Here Comes The Rain Again

As I stated in my blog of 9-24-12 that I don't predict the weather, but based on my observation of nature I made an assumption that this would be an early winter, since the leaves started turning in mid August. I also know that what we call winter in the Bay Area is a rainy season, not winter as I knew it growing up. So, hang in there back East with hurricane Sandy.

Sandy is my mother-in-law's name, and if this storm is anything like here it will be a real bitch for sure.

I spent last weekend getting ready for this storm covering up wood stacks, putting a tarp on the  teardrop trailer, a little painting, etc. I went up on the roof to do my annual inspection.

The weather reports turned out to be correct for a change. The National Weather Service was accurate for a change and we got 3 inches of rain before the weekend, and two foot of show in the Sierra mountains, and that translates into 1/8 of the rainfall California needs for the entire year of 2013.

I hope an early winter translates into an early spring. In other words, let's get the friggin rainy season over quickly.  So, the best summer weather I can remember in my 40 plus years of living out west comes to an end. It was a beauty. Change is a constant. I do like the crisp winter weather, and the sunrise and sunsets in the spring, winter and fall are incredible.

So, my recipe for this week is another dish from Geraldine, my beautiful wife, created for a party we had two weeks ago. About 6 or 7 weeks ago we got the latest addition of Saveur magazine, and Geri and I have been making recipes from it since it arrived in our mailbox. This is the 101 classic recipe issue. Each page you turn makes your mouth water. Page 76 has a recipe that caught Geri's eye for Lamingtons.

Lamington's is named for a 19th century governor of Queensland, Australia. Since Geraldine is Irish and her kin were banished to Australia, most likely because they were criminals, at least in the eyes of the British monarchy, it's a classic paring for her. Lamingtons are cubes of buttercake dipped in chocolate and rolled in coconut flakes. It's a dense cake, but when baked correctly comes out moist, and Geri rocked this one.

I know I say this all the time but Savuer rules when it comes to cooking magazines. Bon Appetite can't even come close.

Peace,

Make Food/Not War

Lamingtons

Ingredients:
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted plus more for pan
1 cup flour, plus more for pan
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2  tsp. kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs separated
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 oz. milk chocolate chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 oz. unsweetened shredded coconut

Directions:
1) Heat oven to 450 degrees. Grease and flour an 8" X 8" baking pan, set aside. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, set aside. In a large bowl whisk sugar and egg whites until soft peaks form. Add butter, egg yolks, and vanilla. Fold until combined. Add dry ingredients and fold until smooth. Pour into the greased pan and smooth out the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool for 20 minutes, and and then invert the cake onto a rack and cool completely. Cut into 16 squares, and set aside.

2) In a bowl place the chopped milk chocolate. Boil the cream in a 2 qt. saucepan on high heat, and pour over the chocolate, and let sit for 1 minute. Stir slowly until smooth. Place coconut on a sheet pan. Roll the square cakes in the chocolate and then roll them in the coconut. Chill in the fridge until the chocolate sets, about an hour.

Geraldine..not my best shot for sure

Lamingtons

Fried Bologna and Jerry Garcia

Bologna comes from Italy of course, and it's really called mortadella. Mortadella often has flecks of fat, pimento, and pistachio in it. FDA regulations make it illegal to produce Italian style bologna/mortadella here in the USA, and call it bologna.

American style fried bologna sandwiches were a staple when I was growing up. Mom would buy bologna in chunks, not pre-cut slices,  cut it by hand, and fry it up in a cast iron skillet on her electric stove. She only bought kosher Oscar Mayer bologna. It was in a red tubular plastic package with their logo and writing on it, and it was about three and a half inches in diameter, and about a foot long. The grocer would cut off the size chunk you desired, and you were good to go. The grocer gave the end pieces away because no one wanted them, and of course they were the best part. My moto is and will remain; "If it's free, it's for me." The plastic casing made it easy to cut the exact size slices you wanted, and then you just peeled off the plastic, and fried it up.  I can't find that product anywhere in the east bay, and when I go to grocery stores I look for it on the off chance that they might have it.  Oscar Mayer is owned by Kraft Foods, and almost every OM product that they have now is pre-cut, and a lot of those products are "light" bologna.

I'm a purist when it comes to fried bologna sandwiches. I'm talking beef here, not turkey or chicken, and definitely not light beef bologna. I've seen a bunch of videos on You Tube for this sandwich, and I'm always disappointed. For me a fried bologna sandwich is beef bologna inside two slices of white bread, that's it. There's no mayo, mustard, ketchup, melted cheese, celery salt, or thousand friggin' island dressing. Just white bread and bologna, bologna and white bread,  got it.  It has to be fried in a hot cast iron skillet, or it won't get blackened around the edges or in the center.  If it doesn't blacken, or bubble in the middle, and if it's doesn't hiss when you poke the raised middle with a fork, you got yourself a defective product.

I won't eat balloon bread by Wonder any more. When we were kids that was the bread du jour for fried bologna. If you look at the ingredients on Wonder bread it's not a pretty sight.  I use Rudi's organic white bread, out of Boulder Colorado. It is a diversion from the classic fried bologna sandwich, but a good diversion for sure. Anyhow, check out Rudi's, it is delicious. The best white bread going. A nice Pilsner or India Pale Ale goes well with this sandwich, some potato chips, and maybe a kosher pickle on the side. I always eat two sandwiches. One sandwich alone will not satisfy my craving, which thank the gods is only once or twice a year, or if I need subject matter for this stupid blog.

So how did I weave Jerry Garcia in with fried bologna. Well, I got this email from someone saying that all my recipes were about meat, and more meat, and aren't hippies supposed to be nut sprout eating Mother Nature's children, and why aren't I promoting a more healthy gastronomic sustainable image for the planet? Good question, and please go fuck yourself, and that's with the middle finger righteously extended. The planet will take care of itself when we're gone Jewl. In the hear and now I teach, not preach, moderation, that's my mantra. You want to be a vegan cool, good for you. A macrobiotic, please, by all means. A breatharian, yoga, second coming of Jesus, delicate genius using all the politically correct terminology bullshit you can sling, I don't eat anything that has a parent bullshit rap, do it, be it. Not nice to throw stones Baby.

I was playing a music benefit show in 1989 in San Francisco with this band that I had been in for the previous 2 years. Two years is a good run for a band. We were called the Steaming Seaman with alternative spellings of "semen" depending on the intended crowd. It was a benefit concert for Brian Wilson who was an anti nuclear activist, and this was definitively a semen crowd.  Ed Asner was the MC, we opened the show, and Jackson Brown, Nick Gravenities from Electric Flag, and Jerry Garcia were headliners. There were a bunch of other bands as well, and the place was filled with hippies of course, waiting to see, Jerry of course. It was held at the Mission Cultural center,  which holds a couple of thousand people.

We did our thing, played our set, and I was hanging around outside back stage drinking beers and smoking reefer when this beat up early 70's white Econoline Van pulls in, and Jerry Garcia is in the passenger seat with this wasted old hippie driving. The driver looked like I do presently.  Now this is Jerry Garcia of the Greatful Dead, King of the Deadheads himself. The grande hippie of the universe. He's smoking a cigarette, and the dashboard of the van is littered with fast food wrappers from Jack in the Box, slurpy containers from 7 Eleven,  you name it. After he and his driver went inside I had to investigate the van more closely, and the whole engine cover was piled high with candy wrappers, empty crumpled Camel cigarette packages and the like, spilling onto the floor of the van, and into the back of the van itself, which was also a total mess.

This is your natural born organic American hippie. Compared to him I am a health nut, and that's my point for the week. Moderation didn't work for Jerry, or many others of my generation. It was full speed ahead for Jerry. We lost one of the great ones when he died. Instead of playing a show with Jerry I would have loved to have cooked for him, and I'll bet he would have requested something that had a parent, but I'm glad I got to do the show.

Preaching is not my profession as I mentioned earlier. Everyone should be able to live their life the was they choose as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Many times the choices we make do affect the people around us, especially the ones who love us the most.  I don't know how that might relate to celebrities who are idolized by others. Do they have a responsibility to lead a more exemplary lifestyle? I don't think so, but that's just me. He lived a full life in only 53 years.

Jerry left us plenty of great music to listen to, and hopefully I'll leave a couple of good recipes for people to use, and fried bologna is one of the them, in moderation.

So, this is sandwich number three of my top ten best sandwiches of all time. Notice that I said this is was MY list.  The first on this illustrious list, if you one of the four people who have to much damn time on their hands, and are following my blog will remember, was Croque Monsieur. The second is pulled pork.

It's very tough to narrow great sandwiches down to just ten, but again they're my ten best.  Stay turned on, and tuned in because the best is yet to come, hopefully.

Peace,

Make Food/Not War

Rudi's organic white bread

4 pieces of fried bologna/cast iron pan

fried bologna and white bread, white bread and fried bologna 

The Man Jerry Garcia

sunrise back yard Oakland 10-21-12

Fall Planting

I got my act together this year and planted my winter vegetables two weeks ago. We planted green and red kale, spinach, chives, iceberg lettuce, arugula. As you can see by the photos below we're not talking about a large quantity of food, but just enough to feel good about producing something for yourself that didn't come from the store.

We all had gardens growing up back east. Quite a few of my Italian and Polish cousins lived in our same neighborhood. My father Rocco's cousin Danny had a garden last time I was back in Connecticut. Danny was pushing a hundred years old, and that garden was producing like crazy.

The soil in New England is a rich musty dark brown, and when you picked up a handful, put it to your nose you could smell mother earth, and you knew instantly that this was where you came from, and that this was where you would return when your journey on this planet was complete.

My grandmother Angelina bought little pieces of land when she got an extra fifty or hundred dollars. You could buy a lot, a whole acre, for fifty bucks back in those days. Our house was where she had her big garden. She had a milk cow, pigs, chickens, and a little red barn.  She had red grapes and Concord white grapes, and made a crude form of wine. One year my Dad made some dandelion wine, which turned out to be vinegar.

There was a slight slope to our property, and my father had the garden configured so you could put a hose with a small trickle of water at the top of the garden, and it would irrigate all the rows of vegtables of the garden all the way down.

He explained to me how the Romans had built the aqueducts, and that our little garden in dirty old Danbury Connecticut was operating on the same principle of moving water that had been perfected thousands of years before. Or as the old man might have said; "Water moves down hill kid."

Gardens were a source of pride, and the people with the best gardens had bragging rights all year round because what wasn't used or given away was canned. Old tomatoes made great bombs to throw at people's cars, and made wonderful weapons for a food fight with your friends.

So, for this blog I'm going to give you a simple salad dressing recipe, and that's it for this week. The veggies are nice, but they need something to accompany them, to make them shine, and this salad dressing will do just that. It goes well with some nice crispy frisee', cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives,  cucumber and dandelions.

Peace,

Make Food/Not War


Toasted Sesame Salad Dressing

1/3 cup of dark toasted sesame seed oil
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
pinch of celery salt
1 tsp fresh crushed garlic
2 tbs dark brown sugar
crushed black pepper to taste
1/2 tsp onion salt

Let chill for at least one hour. Mix well and drizzle over fresh organic greens and veggies. Toss lightly.

winter iceberg  lettuce, dill and cilantro

kale, chives, arugula

the old homestead...garden was to the right

Toasted sesame salad dressing

Geraldine's Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Chunk Bundt Cake

I'm always blogging about my recipes, and experiences with food, but there is another side, or in my case, my better half, and that is my wife Geraldine. Having sustained a relationship for almost 25 years is my proudest accomplishment in life. I see a lot of people in this world who are alone and just as many who are in unhappy relationships and I just thank my lucky stars. I don't even want to think what my little world would be without my wife.

Geri, as she is called by most of her friends, is a great baker, and comes from a lineage of fine bakers, especially her grandmother Elsie who's chocolate cake, made from scratch, could induce a pallet organism every time I ate it, which was often. We had Sunday dinner with Elsie almost ever week, and there was always some chocolate cake to be had. Gram, as Geri called her, was the queen of freeze and thaw. Anyway who's ever done any baking will tell you that sheet cake freezes easily. Gram's, aka the old trout, the old bat, or dust in a dress, chocolate cake was light, delicate yet firm, moist, full of chocolate, and oh so damn good. For someone who never knew his grandparents this was always a special time for me, and food was always front and center at these weekly gatherings.

About a month ago we had a backyard benefit party for my old friend Michael David Evans who lives in England, and is very disabled. Geri and I have been raising money to bring him back to the West Coast. I made pizza, and Geri made the deserts and salad. She made her famous chocolate chip cookies, and a sour cream chocolate chip chunk bundt cake which I couldn't stop eating. People ate so much pizza, I made 12 pies, that they were too full to eat dessert, so I got to scarf down a third of that chunk cake all by myself the next two days after the event.

My back is on the mend, and I should be blogging more in the future. I have also been editing cooking videos from our trip to Paris in April which I hope to get on line before the first of December. We shall see as the blind man once said.

Without further ado.

chocolate

melted chocolate

chocolate, sugars, cinnamon

layer #1

layer #2

In the oven

Geri and Janet

Perfection

Geri's Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Chunk Bundt Cake: (bundt pan needed)

Ingredients: (for the batter)
*2 sticks of unsalted butter
*1 1/2 cups sugar
*3 eggs
*2 cups all purpose flour
*1 tablespoon baking powder
*1 teaspoon baking soda
*1/4 teaspoon salt
*1 coup sour cream
*1 teaspoon vanilla
*5 oz. Scharffen Berger 62% Cacao semi-sweet chocolate chopped into 1/4" cubes

For the Strussel Topping
*2 oz. Scharffen Berger 62% Cacao semi-sweet chocolate
*1/4 cup granulated sugar
*1/2 cup brown sugar
*1 teaspoon cinnamon
*1 cup toasted walnuts

Preparation: (for the cake batter)
1) preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2) Grease pan generously, and dust with flour

3) Beat the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy in a kitchen aid using the paddle attachment, add the eggs one at a time, and add the vanilla extract.

4) Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together. Gradually add the flour mixture with the sour cream, and then fold in the chocolate pieces.  Set aside.

The Strussel:
1) Melt the 2 oz. of chocolate in a double boiler stirring until melted

2) Remove the chocolate from the heat and mix in the toasted walnuts, and then add the sugars and cinnamon.

The Cake:
1) Pour 1/2 the batter in the bundt pan, and add 1/2 the strussel mix.

2) Cover that with the rest of the cake mix, and then top it with the rest of the strussel mix.

3) Bake for 1 hour or until the toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

4) Let it cool on a rack, unmold, and serve warm or at room temperature.

You can't go wrong topping this dessert with some fresh cool whipped cream or ice cream.

A nice 20 year old Tawny Port goes great with this...

Peace,

Make Food/Not War

Nothing to Give

Sometimes you have those weeks, and you got nothing to give. I do feel an obligation to produce a weekly blog.When I start something I usually don't give up. Where it all leads me who knows. That's the big question of the universe. I know there are a few people who actually read this blog so that keeps me motivated to write each week. On the other hand I don't get paid to do this so, fuck it.

Lately life has been just a little tough. My back has plagued me, and I actually was in the emergency room, walking with a cane, pain pills, steroids (which will make you psycho),  basically the whole nine yards of lower lumbar pain. So, do I care about blogging right now, not really. When you've got what feels like a screw driver stuck in your ass, and a pain down your leg, and every move is agony I could care less about writing something.

Along with the pain I still have a viable business to run. One that I have had for almost fifteen years. I actually like what I do for a living, unlike a lot of people. I feel very fortunate to be able to make a living at something I enjoy.

Every once in a while life puts out a little piece of shit, and it says; "Eat this asshole", and you don't have much choice. That's just the way it is. Sure you'd rather have a slice on pizza with anchovies, but that's not on the menu.

If you're wondering where I've been this last week or two that's it. I haven't done much cooking either. For the two or three people who do read this I'll be back soon. I am on the mend.

Peace,

Make Food/Not War

cooking at a friend's wedding this summer