Honestly, what is it with you? I post a picture of seasonally-appropriate pumpkin pie, positively groaning under the heavenly decadence of a cumulus cloud of whipped cream, anointed with a lascivious dribble of maple syrup, and even go so far as to post said picture along with an ACTUAL RECIPE for the best crust in the world. And submit the picture to the most shamelessly dessert-whoring websites in tubedom. And what do I get?
I spent some time last Thursday talking to students about the practice of painting, and how after all these years building said practice I have total confidence in it, even if as now I’m on a hiatus from working in the studio. That trust makes for a real absence of stress, since I know that it will be right there when I start to feel the pull to get back to it. It’s a dividend of all the time and effort I’ve invested in working over all of these years. And cooking is the same, in a way; I don’t beat myself up if I’m not really feeling it, and sooner or later I get it back and all is well. The difference is that taking a hiatus is not really an option, so when I’m not in the mood I still have to do it. But diligence does pay off, and sometimes a really good idea just sort of falls out of the sky.
I have been extraordinarily busy of late, with a show opening next week and an article due before I go to hang it and then swan around the opening looking artistic and important and the like. And this on top of the usual day-to-day, which seems only to get thicker and more obnoxious with the passage of time. The to-do list is metastasizing into a beast that will not be tamed. Anyone looking for an internship as my personal assistant is encouraged to apply; it may not be the sexiest position available but I promise that at least half of the things I throw at you will be good to eat.
The presence of smoked chicken carcasses in the fridge could mean only one thing: stock. And now it’s that most compelling time of year, with warm sun and chilly shade and mountains bedecked with autumn raiment under skies of impossibly clear and cloudless blue. Each season so far this year has been pretty splendid; summer got a bit too hot and dry for a while, but in all it’s just been gorgeous weather. And we’re having a stunning Indian summer that just goes on and on (and the best days have been hitting on the weekends). Last night was the first light frost.
So what I’m saying is that it’s soup season.
So here’s a story of another (mostly) meatless meal, and how it ended up being part of three different dinners and a couple of lunches as well. To begin, early this week I made a stock from the chicken carcass and T-bone bones left from two recent meals (both posted already). Once made, I used some of it to make a very simple puréed kabocha squash soup using some steamed squash from the night before.…
Another showcase for scraps and remnants, and another meal where the pressure cooker has lived up to its reputation as a most useful contraption, this dinner was exceedingly simple and extremely satisfying. We had leftover brown rice and a pot of chicken stock from a night or two earlier, so I combined them into a faux risotto of sorts that featured shredded kale, peas, and parsley. I pressure-cooked some navy beans with minced morsels of…
Sometimes the available leftovers are aligned like so many lucky stars, forming a constellation that points the way to a lazy-ass dinner of surpassing tastiness. This is what was in the fridge/freezer: brown rice some chicken stock (made from pressure-cooked wings) kale pesto frozen peas 1/2 can coconut milk 1/2 onion scallions I love making risotto from leftover brown rice; the second cooking, best done with good stock, gets it to an appealingly gooey place…
Local 10-grain mix pressure-cooked with beets. Lentils simmered with onions, herbs, homemade bacon and smoked chicken broth. Green mash made with curly endive, pan di zucchero, ume plum, pumpkin seeds, and olive oil. All kinds of awesome.
There is no greater resource than a well-stocked freezer. (Except maybe a well-stocked freezer working in harmony with an equally well-stocked pantry.) There are still a couple of quarts of frozen fish stock that I made a while back from a halibut skeleton, and the presence of a big bag of snow crab legs just above the stock containers got the wheels turning. There was also a bag of a rice blend- long, short, and…
Lately I’ve been commiserating with other gardeners about the crap “summer” we had this year, and about how various species underperformed or didn’t at all, and about how hard it is to be us. And I’ve been grouchy and glum about how little I canned or pickled. We’ve begun buying some vegetables much earlier than in previous years, which I take personally as a sign of failure. The last few days have been wonderfully mild,…