope it will be enough for 10 people (2 of them young children). One family is bringing an appetizer and bread. Another is bringing a salad, and another bringing dessert. So I will provide all the parts that go with the ham – asparagus with chile butter  and those wonderful roasted root vegetables with the olive relish that I made a couple of months ago. And I probably need to make the mustard sauce I love so much with ham. The recipe for the ham – really just heated up low and slow, go to Kurobuta ham. I doubt I’ll be making anything new for this meal, but will rely on old favorites.

Here on my blog I have a page of recipes that are particularly suitable for a holiday dinner. Some are Christmas oriented, others with a more Thanksgiving bent, but you can pick and choose. There are LOTS of recipes there – my Holiday Page.

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As many of you probably know, Google recently announced they’re discontinuing Google Reader, my old standby for reading blogs. To say I was dismayed was an understatement. I suppose I’d have been willing to pay for the service if they’d offered that option rather than eliminating it, but they don’t want to support it at all. Obviously it contributed nothing toward their bottom line which is a problem for any company wanting to make money! I read that thousands of folks out there in the blogosphere have rattled Google’s cages asking them to reconsider. I didn’t want to wait until the last minute to find out.

Going online to search about other RSS readers, I found numerous articles. Feedly is a popular one as well as NewsBlur. Some work only on i-devices. Some have a fee attached. Some are still free. Some have other features, others have very few. Lots of people want readers for news feeds. That’s not me. Food blogs are kind of a different animal, I suppose. One link I found had a comprehensive list of every RSS feed reader known with a check-list of the features. I finally settled on one and went about trying to load it. One of the options with some was an ability to import the existing feeds. I did that initially with bloglines. It seemed like the best choice for me, for my needs. I created an account (free) and pressed import and the screen went somewhat gray. It was still operational, but nothing happened. It took awhile for me to figure out that the site was having difficulty.

Well, what I’ve learned is that nearly every other RSS reader site has been overwhelmed with people like me setting up new accounts and importing their Google RSS feed file. It was supposed to be a seamless transfer, one would hope. But I understand, these other websites have had trouble with their own capacity to meet the needs of all these new members. Within a few hours a message was available telling me that their site was overwhelmed and to stay tuned. I did.

Eventually the site displayed my list. I looked at it in confusion. Huh? It was difficult to maneuver in the two available display styles. I didn’t like either of them, and I found one important feature missing – the ability to click a button saying I’d read all the displayed feeds. Since they imported all of my feeds (including a bunch of blogs that are no longer in operation – which I needed to unsubscribe to anyway), all the blog entries were showing as new (even though I’d read most of them over on Google Reader). I had to click on each individual post/feed to prove to its system that I’d read it. I worked at it for an hour or more. It also didn’t return to the right place once I’d completed each one, so I’d have to scroll and hunt. It displayed in columns, and once one was deleted, it re-arranged itself, so I couldn’t find my way. Very confusing and time consuming.

So, I went back to the list and read about The Old Reader. It is a beta reader right now (that means it’s still in a test phase – brand new – could have bugs). But it works fine for me. It was written recently in response to the fact that google is discontinuing its Reader function. It’s a very basic feed reader with all the best features of google, and it even displays in a bigger window than google’s did. The only trouble was that it took about 5 days for their storage to gear up to all the overwhelming requests for new accounts and imported feeds.

Now that it has done that, I’m very contented with theoldreader.com. All of my feeds have been imported, I easily deleted those blog feeds who have stopped posting. I was able to click the button immediately to say I’d read all the posts on those I had already read over at google. The settings function is seamless, giving me several options for viewing. I may try Feedly, since it has high marks in many places, and supposedly has more features than The Old Reader. One of these days. Meanwhile, I’ve deleted my Google Reader link on Firefox’s toolbar and replaced it with The Old Reader.

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A tea bread. Yes. A cake? Well, perhaps, but it’s not quite as tender as one. A traditional loaf bread texture? No, not at all. More tender than that. It’s in-between. Chocolaty, yes, indeed! Delicious? Absolutely!

Oh my. Oh my. I knew, the moment I licked the beater that this bread or cake in a bread shape, was going to be sensational. The chocolate flavor – well, it’s just there. You know what I mean? If you don’t already read the blog from King Arthur Flour, you should. They have a very astute test kitchen, and of course, all they do is bake things – sweet and savory. Crackers, to doughnuts, to cakes, pies, breads of all kinds, and things like this, a tea bread. PJ Hamel was the test kitchen cook this time. I always love reading her stories – she’s witty. Here’s what she wrote in the preface to this recipe:

I brake for chocolate.

I also break for chocolate.

And bake with chocolate.

The day I baked this had been a doozy. A little – no, a big family crisis does something to the psyche. I was feeling wrenched. At a loss. I prayed about it – have been praying about it for several days. I’m sorry, I can’t share about it; it’s not my place to share. It’s still too raw. No, it’s not about me or my dear hubby. Someone else in the immediate family. Finally, after lulling myself with some TV shows on my Tivo, and having a short glass of sangria, I just decided I should bake something. We were going to friends for dinner, so I didn’t have to cook. I thought maybe I’d get it done in time to take some to them. Also thought baking might get me out of my slump. And it did.

It had me looking back at the King Arthur blog piece because I decided to bake the loaf in the narrow tea loaf ceramic pan I have – that I love – and have only used a few times.

There was a little nugget of information on the blog about why/how we use different kinds of cocoa. This was provided in one of the comments to this recipe; it came from Frank, a pastry chef.

• It is always best to use the cocoa called for in the recipe rather than
  making a substitution, but if you need to substitute, here is the
  ratio.
• Dutch Cocoa:
  Substitute 3 Tablespoons natural cocoa plus 1/8 teaspoon baking soda.
• Natural Cocoa:
  Substitute 3 Tablespoons Dutch cocoa plus 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar,
  lemon juice, or vinegar.
• So, when do you use each one? For recipes calling for more baking soda
  than baking powder, you use natural cocoa.
• If the recipe has more baking powder than soda, you will want a Dutched
  cocoa due to the different alkali content. Using a natural cocoa will
  give your baked goods a heavy, soapy taste.

I’m so glad I read that because had I not, I would have used a different cocoa. As it was, I dug in my lidded bin in my pantry for Penzey’s high fat Dutch-process cocoa, exactly what I needed for this tea bread.

It took no time to mix it up. Butter, sugar, cocoa, a little jot of espresso powder (which brings out, or enhances the chocolate flavor in the loaf), baking powder, vanilla, also some of King Arthur Flour’s Cake Enhancer. Have you heard of it? It’s a type of emulsifier, and is used a lot in professional kitchens and bakeries. It helps stabilize batters and breads and makes them or keeps them moist. So there were 2 T. of that in the batter too. Plus flour and milk. I think that was it. Nothing all that unusual, really.

Into the elongated tea loaf pan it went and baked. According to KAF, to switch to the different pan I should reduce the baking time by about 25% from a standard bread pan. It took longer than that to get the tea loaf to just the right internal temp, but it baked in about 60 minutes. I let it cool awhile, then with a little bit of rocking motion it came out of the pan easily enough. I think next time I would put a piece of parchment in the bottom. I’ve added that note to the directions.

What’s GOOD: everything about it. This is really a cake, but it’s sturdy enough (or it has a dense enough texture) that you can slice it into thin slices. But it’s absolutely NOT dense like a banana bread, for instance, or zucchini bread. Not at all. Truly it’s a cake. And delicious. If you’re a chocolate nut, it will tick all your boxes for richness, chocolate flavor, toothsome-ness, if there is such a hyphenation. In a word, this is terrific.
What’s NOT: nothing. Nary a word could I say. Hoorays for the King Arthur Flour test kitchen.

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The world lost a wonderful writer when Laurie Colwin died in 1992, very young (48) to a heart attack. I remember opening my issue of Gourmet that month to read the unbelievable news that Colwin had died suddenly. There was no explanation about what happened. I’d been a fan of her writing for many, many years. I adored her essays in the magazine, and had purchased her first food essay collection, Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen (Vintage Contemporaries). I loved the stories – most of them were from her many years of writing for Gourmet. Her writing style was so witty, folksy, down to earth. But loving, and matter-of-fact. She shared simple recipes, but with a charm and verve that made you just want to go right to the kitchen and make her beef stew. Or her gingerbread. Or her creamed spinach with jalapenos.

Recently I moved some of my cookbooks and other books related to cooking from my kitchen/family room area to my upstairs office. Books I don’t refer to with any frequency made the transition along with various cookbooks I can’t bear to part with, but don’t use much. When I came upon the Home Cooking book, I decided to set it aside and it’s been sitting in the book rack in one of our bathrooms for about 2-3 months. Even my DH has picked it up from time to time and enjoyed reading a story. I’ve just finished reading it from cover to cover, with a renewed enthusiasm for making some of her recipes (of which there are few). There are several quotes that I found so humorous, so I decided to share some with you. I don’t think I’m allowed to completely write one of her essays here, but bits and pieces are okay, I think. Perhaps they’ll pique your interest – enough to buy the book yourself.

In the Forward of the book, Colwin wrote a little explanation about her love of food and socializing in the presence of food.

Unless you live alone in a cave or hermitage, cooking and eating are social activities; even hermit monks have one communal meal a month. The sharing of food is the basis of social life, and to many people it is the only kind of social life worth participating in.

No one who cooks cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers. In my kitchen I rely on Edna Lewis, Marcella Hazan, Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David, the numerous contributors to The Charleston Receipts, and Margaret Costa (author of an English book entitled The Four Seasons Cookery Book).

One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends. People who like to cook like to talk about food. Plain old cooks (as opposed to the geniuses in fancy restaurants) tend to be friendly. After all, without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.

Perhaps Colwin’s most famous essay is the one entitled “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant.” It is, without a doubt, my favorite food essay ever, and I’ve opened this book more than once just to read this chapter. Colwin was young and an aspiring writer back then, and had to economize in order to even live in New York City. She rented an apartment that would likely drive a normal person off the edge, but to Colwin, it had charm in spades. Here’s what she wrote:

For eight years I lived in a one-room apartment a little larger than the Columbia Encyclopedia. It is lucky I never met Wilt Chamberlain because if I had invited him in for coffee he would have been unable to spread his arms in my room which was roughly seven by twenty.

I had enough space for a twin-sized bed, a very small night table, and a desk. This desk, which I use to this day, was meant for a child of, say, eleven. At the foot of my bed was a low table that would have been a coffee table in a normal apartment. In mine it served as a lamp stand, and beneath it was a basket containing my sheets and towels. Next to a small fireplace, which had an excellent draw, was a wicker armchair and an ungainly wicker footstool which often served as a table of sorts.

Instead of a kitchen, this minute apartment featured a metal counter. Underneath was a refrigerator the size of a child’s playhouse. On top was what I called the stove but which was only two electric burners – in short, a hot plate.

Many people found this place charming, at least for five minutes or so. Many thought I must be insane to live in so small a space, but I loved my apartment and found it the coziest place on earth.

My cupboard shelves were so narrow that I had to stand my dinner plates on end. I did the dishes in a plastic pan in the bathtub and set the dish drainer over the toilet . . .

When I was alone I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook’s strongest ally. I fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold. It was cheap and filling and was delicious in all manner of strange combinations. If any was left over I ate it cold the next day with bread. . .

In this tunnel-like dollhouse of an apartment, Colwin often entertained, but only a party of three. Four made impossible logistics. She often served soup – a one pot wonder. Usually she brought in dessert. I’ve tried to envision an apartment 7 feet wide by 20 feet long, which had to have included a bathroom of sorts, thereby leaving very little space left for living. Yet Colwin found it absolutely comforting and homey. She always preferred to eat at home rather than go out – she was a champion of good old-fashioned kinds of home cooking. Nothing fancy was her motto. One of her mantras was about salt – lots of it – and seasoning everything with celery salt too.

Eventually Colwin married – moved into a more normal sized house – and had a daughter. She continued to write. Including numerous novels. Here’s a link to her many published works. None is available on the Kindle.

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For whatever reason, I haven’t cooked anything in the last few days that has been noteworthy. Or I supposed I should say blog-worthy. Don’t we all have days like that, or strings of days? I made some beef stroganoff and to me it was just blah. And it was a well-tested recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. Or Cook’s Illustrated. Can’t remember which. I took pictures of it, assuming it would be great since usually I rave about their recipes. Not that one. Toss those photos.

I have been cooking, but sometimes it’s been something from the freezer that I’ve already told you about. We’ve had several meals from my stash of soups. We’ve been out to eat, or been invited to friends, so I’ve not needed to cook anything myself. I fixed Trader Joe’s minted green peas – the last package from my freezer. I’m sad they’ve discontinued that one. I’ve made squash in a couple of ways – my mother’s old tried and true method of finely mincing, steaming it a bit, then adding in a bit of butter at the end. Who hasn’t done that a hundred times? I bought a nice chubby sweet potato a week ago and went to fix it tonight and discovered that it’s mostly spoiled. Today I defrosted some pork chops (boneless) that I’d gotten all prepared to do in the Sous Vide SVK-00001 – SousVide Supreme Water Oven, Brushed Stainless’>sous vide. But by the time I got to it, there wasn’t time to do it that way. So my DH is grilling them outside. We were invited to our son’s home the other night, and I did make some things – the very creamy rice pudding I posted a few weeks ago. And I also made Irish Soda Bread with Orange Zest that has been a favorite of mine. It’s Ina Garten’s recipe. I love that soda bread (pictured at top). My DH just said to me, as I pointed to the photo here on my computer screen, and he said “wow, that was unbelievably good; you can make that any time you’re willing to.” I’ve made nearly all of my usual rotations of salad dressings, relying on the Garlic VIP Salad Dressing most of the time. That recipe was the 16th blog post I did, back in 2007. I also heavily rely on my Creamy Garlic Blue Cheese Dressing too.

We’ve been buying meat for a couple of years now, from a guy who comes to our house, and he sold us a box of his duck legs. Oh gosh, are they good! But they’re not blog-worthy because they’re already cooked and they enclose a package of orange sauce to serve with it. It’s all “done” already – all I have to do is heat it through in the oven. How easy is that?

Maybe I haven’t mentioned it, but we’ve sold our vacation home in the California desert. We sold it because we just don’t use it enough. We love it – and we use it, yes, but not enough. That picture is taken near the country club a week or so ago. Dave and I got into our cute little black, shiny golf cart and just took a long, long jaunt around the complex, looking at all the ponds, the ducks, the herons frozen in place looking for fish alongside some of the ponds. We watched some of the golfers swing. And miss the green. Spring flowers are blooming to beat the band these days. In the photo above, the golf course is off on the right. We had lunch in our favorite café there (that overlooks the Olympic pool, outdoors) and ordered our very favorite item – an Oriental chicken salad. They use a Sysco prepared dressing on that salad. I’ll miss having that. We’re resigning our membership, so we won’t be able to use the clubhouse. On our last visit, we went to our favorite restaurants out there, Pacifica, on El Paseo, and enjoyed our fish-centric meal so much. Likely our very last lunch at the country club will be that salad. We hope some of our friends will invite us out there on occasion and take us there so we can have that salad!

It only took us 5 years to sell the house, and we took a bath on it. Some areas in California have not had much of a downturn (the Bay Area mostly), but other areas, yes indeed! It’s still in escrow as I’m writing this, but will close in a couple of weeks. We’ve made numerous trips out there packing, sorting and getting rid of clothes that have lived there for years and aren’t being worn. The houses there mostly sell furnished, so it’s just our personal stuff we must pack – and all the art, including many paintings I did myself, and nick-nacks. The kitchen – well, let me just tell you – the new owners are getting a treasure trove of gadgets and things. Most herbs and spices I’m leaving behind – they’ve been sealed up in jars, but during 13 desert summers they’ve been up to 88° for months at a time (houses are supposed to be left air conditioned – even if you’re not there – because if you don’t, the glue in cabinets will dry up and you might arrive one time and find most of your cabinets and everything in them – in a heap on the floor – so the houses are kept at 88° all through the hot months). So I’m not thinking any of those herbs or spices are worth keeping. Maybe the new owners won’t notice. I will tell them, in my lengthy letter I’m writing to them on our last day. I did bring back home all of my good Cutco knives (I ordered a second set for that house when we bought the house in 2000). And my old Nespresso machine which I’ll now put in my office upstairs.

We had a couple of sets of dishes out there, so have brought those back too, but we’re leaving plenty for the new owners. Including a set of white (very plain and ordinary) dishes for 12 that came with the house when we bought it. They’re gathering dust in the garage. They’ll be surprised when they open that cupboard. Maybe they’ll like them. We didn’t. The cupboards in the kitchen are full of varying dishes, pots and pans (including some Caphalon), bake ware, Pyrex, an ancient slow cooker, even a bread machine. Everything they could possibly need except fresh food. The freezer has a bunch of stuff in it, so we will be bringing all that back on our next trip. Whenever I cooked there, I’d just stash a 2nd dinner portion in the freezer. I’m even leaving them some cookbooks. Not ones that I particularly care about, or they’d be coming back home with me too.

Last night I made a big batch of deviled eggs for a luncheon. Or, as my Bible Study leader said, nobody wants to eat anything related to the devil, so let’s call them angeled eggs. Okay. I’ve made them before – and they’re here on my blog. Most people don’t expect curry powder to be in eggs, and yet, they’re SO delish. I also cut the eggs differently, across rather than lengthwise and I slice just a little flat space on the bottom of each egg half. That’s why they stand up and mostly don’t fall over. Go to the blog post if you’re interested in knowing more. I heard lots of raves, which makes me feel good.

Then I have a short story about my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The one I had has bitten the dust. My old one was about 30 years old. A few years ago I discovered the beater blade, a gadget you can use in most stand mixers that scrapes the side of the stand mixer’s bowls, so you don’t have to hand-scrape with a spatula when you’re mixing. I loved it, but sometimes it would get a bit out of adjustment, as you need to move the mechanism that holds the blade (or paddle) up in order to accommodate the extra depth of the rubber blades on the beater. This adjustment is done with some very minute adjustments of a screw underneath the tilt head. My DH had to adjust it the first time – I simply couldn’t make it work right. He figured it out. So this one day I knew it needed some adjustment. I tried to do it myself and thought it was okay. I was mixing up cookies. As the batter got progressively more firm once I added the flour the mixer was laboring a little. I slowed it down, and BANG, the beater blade broke in half. It was made of plastic with the rubber edges. Dang. I went back to the regular blade. A few weeks later I bought a new beater blade, making the assumption that it was my fault that the thing broke, and that another one would work fine. I installed the new beater blade and some days later I was, again, making a batch of cookies. The dough was quite firm, I’ll admit. I could see that again, the motor was laboring, so I made an adjustment to the screw, thinking that this new beater blade was different. Well, before it had hardly made 2-3 circuits in the bowl this brand new beater blade broke in half. Oh my. Since I hadn’t finished my cookies, I reverted to the standard batter beater that comes with it, but darn, if the entire head of the Kitchen Aid would wiggled back and forth. If I turned up the speed it would wobble even more. Not good. I tried adjusting the screw. No difference. I think that breaking both beater blade somehow threw out the alignment of the mixer. So, I had to buy a new one. I might have purchased some great new mixer, but because I have an appliance garage, with exactly 15 7/8 inch height clearance, it was quite clear – no newer model for me – I replaced my old stand mixer with the same 4 1/2 quart Kitchen Aid I’d had before. I just chose a different color, and I think I’ll live with the hand-scraping of the bowl from now on. Love the color!

So that’s where I am today. I’ll be back in the kitchen soon. I have a long post I want to share with all of you – have you ever heard of Laurie Colwin? I’ve decided all my readers need to know about her. Coming soon.

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This post isn’t about a recipe. It’s just about pressure cookers, what makes them tick (ha! that’s a joke, the old-fashioned ones did kind of tick or jitter, new ones don’t). Most of this is synopsized (is that a word?) from my latest issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It was so interesting I thought I’d share it with you.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you’ll already know that I particularly like to know the “why” of things. The science of cooking. I imagine this comes from the genetics I got from my dad – he was an engineer, and probably would have liked me to be one too, but I took a different path. Yet, when it comes to cooking, as I’ve gotten older (oh, excuse me, mature!) I really like knowing why things work. Like what is the maillard reaction (that’s the effect of caramelization or browning in a pan, mostly related to meat, but it could be anything that’s cooked to a high enough heat and creates a fond, that brown stuff that sticks to the pan, where all the flavor lies)? Or how/why does baking powder or soda makes things rise. Why is arborio rice different than long grain and why do they cook differently? You know, those kinds of things.

Just a bit of pressure cooker background here – I was given a pressure cooker in 1962 when I got married the first time. I used it, and then one unfortunate day I was cooking artichokes, got distracted, went outside and totally forgot about the artichokes jiggling away in the kitchen. When I came back through the door about 30 minutes later, the smell assailed me – burned is all I can say. The pressure cooker, one of those old-old Presto versions – was still on the stove, the jiggly top had blown off and the artichokes were burned to a crisp and obviously there was no more water inside. The interior couldn’t be cleaned up, and I discovered immediately that the bottom of the pan was warped. Big time warped. It had developed a rounded bottom – so bad that the pan wouldn’t sit level anyway, although it was still barely usable (amazing, when you consider what I’d done to it!). Plus, I couldn’t get that burned smell out of the pan in any event. I kept it for years, out of guilt, I think, that I’d been so careless as to ruin the darned thing. Hoping there would be a solution. (No.)

But I’d remembered all these ensuing years how much time they saved sometimes. It was at a cooking class about 5-6 years ago that the instructor (Deb Buzar) made short ribs, and she did it in the pressure cooker. It wasn’t a pressure cooker class – but she’d arrived at the class at about 5pm, was somewhat short on time to prep for the class. But, she explained that she always does her barbecued short ribs in the pressure cooker – mostly because the recipe she shared (linked just above – and is still my go-to short rib recipe) was from her mother-in-law, and SHE had always made it in the pressure cooker. It was at that class I decided to buy one.

Being a judicious buyer as I am, I went online and read reviews about PC’s. Mostly at amazon.com. There are all varying prices – from under $100 to nearly $300. After reading reviews, I decided to buy a Fagor, and purchased a variation of the 5-piece set (the one you see pictured at the top) – Fagor Duo Combi 5-Piece Pressure Cooker Set. It has 2 different sized pans, with two lids – one which includes the rubber sealing ring that allows the pan to come to pressure, and the second one just an ordinary glass lid,  and also came with a pasta/steamer insert. I think it’s about $150. The set I bought from amazon didn’t come with the pasta insert and didn’t have the glass lid. I’ve been nothing but happy with my purchase. I don’t use it every day. I don’t even use it every week, but when I use it – I’m very grateful I have it. Lately I’ve used it most often for cooking dried beans, which has been a revelation to me. I’m not trying to convince you to buy a Fagor. I’m only sharing my process and that I’ve been happy with my decision.

So fast forward to the other day when I was reading Cook’s Illustrated, and they had a lengthy article about PCs. Purposely I didn’t flip the couple of pages to read which ones were their winners. Here’s what I learned.

Pressure cookers function based on a very simple principle. In a tightly sealed pot, the boiling point of liquid is higher. As the pot heats up, pressure begins to build. This pressure makes it more difficult for water molecules to turn to vapor – therefore raising the boiling point from 212 to 250 degrees. Why does this matter? The superheated steam generated in the cooker makes food cook faster. And because the pot stays closed, cooking requires much less liquid than usual, and flavors concentrate.

Contraptions for cooking under pressure have been around for a long, long time. They were first invented by Denis Papin in 1679. He was a French mathematician and physicist and invented it because he wanted to reduce bones (probably from cows, pigs and sheep) to bone meal. Some time in the 1900’s, after World War II, there was a big surge to develop them for the home cook. At one time I used my badly warped pressure cooker to cook chicken backs and necks (which were dirt cheap back in the 1970’s), reduce them to mush, and feed them to my female dog who had just whelped and was quite thin and weary from caring for and feeding her litter of puppies. It worked like a charm to give her lots of calcium. The bone mixture was loaded with calories too. She wolfed it down.

Anyway, early pressure cookers had some inherent problems (and the article said there were some unscrupulous manufacturers too), but as the years have gone by they’ve been tested and designed for ease of use – and safety for home use. No toggle thing that ticks. With mine, I bring it up to temperature and it starts to spit steam. Once it’s a steady stream of steam, I reduce the temp, and it sits on the range with no need to watch it at all, until the minutes have ticked away. Once done, you can just let it cool down on its own. You can flip a toggle and release the steam, or I put it in my kitchen sink and run cold water over it for about 15 seconds and it’s down to a regular/no pressure. Mine has a tiny little plastic plug and when it’s under steam pressure the plug sticks up (kind of like those little plastic thingies that come in turkeys, that supposedly pop out when the turkey is done). Once pressure is released, the plastic plug slips back down into the lid so I know it’s safe to remove the lid. It’s very easy and I feel very safe using it.

The article concluded that 6-quart pans aren’t very useful. Mine is an 8-quart, which was the preferred size. They also highly recommended a 9 inch width. Some are 7 1/2 inches, but they didn’t like them much. The bottom of pressure cooker pans enclose a heavy-duty aluminum ring, encased in stainless steel, that regulates and retains heat. If that ring is too small, food on the outer edges can burn. And they cautioned about using pans on a burner where the flame can lick up the sides and can damage both the locking mechanisms in the lids and the rubber gaskets. So don’t use the cooker on a really high BTU burner (those are always a wider ring of flame). Better to use a regular burner, although it will take a bit more time to bring it up to temperature. The 2 winners had base thicknesses of over 7 millimeters thick. Several other models were under 7 millimeters and didn’t perform as well. Some models didn’t quite reach/maintain the 250 degree desired temp. Only the top one did. The 2nd best, their Best Buy model (the one I own, above) didn’t quite get to 250 degrees, but was very close. All the others were less, so cooking times were longer. Some models also lost fluid (meaning they vented too much steam). The two top models lost a very tiny amount, which is ideal. The number one model was the Fissler Vitaquick Pressure Cooker, 8.5qt.  It’s $279. The #2 choice was the one I own (see link in top paragraph if you’re interested).

Electric pressure cookers were also examined and found wanting, for a variety of reasons: smaller size (too small), the nonstick coating inside was less durable than the stainless steel in regular models, they lacked handles, they spun around when stirring, and weaker heating elements. The only model they half-heartedly recommended was Emeril by T-fal CY4000001 6-Quart Electric Pressure Cooker, Silver.

If you’re interested, the article says that 5 recipes from Cook’s Illustrated’s new book, Pressure Cooker Magic (not out yet, I gather, since I can’t find it online anywhere), are available for free for 4 months (until May 13th, 2013). You will have to sign in/up (free) in order to access the recipes. There’s one for Asian-Style Boneless Beef Short Ribs, Chicken Broth, Easy Chicken and Rice, Easy Ziti with Sausage and Peppers, and Parmesan Risotto.

I do have a number of recipes on my blog prepared in the pressure cooker. In case you’re interested, click on the links below. And I just posted 2 days ago an article about cooking beans – if you click on this link, you’ll go to that one, and do print out the 2-page chart which includes the cooking times for cooking every possible kind of bean in a pressure cooker.

Malaysian Inspired Pork Stew
Parsnips in Orange Sauce
Lamb Shanks with Garlicky Madeira Gravy
Sweet and Spicy Barbecued Country Ribs
Carnitas Tacos
Italian Pot Roast
Mushroom Risotto
Beef Stew with Dumplings
No Heat Beef Chili (the beans are made in the pressure cooker)

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