12-Month Recipe Challenge Recap

I have to admit, I’ve kind of been dreading this post. I knew it was coming about sometime in mid-October, but denial is a sweet and powerful drug. Alas, the tincture bottle is empty, and I now have to face the harsh reality...my 12-Month Cookbook challenge was a flop.

Okay, maybe “flop” is a bit of a strong word. However, it didn’t have a very strong start out the gate, and as the months ticked by the project began to falter further. First it was simply recipes tried and photographed, but not posted. Then it was no recipes tried. Then it was new recipes from the same cookbook. Then it was a new recipe from a new blog…you see where this went. Utter chaos.

I kicked off with the Lentil and Toulouse (heh, Kielbasa) Sausage Casserole in January, and skipped February. I doubled up with Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes in March (cake and frosting!).

The two I photographed but didn’t share were April’s “Aunt Joyce’s Brownies” from I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris, and May’s Double Lemon Bars from The Bon Apetit Cookbook.

That’s where things just petered out. Somewhere in the following months I did try the Marlboro Man Sandwich from the Pioneer Woman Cooks, a batch of Blueberry Ginger Freezer Jam from my old standby, the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and a wacky smoothie from a writing blog. I had another surge in November with Thanksgiving, with Roast Spice Turkey from Sunset Magazine and some new side dishes, but they didn’t get a post either.

In total, I tried about ten new recipes. I managed to properly post about three.

So, what has this taught me? Several things, but primarily that my priorities are pretty far from the kitchen! I do love cooking and baking…when I have the time.

I close the book on this experiment with a sort of odd satisfaction. I gave it a go, and it didn’t work out as planned. I did get to try some new recipes, and my kitchen confidence grows every year. I recently moved into a new apartment, with a bigger, sexier kitchen (granite countertops!), and I can already feel the rumblings of culinary inspiration. I’ll be cooking much more this year, but I just won’t be trying to document the process!

12-Month Cookbook Challenge

I have this odd addiction to cookbooks.

Much like craft supplies, I love the possibilities that cookbooks present. Just leafing through the glossy pages, I can imagine myself sitting down to the perfect provincial French supper or mastering a centuries-old Romanian recipe.

Take this seductive gastronomical fantasy, and couple it with my obsession with printed words in general, and you’ll see why I have stacks of cookbooks and beautiful cooking magazines. There’s only one problem…I rarely make ANYTHING out of them.

I hate to admit it, but I kind of suck at meal planning. I’m an impulsive chef. I have a few key dishes I always have ingredients for, and the rest I make up as I go along. I may think as far ahead as a couple days, but in the end, I rarely take the time to go through my books, make a proper list, and give myself enough time to shop, chop, and cook.

This year is the year that changes! At least, a little bit. I’ve set for myself a 12-month cookbook challenge, where I will plan and make a new dish every month from my neglected cookbooks and magazines.

I started with a cookbook I had long been admiring, but had never been able to get it together enough to use: My French Kitchen: A Book of Treasured Recipes by Joanne Harris & Fran Warde. Harris is a novelist, and as many of her titles can attest (Chocolat, Five Quarters of the Orange), food plays a huge part in her writing.

The dishes presented are surprisingly simple, calling for fresh vegetables, herbs, and good cuts of meat. There’s nothing too exotic or difficult (aside from the hard-to-find slab bacon), just a bit of time and a lot of chopping required.

This weekend I whipped up the Lentil and Toulouse Sausage Casserole. I did have the proper green lentilles du Puy on hand, though I could not find genuine Toulouse sausage at my nearby stores (and didn’t have time to take the bus to the Berkeley Bowl). So, I made a last minute substitution: turkey Kielbasa. Yes, cringe-worthy to many, but for me, it worked out just fine.

I’d never had French lentils before. I’m used to lentils being cooked to a paste, so to see the little legumes holding their shape so beautifully was a nice surprise. The taste was earthy yet herby, and perfectly warming on a cold January night. It was almost better the next day, once the flavors had a chance to “marry” a bit in the fridge.

I already think I know what book in next in the queue, but Valentine’s Day may change that up a bit if we decide to eat in. V-day is always a good excuse to get creative in the kitchen. Especially with desserts.

"Independencia" Dinner: The Conclusion

"Still Life with Parrot and Flag" by Frida Kahlo (1951)

[Note: You can read the first part of this culinary adventure in my previous post.]

When it comes to my memories of "authentic" Mexican cooking, I don't have much to pull on. From my childhood trips to Mexico, I remember mostly delicious homemade soup and restaurant food (including a Christmas Eve dinner of El Pollo Loco).

During the holidays, my mother would sometimes pull out all the stops, slaving over dishes like chiles rellenos with red sauce, bacalao (salted cod), romeritos (a rosemary-like herb) in mole, and flan napolitano. I would invariably reject these dishes (well, except the flan), wishing my Mama would make a roast or ham or some other nice, normal American dish. Now I wish I'd been able to appreciate it more.

We still sometimes do the "traditional" Mexican-American Christmas dishes of tamales and pozole (pork and hominy soup), but time and taste has keep these old-world dishes off the holiday table for years.

So, it was with a real sense of adventure that I embarked on my mole-making quest. I'd rejected the 25-ingredient black mole recipe from Frida's Fiestas, figuring the red mole would be a little more manageable.

A quick note about mole: it is not "Mexican chocolate sauce." Almost all mole recipes are chili-based, with a mish-mash of ingredients that can include a bit of chocolate. This red mole recipe didn't incorporate chocolate at all, instead relying on cinnamon, allspice, and cloves for its spice, and roasted tomatoes and plantain for its base. It also included boiled pork loin, along with some potatoes and masa-based dumplings.

It was a deceptively complex recipe, full of roasting, blending, straining, and stirring. In other words, a lot of steps that I could mess up. I soaked the dried chilies for 20 seconds, not 20 minutes. The dumplings dissolved completely into the sauce. I even burned the sauce, leaving chunks of blackened potato at the bottom of the pot (we transferred pots, though, so it didn't completely ruin the mole).

The results:

Okay, mole doesn't photograph well at all. Just image the scent of roasted chilies, pork, tomatoes, spice...yum. I'll admit, all the little errors added up to a dish that didn't quite blow my mind, but it was definitely not a failed meal...

...especially when it ended with delicious flan.


Even after dessert, there was still one last thing to do to make our Independencia celebration complete: we had to hear the Grito de Dolores.
It's not a song, but a speech that is made every year on the eve of Independence. It's the battle-cry that the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla gave in Dolores in 1810, to rally the people to rebel against their Spanish colonial government. This rebellion became the start of the full-on war for independence. Or so the story goes.
The Mexican president makes the speech from the National Palace in Mexico City, with thousands of people coming out to hear. This year's was extra-special, being the bicentennial, and was followed with an incredible fireworks display. Even if you don't speak Spanish, take a peek and see what I'm talking about:

I have to admit, I got a bit misty-eyed. Even sitting in my Bay Area apartment, with only a few loved ones, and even a day later, I felt a deep connection to my birth-country like I haven't in a long, long time. I suddenly wasn't worried about making "perfect" mole or representing my culture "correctly." I wasn't thinking about immigration reform in the US, or the drug wars ravaging Mexico. For one moment, I was just another Mexican, proud and free. It was...powerful.

So, all in all, it was a successful celebration. Mama has promised to show me how to make better mole when I come home for Christmas, and I think I may try some simpler dishes from the cookbook before then. It should be fun.

I hope ya'll enjoyed my culinary adventure/history lesson/trip down memory lane. Food is famous for bringing up feelings and memories, and this meal was no exception!

Viva Mexico! Viva la Independencia!

I was born in Mexico, to a Mexican mother and an American father. We came to the States to stay when I was around one year old, so I've spent over 99% of my life in the USA [EDIT: My husband the professor informed me it's more like 97%]. We only went back to visit Mexico a handful of times, and I remember my motherland with a sort of fuzzy nostalgia.

It's definitely not the Mexico of today that you see on the news. My Mexico is a child's Mexico, with bright bugambilia flowers and tissue paper kites, rope swings in the summer and exquisite Christmas lights in the winter. It smells of bollios warm from the oven, car exhaust, and my grandmother's powdery perfume. It's making your cousins cry because you broke the Christmas pinata on your first swing, since you didn't realize it was made of clay and not paper mache. It's being chased by your aunt's posse of viscious poodles in your uncle's mechanic shop. It's watching your baby brother throw a fit in the lobby of the National Musuem of Anthropology, and pretending you don't know him. It's hearing both your parents speaking Spanish to everyone, not just amongst yourselves when you're at home. It's comforting and strange, familiar and alien. It's beautiful and dangerous and a secret part of you that no kids in your class at home know anything about.

Even as an adult, I almost feel like it's a sort of secret identity, a quiet other half that I don't tap into very much. I have been trying to lately, and what better occassion than Mexico's Independence Day on September 16?

It felt extra-important to commemorate La Independencia this year, since 2010 marked both the bicentennial of Mexico's independence from Spain and a century since the Mexican Revolution.

Since I'm not very big on crowds, a more personal celebration was in order. I decided to throw a little dinner party, just for my husband, my good friend, and the aforementioned baby brother who is not really a baby anymore.

Now, beyond the odd dish of enchiladas or batch of salsa, I've never tried any serious Mexican cooking on my own. My Mama gave me a gorgeous cookbook years ago, Frida's Fiestas, Recipes and Reminiscences of Life with Frida Kahlo, and I'd been itching for an excuse to break it in.

The menu consisted of Red Mole, White Rice, and Flan from the cookbook, supplemented with a green salad and roasted tomato salsa. Simple enough, right?

Heh.

Now I know why traditional Mexican cooks spend all friggin' day in the kitchen. I thought it would take me about three hours to whip up this meal.

It took me six. With lots of help.

That doesn't count the hours I spent going to grocery stores, little Latino markets, and the farmer's market in search of all the ingredients. Who knew it would take me three tries to find both dried ancho chiles and guajillo chiles for the mole sauce? Not to mention, the failed quest my brother and I went on to find one little herb called acuyo. AKA heirba santa. AKA oja santa. AKA unicorn hair, 'cause it was just as impossible to find!

Regardless of the acuyo fail, it was still a grand old time. With Chavela Vargas and Pedro Infante serenading us from my new laptop, my brother and I broke in my new molcajete with a batch of Roasted Tomato Salsa.

It's super-easy to make. Just grill a bunch of small tomatoes (I used zebra tomatoes from the farmer's market), garlic cloves (not pictured) and serrano chiles on a comal or frying pan.

When they're starting to char and peel, and they feel soft and squishy when you squeeze them with kitchen tongs, toss 'em in your molcajete (or food processor). Be sure to remove the stems from the chiles. Add some freshly chopped cilantro, and a few dashes of salt to taste. Mush it all up real good.

Transfer it to a glass or earthenware bowl (I swear it tastes better than plastic), and let it sit in the fridge to cool and let the flavors "marry." Or just eat it warm out of the molcajete. It's awesome that way, too.

There's more to this, but I've already rambled on enough for one post. Next time: my Flan-tastic dessert and why you NEED to watch the mole while it cooks...

[The culinary adventure continues here...]

Culinary catastrophes build character

I should be working on a piece for my as-to-be-disclosed project, but right now my mind is swimming with images of melting butter, de-boned duck, vodka gimlets, and utensils being flung around a tiny Long Island City apartment. Yup, I just finished reading Julie Powell's Julie & Julia.

I picked it up as the inaugural book for my Berkeley Public Library membership (about friggin' time, I know), and polished it off in just under a week. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. But it definitely struck a deep chord.

I know it's hip to hate Julie ('cause it's easy to hate people who become successful for doing what they love), and to be honest, there's a part of me that kind of does. But this is the part that recognizes the things I hate are exactly the same traits I find in myself. Which shuts me up fast and makes me appreciate her even more.

Here's the story of a depressed urbanite on the cusp of 30, who finds a direction for herself by taking a giant leap with her eyes closed. Is it easy? No. Is it sane? No. Is she trying to change the world? No. She's just trying to cook 524 recipes in 365 days.

She drinks too much. She has crying fits in the kitchen. She bitches about her job. Her apartment is filthy. She fights with her husband (a lot). In other words, she's a human being. Flawed, like the rest of us. Which is why I like her. She's no Martha Stewart. Thank god.

One thing that makes it easy to relate to Julie is her approach to cooking. She's not a kitchen goddess with eight arms, each coolly waving a gleaming gadget over her perfect culinary creations. She fucks up. A lot. But she's honest about it, and she keeps trying.

A lesson to remember when things like my Sweet Bean Pudding incident occurs:


This was supposed to be a delicious fusion of coconut milk-soaked rice and homemade black beans scented with orange, gently steamed in a fresh banana leaf.

What it was, was a friggin' mess:


I'd like to blame the vague cookbook directions, which lacked the proper instructions for working with banana leaves. But the cold, hard facts of the matter are that a) I should have known better than to substitute brown rice for white rice, and b) I didn't think about replacing the steaming water in the pot until after it had evaporated. At least, not until after the delicious aroma of steamed coconut milk transformed into the stench of scorching banana leaves.

And scorch they did:



It was so bad it took three days of soaking, plus a good working over with steel wool to get all the black funk off my best pot and steamer basket. To add insult to injury, I think this little mishap is what contributed to the burn-out of my biggest electric burner.

Did I cry? No. Did I throw things? No. Did I pour myself a big glass of red wine and whine to my lovingly patient mama? Oh yes. Yes. Yes. It still felt like a very Julie moment, even if it was Sweet Bean Pudding rather than Julia's Charlotte Malakoff.

Every cook has those moments. And every cook worth their Morton's knows the only thing to do is try again. And again. And again. Now that the burner is fixed, I actually can, and I will.

I'd like to think that Julie and Julia would approve.