Happy Fourth, with cherries

Breakfast in bed, with cherries, which seem like patriotic food to me, probably the Washington connection. And a Charles Todd Inspector Rutledge mystery, not Bess Crawford this time.

Note the stainless steel cup, hot tea from the thermos. This is great.

Quiet day, handsome Son working full day as usual in Sunday and most holidays and this is both. But in summer he's off to the shore every chance he gets, so I may see him less anyway.

Yesterday I was so industrious that I made the curry powder and the baharat. Grinding that many spices is in fact quite buzzy. Definite high happens, a happy one, no crash.

So here's what transpired.

Getting the seeds out of cardamom pods, wonderful smell. After a bit I decided just to grind the whole pods anyway.

Here's the mixture ready to grind. Everywhere the recipe says ounce I used two teaspoons, just to keep the proportions right. Half ounce = one teaspoon etc.

Then after grinding, I winnowed a bit, then reground what was left in the sieve, a tip from Bill Veach which I'd never noticed before.

And came out to this beautiful powder.

On to the baharat, much simpler recipe

Very different from the curry powder, warm scent and taste, great for all kinds of food.

And somewhere I found a tip for cleaning the grinder. The top comes off and can be washed, but all you can do with the grinding chamber is wipe it out. Hard to remove traces of previous spices. Anyway the tip was to grind some salt, then empty and wipe.

Which I did, using kosher salt, which is a great scouring material, safe and it works, and that was a good tip. But there's more..

I realized that I now had a supply of ground salt with spice flavoring. I tasted, and the saltiness was amazingly amped up, along with spice flavor. So, frugal me, I bottled and labeled it, and it's joined the salt collection. Tiny pinch is all it takes. Happy discovery.

And, since I didn't waste, I mean spend, all my time in the kitchen, I also discovered a very funny writer, D.G.Strong, humor pieces, right up my street. 

So that's another holiday, my whole life is holiday, chez Boud.

The Law of Concatenation has struck

 After the prepping of the Misfits produce, minus the ginger which they forgot to pack, and will credit me for, though I'd rather have the ginger,  where was I? 

Anyway, at that point I noticed the spices which take up most of the small cabinet space of this not very well designed kitchen, were in total disarray.

I use them a lot, so they get knocked down, shoved around and generally disrespected.

So today, the weather being rainy, seemed like a good idea finally to Do Something. 

Three cabinets, the only ones away from the stove and the window, better for spices, were stuffed with containers of all sorts and materials which defeated my original idea of alphabetizing them. I'm against buying containers on purpose except for the few I have for jam. 

So I sort of have them organized by function. All the baking related ones together, more or less, the others by family, all the salts, all the peppers, that sort of thing. 

But it's ages since I took everything out and cleaned the shelves, and generally Kept It Up.

Top pic is the easiest one, cleaned up, then the middle one, horrible shape, too deep to reach in, goes to a point in the corner, things fall off the lazy Susan and you have to get a stepladder to retrieve them. 

Then the smallest which ended up with the most stuff, don't ask me, I only live here. That one also yielded all the items on the tray, needing emptying, cleaning, reassigning.

As I sorted and wiped and spilled and swept, I wondered why I had so much of some items. Cardamom seeds? Masses of cinnamon? Coriander?

Then is when the concatenation struck. It's a fancy word for one damn thing after a damn nother. Because a couple of the containers were empty. No home mixed curry powder. No baharat.

Clearly the next thing, once I'd dealt with the extraneous objects such as bags of coins needing wrappers if they still exist, totally outdated spices needing to be tossed to reuse the glass jars, the next thing is to get grinding.

Needing to retrieve the recipes, baharat in Jerusalem, curry powder in Bill Veach.

And that's when I realized it's why I have all those spices. 

Here's the set-up for the curry powder.

I rest my case.

I also rest my arms. 

While these are soaking, I'm off to enjoy Bad Food.

No grinding, mixing, working. Just chomping. Happy Fourth Eve.

Baharat, plum toms and tarts

Rainy cool weather is great for messing about in the kitchen, catching up on making things.

I mentioned that it was time to make more baharat, the Middle Eastern spice mix, from Ottolenghi.  I think baharat probably only means mixture, like masala, and there are millions of recipes for it.  But the one I use is Ottolenghi's, from his Jerusalem book, and it's great.  As is the book, an adventure in cultures and history as well as food.  Go here for the recipe and a bit of the book

I helps that I have all the spices in the list in the kitchen anyway. And here you see most of the cast of characters, the black peppercorns not having been unearthed at this point, but they did show up for the performance. 

You'll notice that I use the real cinnamon, which is not the stuff you get in the supermarket. That's not the actual plant, but it is related to it.  The real stuff is much more delicate in scent and in handling -- you can break a stick in your hands, so you have the amount you want. It's also a lot more expensive, but you're worth it.

This really is a great entertainment.  You sniff at each spice as you dole it out into the bowl, and it's a sensory trip.  Then into the coffee grinder, which I use to grind spices and flours, but actually not coffee.

Then once ground, another trip as you spoon it into the jar.  I keep it in a tightly lidded glass jar inside a cabinet as far from the stove as you can get in this kitchen. You'll see the recipe doesn't make a lot.  That way you always have fresh flavor. You can always make more when you run out.

It will come into play in a lot of recipes, since the combo is lovely for many sorts of dishes, chicken, fish, fruit, green vegetables, very varied in itself, so it adapts.

Then onward to the Roma plum tomatoes, a bunch from the farmstand, washed, cut into about thirds, these were quite big ones, and then frozen exactly like that. 

I will use them later in tomato sauce or any place I want tomatoes with not much juice.

Keeping with the plum motif, there were the first black plums in the  store so I got a couple of pounds, washed, halved and pitted them, and made a Plum Tart, according to Marian Burros, which I think is really a torte, but it's very good anyway. I have the cook's privilege of sucking on the pits, to get all of the fruit. No picture of that process.

To get the original recipe, where it's called a torte, see I toldya, go here


She talks about using a dozen halved plums, but I never have room for that many. I just stud it with as many as fit, and save the rest for a sauce next time I do chicken or fish.

 
And here, in my trusty castiron pan, is the lovely result.  You're supposed to use a springform pan, but until they invent a castiron one, I'm going with this pan.

The topping is lemon juice, a sprinkling of sugar, and cinnamon, but I was a bit heavy on this last, hand sort of slipped.  Still tastes fine, though.  The plums were wonderful, must be a good year.

Had one warm slice with tea, managing to burn the side of my hand on the pan, forgot it was still hot, quick application of aloe juice, from kitchen plant, fixed that, then I froze the rest of the tart or torte for future use.  If I just refrigerate, I'll feel I have to finish the slices faster before they go stale, and that would never do.. 

Next time Handsome Son comes calling, I think he's in for pumpkin soup, roast chicken, probably seasoned with baharat,  with plum sauce and brown jasmine rice, and plum tart. All the best establishments have echoes in their food.. at least that'll be my story.

Report From Blogger Under The Weather 6WS

I rarely talk about health matters in this blog, because even when I'm physically in a bit of a struggle, mentally I'm still ticking over nicely, so I keep on blogging if I can be upright!  this week I've had a time just moving and keeping awake and climbing stairs.  

Might be a virus, I think, or maybe a late onslaught of allergy.  Whatever it is, it's doing a job on my energy.  Will be cancelling attendance at a couple of things just in the next day or two, I think, since I finally realized I don't have to force myself to do everything all the time.  Or as HP used to say, very annoying because true, "you're never happy till you've overdone it!"  And when I have to sit and get up my energy just to take a shower, I know things isn't quite right.And I went next door to attend to all the houseplants on absent neighbor's patio still in robe and pajamas, in case I didn't feel up to getting dressed, very unusual around here.

Okay, end of whine alert.  And I want to show you today's lunch, which I finally got to after ages of deciding to get up and move into the kitchen.  Once there I made a nice little omelette with chunks of cooked asparagus (cooked then frozen for uses such as this), pepper and kosher salt, and a little pinch of baharat, that spice mixture from Ottolenghi, plus several capers.  I separated the eggs, added the seasonings in to the yolks, because I just learned that they work best for seasonings, then added in the beaten whites.  Worked nicely.

And the odd looking beverage beside the plate is not carpet shampoo, nor yet algae scooped up from a pond, it's a surprisingly good tasting smoothie.  This is a handful of  kale, farmshare has started kale this year, torn up small, blended with lemon juice, some water, sliced banana and diced Granny Smith apple.  The glass shows you half the amount it makes.  And it's so good that I might be making a lot more smoothies using leafy vegs when I run out of ways of cooking them.  Kale is a bit bitter for salad purposes for my taste but in this mix it's very good.  And will maybe restore my energy. And cure my sore throat.  And cough.  Oh dear, poor me...

East meets West on my table

Perfect early summer supper.  

Asparagus, growing in the field this morning, steamed and on my plate this evening.  Dipping sauce made from a mixture of plain yogurt, sour cream, using up what's left actually, and a spoonful of mayonnaise.  And after I tasted, I decided it needed a little something, and added a pinch of baharat, that wonderful spice mixture I made recently.  I really recommend this one.  Just lovely.  Nice glass of wine with, of course.

I think I might share pinches of baharat with my Bite Club next month. Aside from anything I might cook.

True confessions: despite my very modest income and froogle ways, there are times when you just need to buy something.  And when I found I'd used up all my collection of bookmarks marking items in Jerusalem and now Plenty, same authors, I decided I needed to own these two books. So they're on their way. Then I can write in them.  Even scanning and printing was going to mean many pages, silly really, better just buy the book and let them have their royalty.

Jerusalem, an education as well as a cookbook

The Bite Club this week introduced us to Ottolenghi and Tamimi, whose cookbook Jerusalem I've started on, with two others on reserve at the library.

What a contrast to the boredom of the last cookbook.  This one is full of life and history and the sort of food I really want to make, many spices, wonderful history of the culture and conflicts in both the city and the food.  Written by an Arab and a Jew, both of whom grew up in Jerusalem, in different quarters, could be different planets, but both of whom have a great interest in the cultural and historical significance of food, not to mention its politics. And the book has a kind of padded cover, which lends an air of friendliness and importance, at the same time.

This morning, I used my early morning hour (had to be up and about to take one med, then wait half an hour to take the other, then another half hour before I can eat anything, this is a real hardship! only once a week, so I try to use the time in some way) anyway, I used that hour to do something interesting other than feel hungry and sorry for myself.

So I made Baharat, a spice mixture, for use over the next few weeks in whatever strikes my fancy.  

The smells as I ground all the spices together in my trusty coffee grinder, and the resulting warm and amazing blend, now in a jar in the fridge, were just exciting. I didn't have cardamom, but I think it's still great anyway. If I get some, haven't had it in the house in years, since my serious curry making days, I'll just grind and add it in, I think.

And I already have plans for a roasted sweet potato and fruit dish, which I think I'll do today.  And a kohlrabi salad.  I was introduced to kohlrabi decades ago, in student days in northwestern England, when I rented a room at the top of an old house with a big back yard. 
 
Another tenant had arranged to garden a section of it and Alan was always trying out new and exotic vegetables, including kohlrabi, which looks like it landed from outer space, but is crisp and very good in salads. You can cook it too, but I think I'd keep it raw.  And the Asian store routinely stocks it. So this is literally a return to my green and salad days, as well as a new recipe to me.

I had no idea that the history of food was so interesting before Diane, the doughty leader of the Bite Club and reference librarian as well as great cook, introduced a lot of ideas, beyond just making meals, to us all.  One of the nicest things I've done for myself in some time was to join.