Earthworm

Streamlined to the ultimate for functional performance the earthworm blindly eats his way, riddling and honeycombing the ground to a depth of ten feet or more as he swallows.

~Anatomy Underfoot, J.-J. Condue

Prayer and Potatoes

Pray for peace and grace and spiritual food,
For wisdom and guidance, for all these are good,
But don't forget the potatoes.

Prayer and Potatoes, J. T. Peter

Most Beautiful Landscape

Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. ~~Francis Bacon

Harissa Xmas...

Manage with bread and salted butter until God brings something to eat with it. ~~Moroccan proverb

"It’s in a' can, it’s got to be good!" is what a friend told me at a dinner party after we had just seen Handel's Messiah performed at the Boston Symphony Hall. I rarely meet a little exotic can with some Cyrillic, Arabic, or logographic script on it that doesn’t appear in my pantry at least once. All are opened and tried, but few stay and become a standard part of the inventory next to the cans of tomato sauce, chipotles, and pineapple juice. And then there was “Harissa!”

This chili-based paste is exotic; it used in Moroccan and other Mediterranean cooking. It appears in roasted meat dishes, in condiments made of tomatoes, and my favorite the Moroccan Carrot Salad. The version I have now is made from red hot chili, garlic, coriander, cumin, and salt. And other recipes include cloves, caraway, and olive oil.

Although you will often see it added to barbeque sauces, smeared on poultry, added to yogurt marinades, and even as a dipping sauce, it shines with carrots. If you have vegetarians coming to dinner and want to spice up their life, this is your friend. Just look for an authentic recipe from Morocco, Tunisia, or Algeria. What follows is advice & my smashup recipe;

Go buy yourself a little can of “Harissa Du Cap Bon” at any small grocery that says “HALAL.” Then look for a can about the size of a tomato paste can that is typically metallic-yellow & red; the can will feature chili peppers, see picture*.

So start with the following ingredients:

Moroccan Carrot Salad

1 lb carrots
2 Tbl olive oil
1 garlic clove, large, minced
1 ½ tsp cumin, ground
1 tsp salt, kosher
1 tsp honey or sugar
½ tsp turmeric, ground
¼ tsp harissa, or to taste
1 lemon’s zest & juice
2 Tbl parsley, flat-leaf, fresh & chopped
¼ cup feta cheese, crumbled, or any other farmers cheese grated
12 olives, kalamata or others, pitted & halved (black olives in a pinch)

Prepare the carrots to your taste; grated them on a box grater or food processor, or slice & strip on a mandolin. You want to steam them a little to blanch them for maybe a minute, or just microwave them for 1-2 minutes. In a pan, heat the oil, then add the minced garlic for 30 seconds to infuse the oil. Add the cumin, turmeric, and salt to bloom the spices 15 seconds, then add the harissa and the honey; stir until paste forms, about 1 minute. Add the lemon juice, then the carrots, and the lemon zest, in that order. Stir and mix in the pan, it is okay if the carrots brown a little but just cook for 3-5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and chill in the fridge for a few hours or overnight; it’s better the next day.

When you’re ready to serve, remove from the fridge and bring to room temp; garnish with parsley, feta, & olives.
Variations:
Add some 1/8 tsp clove, a tsp of brandy, 1 Tbl sherry, change the cheese to any farmers cheese grated, garnish with 1-2 Tbl fresh cilantro, more garlic, or roast the garlic, roast/broil the whole carrots first, substitute limes, substitute orange, MORE harissa, and/or make your own harissa. You can use cider vinegar or any mild vinegar.

Off the reservation: balsamic vinegar, use some cooked parsnip, first roast or grill everything, balsamic & some beets, add some roasted nuts, substitute other types of sugars such as agave nectar, try some mace, more harissa. Hot, hot, hot! Oh, and you could just take it to heat it up to run it through a blender and server it like soup with garnishes on top, now that is a mash-up!

Have fun with this, and I hope you add a little can of harissa to your panty. This is a beautiful dish with the orange of the carrots, red-tinged harissa, green parsley, white cheese, and earthy olive colors.

Bon Appetite & Happy Holidays!

* In the majority world cans picture what’s inside them; i.e., peaches, pig, peppers, goat milk, guava, Gerber babies… lol. And the color patterns of various ingredients tend to be the same across brands for similar ingredients. Just think to be a Japanese worker in Morocco, or a Frenchmen in South Africa, or a Moroccan in France.

More information*:

• Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon This is the BEST cookbook for this cultural type of cooking. Hands-down it will get you started and on your way! This is my recommendation for a Christmas or Hanukkah gift. 
• Cooking at the Kasbah: Recipes from My Moroccan Kitchen Nice book! 
• The New Book of Middle Eastern Food I checked this out of the library once, I covet this book. 
• Mustapha's Moroccan Harissa The gourmet stuff! 
• Harissa in Tube - Puree of Dried Hot Peppers More like peasant stuff!

*Many of the links above are paid links and pay a commission if you buy something.  I make enough, so that I have a regular 9-5 job.  I own most if not all of the items recommended.

Catching up with Ketchup, Step #1

So here is a little weirdness, I collect old tomatoes. I keep them cryogenically frozen, like little heads. I supposed I might name one Walt once in a while. Okay, I jest, but I do have pounds & pounds of frozen tomatoes. My wife calls them canonballs, mainly because when she opens up the freezer one shoots out at her once and a while and they skitter on the tile floor. Very exciting! The cats hate it.

So WHY!? Well, I love tomatoes and tend to buy 3# weekly at Haymarket. The tomato guy likes me because I always ask for a range of ripeness, so I can use them up before they spoil. But even with this little bit of preparation, I often have a tomato here & there that is to ripe. So I simply freeze them. To make tomatoes soup (no milk, hate milked T-soup, makes me retch) or make sauces. And what is America’s favorite sauce? One guess genius... "Ketchup", or as the English like to say Catsup. Repeat after me give me a K, give me a E, you can finish from there. It’s so good and so well like our government in it’s wisdom has deemed it a vegetable. Several people including me have deemed french-fries as just a delivery system for ketchup. Don’t be ashamed it’s true.

So why make your own ketchup? #1 for me, I like to make everything once & awhile so I know the difference between crap & caviar. #2 why not?! #3 Yeah everyone is so concerned about sourcing local, local this and that, but folks no one is making local ketchup, no one. Just like I am one of 2 people I know making there own mayonnaise & mustard, hey it comes up in conversations. So I want another feather in my cooking cap.

Where to start, where to start okay Google, found some nice Amish recipe during work a few weeks ago. And the Joy of Cooking, of course my favorite general cookbook. Plus I have some books cooking garden veggies & sauces so I am figuring out where to go from there. Oh, I am making smoked spare ribs tomorrow and want to make BBQ sauce for them. Two types one kinda classic hickory smoked & my Mongolian BBQ sauce.

So I will get back to you on how many pounds of cannonballs ah frozen tomatoes I have lurking in the freeze o be reanimated into a Disney Studio HEAD, and figure out a game plan... I’m going to make a plain ketchup, sort of like HUNT’s, maybe with the zest of Heinz, but I want a canvas to make other sauces on. Oh and the best thing is mine won’t have any evil HFCS bleh! (High Fructose Corn Syrup)

Eggs in Hell

With times gettin' tougher and the penny being pinched out of your hand by the Fat Cats. What to do? Preparation is worth a lot and changing thinking are probably best. Our grandparents went through the Great Depression. While things are cheaper and you have cash stocking up the pantry with dry goods when they are on sale, and can goods of essentials. Plan a garden for the summer for maximum yield would is good planning. And then there is economizing.

M.F.K. Fisher was a writer of inspirational culinary talent. She wrote many diverse books on food and cooking (e.g. A Cordiall Water..., Here Let Us Feast..., etc), but the most interesting is "How to Cook a Wolf. The book focuses on substitutions and variations to a penny-pinching degree. Although Ms. Fisher wrote in the 40s on through the 80s, this book's knowledge was hard-learned in the Depression Era and the time of rationing during World War II. Want to make a cake without butter well render some bacon fat and with strong spices, it’ll get-her-done. The book also looks at the quality of your life and how to maximize the experiences of it in simple ways. Eat, drink, and be merry for perhaps tomorrow the wolf will get us or the larder will run bare.

People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" . . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.” ~~M. F. K. Fisher

Culinary tastes in America have thankfully broadened, and at least for the middle-class, the ingredients that are available are amazing. Honestly if one can’t afford all that imported-organic-rip-off stuff anymore, then don’t worry flavor doesn’t need to suffer. Cook like a French romanticized country peasant or an American pioneer with a good garden and a spice-rack. Buy stuff on sale and buy things you know you will use in bulk (i.e. rice, pasta, dried beans, honey, lentils, etc). Rice is a lot cheaper in bulk and so is pasta, split the cost with your siblings' family and each of you takes 20# of that 40# bag you just bought. Simple ingredients don’t have to mean bland food.

Here is a recipe from M.F.K. Fisher that follows:

Eggs in Hell
------------------From How to Cook a Wolf, by M.F.K. Fisher
SERVES 4

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 onion, minced
2 cups tomato sauce
1 teaspoon mixed herbs, minced (basil, thyme, etc)
1 teaspoon parsley, minced
8 eggs
Slices of French bread, thin, toasted

1. Heat olive oil in a saucepan that has a tight cover. Split garlic lengthwise, run a toothpick through each half, and brown slowly in oil. Add the onion, minced, and cook until golden. Then add the tomato sauce and the seasonings and herbs. Cook about 15 minutes, stirring often, and take out the garlic.
2. Into the sauce break the eggs. Spoon the sauce over them, cover closely, and cook very slowly until eggs are done, or about 15 minutes. (If the skillet is a heavy one, you can turn off the heat and cook in fifteen minutes with what is stored in the metal.)
3. When done, put the eggs carefully on the slices of dry toast, and cover with sauce. (Grated Parmesan cheese is good on this if you can get any)

This is a great little recipe and has a lot of historical contexts that might need to be cleared up. Firstly, most middle-class women at the time had had classes in cooking (remember home-economics), they knew how to cook, they didn’t need to be told that you start the pan on high to get the oil frying. They knew how to brown the onions over medium heat. These women also had there owned dirty little secret whose name could only be whispered, the culinary lover was “garlic”, but the evidence had to be disposed of. So they infused the oil with garlic and then removed the clove-evidence. Today we just mince the garlic and leave it in the sauce. Also, the olive oil does not need to be EVOO (extra virgin olive oil), for sauce cooking or anything outside of drizzling, dipping, or dressing use the OO (olive oil, from the second pressing) trust that no one will know the difference. Olive oil back in the 40s & 50s was harder to find, typically bought at the pharmacy or the local Italian ethnic grocery store. As for the French bread, well any dry bread will do. Remember Depression Babies wasted “nothing”, an old crust of bread will soften up in sauce so it is delicious & edible, those day-old bread crusts that the birds get fed with, just shove it under the sauce. By the way, seasonings mean salt, pepper, and the house secret ingredients to taste. And finally the heavy pan most likely Ms. Fisher means cast iron.

So a modern economizing interpretation of this recipe might be as follows:

Eggs in Heck
-------------------
2 tablespoons oil (olive oil preferred, don’t waste your EVOO, vegetable oil in a pinch)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 onion, minced
2 cups tomato sauce (any cheapo sauce from the store, or homemade, or 2 cans diced tomato)
1 teaspoon mixed herbs, dry (Use up that Italian spice jar you have) (fresh use 1 Tablespoon)
1 bay leaf
1 Tablespoon parsley, minced (dry parsley is blah (1 tsp), use fresh as a garnish, thrown the stalks in for the cooking)
8 eggs
Slices of French bread, thin, toasted (or any reasonable substitute such as steamed potatoes, toasted/dry bread, pasta, or rice)

1. Heat oil in a saucepan that has a tight cover over medium-high heat. Drop a tiny piece of onion into the oil when you think it is hot enough if it sizzles drop in the rest of minced garlic & minced onion. Once it starts to sizzle again turn down to medium - medium-low heat and cook until golden. Stir often to get an even golden texture. I would put in any seasoning spices (not herbs) now to bloom them (release the essential oils) this takes 10-15 seconds. Then add the tomato sauce/diced, bay leaf, and Italian herbs to the sauce. Also, make a little bundle of parsley stalks (tie of with cotton string). Once the sauce starts bubbling turn it down to low to a bubbling simmer, and cook about 15 minutes, stirring often. Stir in some hot sauce, ¼ tsp cayenne, or a dash or two of Worchester Sauce, to taste. This will add some dimension to the flavor once you have made the recipe a couple times. Remember to have started boiling rice or pasta water before this step too
2. Into the sauce break the eggs. Don’t drop an egg on top of the parsley stalks to avoid a mess later. Spoon the sauce over the eggs, cover closely, and cook very slowly until eggs are done over a low simmer or about 15 minutes over. (If the skillet is a heavy one, especially cast iron, you can turn off the heat and cook in fifteen minutes with what is stored in the metal.)
3. When done, pull bay leaf & parsley stalks to discard, put the eggs carefully on the slices of dry toast (or what ever starch there is that day), and cover with sauce. Garnish with minced parsley (grated Parmesan cheese is good on this too if you don’t have any, any salty and/or strong cheese will do (e.g. Romano, Provolone, etc)).

The thing is to economize, remember “substitution is the child of invention”. M.F.K. Fisher expresses a bon vivant attitude for life. We are more fortunate than her generation in the availability of ingredients and a society where culture mix more readily. I also hope that we will not need to suffer as much as the previous generations, although our excesses are catching up with us. Now is the time to look more to the past and rediscover the flavor in just a simpler life and the bounty it brings.

Books of interest by M.F.K. Fisher
----------------------------------------
How to Cook a WolfA Cordiall Water: A Garland of Odd and Old Receipts to Assuage the Ills of Man and BeastThe Gastronomical MeHere Let Us Feast: A Book of Banquets
More on M.f.K. Fisher
Bio
Website
Video
Archives of The New York Times