Leila's Commonplace Blog

Endless Christmas Ham

For Christmas a week ago I cooked a Niman Ranch, antibiotic- and nitrite-free apple-smoked ham. Glazed it with orange juice, honey and mustard. Made Southern spoonbread, braised rainbow chard with garlic, and mashed potatoes to go with it. (The children like mashed potatoes). We were only five, as my father died three months ago and we really didn't feel like having a big party.

So there was plenty of ham left over. Tuesday, Boxing Day, we ate leftover sliced ham and whatever else was in the fridge. Wednesday I made pasta with spinach and pesto sauce and served diced ham with it. Thursday I made a frittata with the leftover pasta and more bits of ham. Friday there was still a giant chunk of ham left, so I cubed it and made a plain bean soup - speckled Anasazi beans, sauteed onion, bay leaf, salt and pepper, cooked under pressure, then the last of the ham stirred in and cooked a little longer. The four of us demolished a whole pot of the soup in one day.

(the spiced lentil soup was in there, too)

Because we ate beans and leftovers all week, I didn't flinch when hubbie requested roast beef for supper tonight. Don't worry about what it costs, he said. I did flinch when I got to the butcher and saw what grass-fed rib roast costs per pound (our dinner guests might read this blog so I won't share with you).

I repeated out loud to my son: "Daddy says don't worry how much the meat costs, just get it." I still shop like a parsimonious housewife when actually my husband earns a good living and we can certainly afford to buy roast beef, grass-fed no less. We'd spend a lot more eating out. But my inner Puritan struggled. The strong direction from my husband over-rode my price resistance.  Now I just have to figure out how to roast the thing. I've only done this once before.

Happy New Year to all.

What to Eat

Just got the new book from Marion Nestle out of the library. I didn't buy it because I figure I have the info already - and it's true that I pretty much do what she says. But the book is very informative and gives you the lowdown on What to Eat.

Nestle is a nutritionist, food lover, and big critic of corporate food. With all the competing health claims and fears out there, and the pressures of grocery and restaurant advertising, we are bewildered about what to feed our children these days. Some of her guidelines:

"First, shop the perimeters of the market. That's where the real foods are -- the meat, produce, dairy. Don't go into the center aisles. If you have to, don't buy anything with more than five ingredients, not counting vitamins. And if you can't pronounce an ingredient, don't buy the product. Don't buy anything with a health claim -- they're misleading. Don't buy artificial anything. Don't buy anything with a cartoon on it -- these people are marketing directly to your child. And if you're concerned about weight, don't buy soft drinks -- they're all calories and no nutrients. ...Eating is a great pleasure. I'd rather try to keep control of the quantity I eat." (from a Washington Post interview)

This book is for you if you're confused about eating fish (sustainable? mercury levels? Omega 3s?), nutritional supplements (she's skeptical) organic food (she's cautiously in favor), and all manner of commercially processed "health food" (caveat emptor). Marion Nestle reads the labels, goes to the stores, phones the numbers on the back of the box and quizzes the spokespeople, goes to the farms and generally pokes around asking questions. The book is quite entertaining.

But basically - eat at home more often. Eat whole foods. Go easy on the junk food. If you want to lose weight, move more and eat less. Watch the added sugar. Drink tap water (buy a filter if you're worried about the quality). Etc.

Several cookbooks in my collection that help me with putting on simple meals cooked from basic ingredients with not a lot of time:

Good, Cheap Food Miriam Ungerer
How To Cook Without a Book Pam Anderson
The Minimalist Cooks Dinner Mark Bittman
How to Cook Everything Mark Bittman
The New Fanny Farmer Cookbook Marion Cunningham

Making food just doesn't have to be hard work. What you need to eat every day does not have to be fabulous all the time. Simple home-cooked food is healthier, tastier and more economical than takeout, takeout, frozen dinners and takeout.

Quaffability: The Blog

When you go to Trader Joe's to buy wine, do you feel confused? Do you stand in front of the bottles of two buck chuck, $3.99 cabernet, and $6.99 Bordeaux, wondering whether any of it is any good, and is the extra three dollars going to make a difference or is it all rotgut?

Read Quaffability, a blog of a year's standing full of reviews of wine. The motto: "mostly under twelve dollars, mostly available at Trader Joe's." Probably very specific to Northern California but maybe some of the wines are available in markets elsewhere. They even review the two buck chuck.

If you aren't from California, you may not know about two buck chuck. It's this super cheap wine that may or may not be the excess product from a good producer; TJ's sells it under the label Charles Shaw. Staple of graduate school parties all up and down California.

For New Year's, Quaffability recommends Schramsburg Mirabelle Brut, North Coast, at $14.99, for your sparkling wine. Happy New Year!

Let me just add: I am not all that impressed with Trader Joe's as a grocery store. I don't buy their produce -it's mediocre. My local upscale market (locally owned too) has a much, much better meat department. In fact, the old local market, a smallish corner store, has a meat counter I like much better than TJ's. I really don't like TJ's snacky foods - what is the purpose of buying upscale junk? It's still junk. Their nuts etc. are no better a deal than what I get at my local "natural foods" markets. In fact, TJ's has way too much sugary, fatty, processed food. So what if they have organic juice boxes - I try not to feed my kids juice boxes, which are wasteful (the packaging) and not that healthy (juice is still a sugar drink, I don't care if it is organic). Their pre-made frozen foods and fresh salads and such range from mediocre to forget-about-it. (note - because frozen foods and pre-made salads are just mediocre; it's possible that TJ's is no worse than anybody else's)

I don't buy commercially prepared sauces, packaged dinners and mixes such as Thai Green Curry Sauce or even macaroni and cheese in a box; I prefer to make my food from scratch, using simple cooking techniques and whole, unprocessed ingredients. Ok I've bought things like frozen wild shrimp upon occasion, but on the whole I am underwhelmed by most of TJ's food offerings.

What Trader Joe's can offer me, and why I drop in when I'm in the neighborhood: cheap wine; good prices on dairy products, including yogurt and keffir cheese; and low priced tortillas, flatbreads and other specialty breads. So while I am posting about wine at TJ's, please don't mistake me for a TJ's shill. I shop my local markets instead. But they are certainly nice people in that store, and they know their business and their customer. I wish them well.

Lentils and Spiced Chicken

Remember the endless spiced chickens?

Remember the broth?

This morning I pulled both out of the deep freeze and made a soup with lentils. Sauteed onions in olive oil, added crushed garlic, some paprika and cumin, a can of chopped tomatoes, the broth, and two cups of mixed lentils (little green Puy and split red). Bay leaf. Boiled it. Then at the end, dropped in the frozen spiced chicken leftovers and plenty of salt. Let that heat through and cook for a bit.

It's heaven. Especially to treat a bad head cold. One of the mothers at my kindergartener's school is a Yemeni from Sana' - I ate a version of this at her house. Yum, yum.

Inner Life

Yes, I have an inner chef.

I also have an inner lawyer.

Back in the 80s and 90s, some of us worked on ourselves. We went to therapy and had dialogues with our inner children. There was a guy I knew who used to show up at support groups with a teddy bear. He was about 35, wore glasses and looked like an old-school computer engineer. I have done my time sitting on different chairs, talking to myself in front of a therapist, at $75 an hour. At least I never carried around a teddy bear....

Around that time I discovered my inner lawyer. I was working for lawyers as a legal secretary, and painfully aware of how I'd fallen off the professional path long before. The people I worked for could have been my classmates and peers in high school and college, but they were the conscientious, driven, competent ones. I was smart enough, but flaky, alternative, a bohemian slacker with weird clothes and unruly hair. I made lots of careless errors. I could type very fast and churn out documents in record time but I drove the lawyers nuts. Then I discovered that I usually knew when I was making a mistake, overlooking something, not doing something right. Normally I would just slam through, ignoring the little inner twitch. I learned to listen to my inner lawyer, look at the paragraph or word or filled-in form that bothered me.

The lawyers thought this new development, my inner lawyer, was pretty weird, since I liked to tell them all about it. But my error rate dropped off and I got to be a demonically productive secretary. They had to hire two people to replace me when I left that last position.

In the mid-1990s I worked in a culinary school. I hung out with the chef instructors at lunch and after work, learned how they think and operate. I am no chef - too uncoordinated to be in the hot kitchen, too sloppy to do pastry or garde-manger. Really I have small-motor issues, I'm sure of it. But I did pick up some attitudes. For one thing I'm very paranoid about cross-contamination. For another thing, I feel guilty whenever I throw out bones, pan juices or cooking liquids. They could make stock, you know.

Thus my inner chef.

I'm working on having an inner Micheline Marcom - literary mentor and extraordinary writer. She's younger than I am but quite an inspiration. Every aspiring writer needs an introjected genius literary artist.

Endless Chickens

I know I bitched about this six chicken roast melee, but I am still obsessed on it. Am I procrastinating on my novel? maybe.

There were lots of leftovers. Six chickens is too many for a buffet party, even one with fifty guests. There was plenty of other food, and I arrived late, so only about half the chicken got eaten. I have leftovers, including the carcasses and wings and such. I also saved the pan juices, a good four cups worth of spicy chicken essence.

When reheating leftover chicken, I boil it for a good five minutes in a combination of water and pan juices, to make sure everything is totally cooked, and to kill any bugs that might have decided to grow whilst the chicken sat on the buffet table at the party. So far no side effects. The leftovers have filled out two suppers for us quite nicely.

Last night I was faced with about four carcasses - backs and breast bones with tiny bits of meat and gelee clinging to them. My inner chef could not face just throwing that stuff out. I put the carcasses in the pressure cooker with a chopped onion, two ribs of chopped celery, and water; cooked it under pressure for 30 minutes and let sit for an hour (pressure cooker method for chicken stock). This yielded a spicy chicken broth which I strained and put in the fridge.

I have a new friend from my son's school who is Yemeni; she's always feeding us lovely suppers when we visit after school. From her I got the idea to cook lentils in the broth; then add the spiced chicken leftovers in the freezer and cook thoroughly. I may freeze the broth and do this when I have the Yemeni family over for lunch at Christmas time.

I'll consult with my Yemeni friend on spices but I'm pretty sure she would recommend paprika, cinnamon, cumin and maybe ginger. She serves these lentil stews with chicken parts that are delicious and warming. My kids love her food. (In fact my older son was disappointed that we only stayed for tea and honey-glazed flatbread yesterday; he wanted to know where was his supper?)

Mark Bittman

I've liked Mark Bittman's cookbooks for years, felt that his style and his voice reflect the way I like to cook. If you read me on the usenet, you know I'm always talking about him. He has a New York Times column I enjoy (whose recipes feed into some of his books).

Lately I've discovered Mark Bittman on video at the Times. (update - see if this link gets you there - they don't make it easy) It's hugely entertaining. He is such a character, with the amused, humorous attitude of the lifelong New Yorker. He's a big ham and he plays well with other New York hams - his segment with the baker Jim Leahy was completely endearing.

I haven't totally figured out where you go to find his video archive links. When the video goes by on the main page, I click on it, and then his past videos come up for browsing. I just looked at his piece from nine months ago on chicken with green olives. The Times thought they would be clever and edit the recipe out, so you'd have to buy it from the archive. Hah! I used my graduate student privileges at the library online to find it in Lexis/Nexis. But I'm not going to reprint it because the Times lawyers are very clever and very dogged and they'll come after me.

Note that his recipes are not foolproof. I don't think he tests them enough - at least not the ones in "How to Cook Everything." Some work well, some fall flat. Other people have complained of this. You have to be wary, and if you think "that doesn't look like it will turn out right," trust your instincts.

Spiced Chickens: The Best Recipe

My roast chicken melee last night was a total hassle, but the chicken that was cooked through tasted great. Several people came up to me raving about it and asking for the recipe. It's marinated in a lemon-garlic-spice mixture, then roasted with more of the spice mixture sprinkled on. The combination of cinnamon, cloves, cumin and paprika just drives you crazy with the delicious smell as it's cooking. Here is my adaptation with chicken parts. Originally appeared in Gourmet magazine, May 1995.

2 tablespoons cumin seed
a 3-inch cinnamon stick, broken into pieces
10 whole cloves
1/4 cup paprika
3/4 teaspoon cayenne
9 or 10 pounds of chicken parts (can use legs and thighs, or whole chicken cut up)
3 garlic cloves, chopped and mashed to a paste with 1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
Garnish: parsley sprigs

With a mortar and pestle or in an electric spice grinder grind cuminseed, cinnamon stick pieces, and cloves and in a small bowl mix with paprika, cayenne, and salt to taste. In a non-aluminum container large enough to hold chickens stir together garlic paste, zest, lemon juice, oil, and 2 tablespoons spice mixture (reserving remainder) to make marinade.

Rinse chicken parts and pat dry with paper towels. Put chicken in container and rub with marinade to coat. Marinate chicken, covered and chilled, at least 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Put half of chicken in each of 2 large roasting pans. Brush chicken with any marinade left in container and season chickens with salt. Arrange skin sides up. Sprinkle with reserved spice mixture.

Roast chicken in upper and lower thirds of oven 20 minutes. In a small saucepan melt butter. Brush chicken with butter and sprinkle with chopped parsley. Switch pans between upper and lower racks and roast chickens 20 to 30 minutes more, or until a meat thermometer inserted in fleshy part of a thigh register 175°F. and juices run clear when thigh is pierced with a skewer.
Serve chicken warm or at room temperature and garnish with parsley sprigs.

Serves 12 as part of a buffet

Spiced Chicken Melee

I've been threatening to try a recipe in which you roast six chickens at once in a giant roasting pan. Now the chickens are prepped and marinating.

Because I combined the internet recipe with my own favorite spiced chicken recipe (adapted from Gourmet/Epicurious), the hassle factor was higher than it would have been. Rubbing those chickens with the gloppy marinade was icky. The flavor is worth it, I think.

My roaster must be extra large, because the chickens don't fit in snugly, they have plenty of room to loll around. However that also means they have plenty more room to cook - if they were wedged in on top of each other, they wouldn't cook evenly. Tomorrow I'll debrief here on how it went.

See flickr for more pictures of the process.

And afterward I cleaned and sanitized my kitchen counters and sink. The place reeks of chlorine but boy are we clean at our house. Tonight after I get the roasted chickens out of the oven, I'll have to cut them up, then sanitize all the surfaces again. Will I even want to go to a party after all that?

Update. It's not going well. The chickens were apparently just not defrosted well enough (I'd bought them early in the week, started defrosting them in the fridge on Thursday, trying so hard to follow all the safety recommendations. !#@$@). They've been in over two hours and I'm not sure they're done yet. And we're late. P***.

This really is a hassle. The recipe is NOT as easy as the chef makes it sound.

Update next day. NEVER AGAIN. I will not detail here the enormous hassle and trouble of getting the damn chickens to cook. And some parts were still underdone, curses. My mother-in-law was enormously helpful during the whole process, including hacking up the chickens with me at the end. We were an hour late to the party.

The original spiced chicken recipe as I've adapted it from Gourmet uses pre-cut chicken parts; it can be made with about ten pounds of chicken, to serve twelve supposedly, but at a potluck it's plenty of chicken. My mother-in-law sensibly suggests that I just use the original recipe.

Never again will I attempt to roast six chickens at once. It is simply not worth the trouble to me.

Protest Food

You probably read the main blog, but in case you don't, check out my post on street food during Lebanon's big demonstrations.