Gutsy Eaters Only

03 Oct 2010 6 Comments

by scolgin in Uncategorized

Here’s a fun little quiz.

What is it???

The answer is none of the above. Actually, the answer is “I don’t know,” even though I ate some of it.

I don’t typically eat things I don’t know what they are. But my friend got this in his “Salumi Society” monthly shipment from Boccalone in San Francisco (see “Links”), which led us to the conclusion that it was some sort of cured pork product and that we were meant to eat it. We poked at it first, trying to figure out what exactly it was. Some sort of offal, obviously — perhaps a stomach lining? We tried it on bread. I’d give it a “3” on the Curious Meatometer 1-5 rating scale. It was not bad, nor was it delicious. The literature that came with it suggested it was very good with beans. So I took some home, cooked it with cannellini beans, and we tried it again. The beans were very good, although they were good before I added the pork thing. It contributed a certain porkiness to the meal, and the boingy toothsomeness of innards was interesting. But I certainly wouldn’t spend a lot of money on it.

Not that you should spend a lot of money on it. It’s the part most people throw away.

I struggle with offal. Even the word is so close to “awful.” I like it theory — it’s admirable if you’re going to kill an animal, to eat the entire animal, the way they do in so many countries and cultures. In America, we like it if they do whatever they can before we eat it to make it seem NOT like an animal. We like to buy our steaks and chicken breasts prettied up and sold in styrofoam — sort of like they were simply fruits picked off the animal. I couldn’t even kill and cook the roosters two of our baby chicks turned into, although my Guatemalan housekeeper’s eyes lit up carnivorously at the suggestion that she might take them.

It’s more the reality of it that I have trouble with. Like, the part about having it in your mouth. It tastes organny to me. On the advice of friends, I’ve tried menudo when I’ve had hangovers a few times, and generally gagged. I do like sweetbreads, although as innards go they’re fairly dainty.

I will keep trying them. I consider it my duty as a carnivore. As Mario Batali said, “It has always surprised me that some people are suspicious of offal and yet have no fear of eating an arm, a shoulder or the fatty muscle under the rib cage (i.e. the steak).”

Deep in the Heart of Texas

29 Sep 2010 1 Comment

by scolgin in Recipes, Sensational Salads, Video Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

We were beginning to enjoy the cool fall weather. And then it hit. In Southern California, we call it the Santa Anas. You might know it as Indian Summer. Put simply, it got @#$%ing hot!!! 110 in the shade.

Life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. The perfect opportunity for a last barbecue or two. So the other night, we called some friends over and did Texas-style. Stood out on the deck with my tongs like a cowboy. Hollered at the chickens and the kids, spit into a tin. Perhaps it’s still warm where you are, and you’ll want to try it too. Put on some Patsy Cline and call the cowboys in…

More knowledgeable people than I could speak more articulately on the regional differences in barbecue. In Texas, I know they love their beef, and they like chilies. I know you’ll love this steak with salty-sweet chili rub. To go with it, I made cheese grits and an iceberg wedge salad with bleu cheese dressing and pancetta — neither strictly Texan, but pretty good foils to the flavorful steak. We drank one of our big jammy family zinfandels — there’s no better varietal with barbecue. Of course, beer, a nice mint julep or even a zesty margarita would’ve paired well. This Texas dinner will serve 4, amply.

*   *   *

Cowboy-Style Grilled Steak

2 lbs good steak on the bone (rib-eye, preferably; but porterhouse is good too)
2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp pimenton (Spanish smoked sweet paprika) or regular paprika
1 tsp ground chipotle pepper
1 tsp ground pasilla or other mild red chili

Take steaks out of the fridge about one hour before you grill. In the meantime, combine other ingredients to make a rub. About 10 minutes before grilling, sprinkle steaks evenly with rub. Gently massage the rub into the meat.

Heat your BBQ as high as it will go — mine gets up around 600 degrees. Cook your steaks 3 or 4 minutes on each side, depending on thickness, until cook medium or medium rare to your preference. Remove, cover with foil, and let sit for 10 minutes. Then use a very sharp knife to cut across the grain into 1/2 inch thick slices. Spread a few slices on each person’s plate, and serve with cheese grits.

Cheese Grits
(Note: I highly recommend buying some Anson Mills grits from the link on this blog. They’re about the best grits on earth. While you’re there, pick up some dried polenta, including the fabulous rustic polenta integrale. Make your shipping costs worthwhile!)

1 cup dried grits
water
1/2 cup grated cheddar
1/4 cup grated pecorino romano or asagio
1 tbsp butter
salt & pepper to taste

Heat about 2 cups of water in a pot to a simmering boil, and add dried grits. Reduce heat to medium low and cook, stirring and adding more water frequently, for up to an hour. Grits should be tender and not at all crunchy. Add salt and pepper to taste, then stir in cheeses. Stir in butter last, and then cover and let sit for five minutes. Scoop some onto each of four plates, and surround with a fan of the steak slices.

Iceberg Wedge Salad

1 head iceberg lettuce
1/2 cup crumbled bleu cheese (roquefort, gorgonzola, etc.)
1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp mayonnaise
4 strips pancetta (or bacon), cooked to crisp
salt & pepper

Remove the core from the lettuce, and cut into quarter wedges. Mix the bleu cheese, milk and mayo vigorously together until it forms a thick dressing (some chunks of bleu cheese should remain). Drizzle some dressing over each of the wedges, then drizzle with a little olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, and lay a cooked strip of pancetta on top of each. Serve.

The Boy & the Fig

27 Sep 2010 12 Comments

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Video Tags: , , , ,

People, I find, either love figs or hate them. Mostly it’s less about the food than the tree. If you love figs and you have a fig tree, you are thrilled every late summer when the branches are nearly exploding with ripe fruit. If you hate figs, you despair as the ground of your garden or driveway are littered with gooey, sticky, fly-covered fruit. Others have fig trees and are merely agnostic about them. “Oh, yeah… it’s a nice tree. But we never eat the figs. No idea what to do with them.”

Eat them, my friends, eat them.

My friends with fig trees are never surprised when they invite us over in the late summer and find me clinging simian-like amidst the high branches of a tree or scaling a wall. Some of them look at me skeptically and ask what on earth I’m going to do with the fruits — fig haters, they. Here’s what I teach them:

There’s something sexy and carnal about figs. The way they hang ripely. The way they burst open and reveal their ruby insides. Even the leaves bring to mind Renaissance paintings of Adam & Eve in the garden, body parts barely covered by fig leaves, succumbing to the allure of temptation. But I digress…

I dreamed of having my own fig tree. Last week, we had a surveyor out. We’d always thought our property extended beyond the fence but weren’t sure. I was walking the additional half acre or so we’d picked up in the process with him, and he pointed to a tree. “Well, that’s a strange looking tree!” I looked over, and there hidden among the oaks, a beautiful tall fig tree, reaching its limbs to clear the canopy. Right on the far corner of my own property! So maybe next summer, if you’re lucky, you won’t find me lurking in your yard and scaling your wall…

Teach Your Children Well

25 Sep 2010 9 Comments

by scolgin in Observations, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories), Video Tags: , ,

This is a post for parents. And for those who are childlike at heart. Because it is in approaching food with a childlike joy and wonder that your cooking will be transformed. And your eating.

Of course, any parent will tell you that children don’t always approach food with a childlike joy. When my son, Flynn, was young. I used to make him baby risottos. They were so good and he loved them so much that we thought of starting a baby food company. But then something happened. He switched. He was suspicious of everything I made. “Dad, there’s a dot in my food!” he would squeal in terror, and the simplest dishes would be derailed by a speck of pepper or a stray trace of parsley.

I was crestfallen.

A chef. And my first-born son would eat nothing but chicken nuggets.

The question, of course, was how to ever get him eating interesting food again. The answer was simple, if not exactly quick. Introduce him to the joy of growing, shopping, cooking and eating. And get him involved. Are your kids involved? Are YOU involved??

I expanded the garden, and gave Flynn his own tomato and corn plants. I got chickens, and put him in charge of egg collection (he now has an egg business selling them in the neighborhood — need any really GOOD eggs? Call Flynn…) My sister got him his own cookbook for his birthday — what a gift! Sometimes I find him sitting on the couch on a Saturday afternoon reading his cookbook. Sometimes he and I watch the cooking shows on PBS on Saturday afternoon. Sometimes we make what we’ve seen.

And I began to request his help in the kitchen. I would let him chop things — supervised, of course — with my really cool, sharp chef’s knife. (Chef’s knives are enticingly exciting to kids, especially boys.) I let him stir sauces. I let him toss the pizza dough in the air. And anytime he wanted a bite of something, I gave it to him.

While he’s still not eating EVERYTHING, there are few things he won’t try. And he’s had the experience enough times of enjoying something wonderful he didn’t want to try, that he believes me when I say, “No, seriously… you’re gonna LOVE this!” Plus, he learned to love the experience of sourcing our food. We go on food adventures. To Little Tokyo to get imagawayaki hot off the grill. To the cheese shop in Beverly Hills. To East L.A. to get handmade tortillas.

Flynn wants to go to France to try the stinky cheeses there. I heard him telling a friend in his taekwondo class the other day about the shabu shabu we were having for dinner that evening. “No,” he explained, his hands gesticulating animatedly, “you cook it right on the table!”

Have you made food an adventure for your children? First, of course, you must make it an adventure for yourself. I guess that’s really what this blog is all about. We’re all kids at heart. Life should always be approached with bright-eyed wonder, as an adventure. And in life, food is one of the greatest adventures of all.

Rome’s Best Soup

22 Sep 2010 13 Comments

by scolgin in On the Road, Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , ,

I was about 11 when it happened.

Spending the summer in Europe with my family, I was gazing out the window of a restaurant high above Florence in the Etruscan town of Fiesole (where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas used to spend their summers entertaining Picasso and other friends, of which Stein wrote, “The days were long and the nights were long and the life was good.”). The waiter brought a soup that was one of many illuminating moments on that trip which would change my life. It was called stracciatella, “little rags” in Italian. It was a specialty of Roma, we were told. I’d never tasted soup like it.

Keep in mind this was the late 1970s, a time when “Italian” in the U.S. — even in sophisticated Southern California — meant Papa Tony’s, greasy meatballs in tomato sauce, pizza and overblown Jersey-style minestrone. Here was a soup that was the antithesis of everything I’d known to be Italian.

It was also miraculously simple. A clear, resonant golden broth in which floated those little rags — shreds of egg and spinach flavored with parmesan, nutmeg and pepper. A soup that would come to illustrate perfectly my core cooking belief in highlighting simple, fresh flavors that sing like a symphony together. Beautiful to see, and memorable to taste. Make this soup — I can make no promises but it may change your life too. Especially if done properly.

As I often say on this blog in regard to the simplest recipes, success depends entirely on the quality of your ingredients. This is a soup, for example, that benefits highly from a good homemade stock. Fresh farmer’s market spinach, the best parmesan reggiano you can find, and really good eggs don’t hurt either. And there may be no experience in the kitchen as immediately gratifying as grating a pod of nutmeg directly into your food.

Stracciatella

1 quart homemade chicken stock
3 eggs
1 cup finely chopped spinach
1 tbsp semolina flour (optional)
1/4 cup parmesan reggiano
a few grates fresh nutmeg

If you don’t have chicken stock, get yourself a whole chicken. Throw it in a pot with an onion, a bay leaf, a carrot and about a gallon of water. Bring to a boil, skim off froth, turn down to a simmer and cook for about 30 minutes. Add salt to taste (you’ll need a good bit of salt here). Remove the chicken (use the meat for sandwiches or tacos). You can continue reducing the broth over medium heat for another hour if you want a stronger broth. (I would recommend doing this.) Strain through a fine sieve into another pot. Let cool. At this point, take out your quart for your soup and freeze any remaining stock in freezer back for future use. (I always keep three or four bags of chicken stock in the freezer.)

Heat your stock over medium to a simmer. Beat the eggs in a large bowl, add the spinach and the semolina and stir together. Add the parmesan, grate a little nutmeg over the top (or throw in a pinch of pre-grated nutmeg), combine thoroughly. Turn off the stock, slowly pour in the egg/spinach mixture, and cover. Let sit for five minutes. Then, gently break up to “rags” in your soup with the back side of a ladle. Serve.

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