The Week Ahead

     We are still transitioning from the dreary cold winter weather to the sunny warm days of Spring.  And thus far the transition has not been a smooth one.  Two mornings this week we had below freezing temperatures.  So just like the weather my weekly menu reflects the alternating climate varying between warming meals and food cooked on the porch overlooking the blooming daffodils.  Here is what I am planning to prepare this week:

WEEKLY MENU PLANNER

 Saturday

Philly Cheese Steaks

Steak Frites

Steamed Broccoli

 Sunday

Cheese Ravioli with Red Sauce

Grilled Chicken Salisbury Steak

Maple Mustard Green Beans

Fresh Fruit

 Monday

Grilled Tarragon Shrimp

Angel Hair Pasta

Spring Mix Salad

 Tuesday

Baked Tilapia

Roasted New Potatoes

Steamed Haricots Verts

 Wednesday

Abbondanza! Medley

 Thursday

Kitchen Closed

Until Further Notice

And the answer is...

     Yesterday I asked you to correctly name the vegetable that is only consumed raw, never canned or frozen.  The answer comes from the University of Illinois Extension Service:

     "Due to the extremely high water content, 94.9%, there are no successful method(s) of long-term preservation of lettuce.  Lettuce does not respond well to freezing, canning or drying.  For optimal nutritional value, lettuce should be eaten while it is fresh and crisp."

     So there you have it.  But what do you really know about this so called "rabbit food" that we can enjoy year round?  Let's take a look at its history and see if we can uncover some interesting facts about this quintessential vegetable.
     Lettuce is a temperate annual or biennial plant belonging to the sunflower family under the nomenclature  Asteraceae.  It was first grown by the Egyptians and eventually made its way to the Greeks and Romans.  The Romans gave it the Latin name "lactuca" meaning milk, due to the white substance that is produced when the stem is cut.  They also were the first to incorporate it into the meal, with other greens, as a first course.  It was thought alternately by those cultures to be an aid in fertility or a cause of sterility.
     As anyone who has grown a backyard garden knows, it is a hardy annual and is easily cultivated in the early Spring and grows best in the cooler weather before the heat of Summer.  Warm temperatures cause it to "bolt" or go to flower and eventually to seed too rapidly.  It is a good source of Vitamin A and K and also potassium.  There are between 65 and 140 distinct varieties and a general rule of thumb (a green thumb, if you will) is that the darker the leaf of a particular variety the more nutritious it is.  That being said, it is a fact that the pale iceberg lettuce that is most commonly sold in our super markets is the least healthful of all the varieties available.  World production of lettuce and it's relative, chicory, reached an impressive 23.62 tons in 2010, over half of that coming from China.
     Lettuce has a mild narcotic effect when consumed.  No wonder Peter Rabbit after eating the lettuce in Farmer MacGregor's garden felt so soporific.  And that also may account for the Anglo-Saxon term "sleepwort" when referring to it.
     One word of caution, however.  Lettuce should always be thoroughly rinsed before eating.  It can transmit certain serious diseases including E. coli, salmonella, listeria and shigella when grown in contaminated soil.  Isn't that correct, Rudi?

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

     This week I tried two new recipes.  I call them experiments.  And my long suffering wife becomes the unsuspecting victim of such attempts at culinary excellence.  One recipe combined several unlikely elements and worked out very well.  The other looked good in the magazine but was decidedly less than mediocre in actuality.
     So let's begin with the thumbs up recipe.  Here are the elements in order of appearance: bacon, Brussels sprouts, an onion, unsweetened apple juice, whole grain mustard, an apple, butter, cider vinegar.  Sounds odd, doesn't it?  But the flavors and textures worked very well together and at the dinner table we both decided the recipe was a "keeper."  I will post it below.
     The thumbs down recipe seemed good in theory and was certainly simple enough.  It just didn't deliver on taste or appearance.  It was for glazed radishes.  On that issue the verdict was that some things are just better eaten fresh from the garden.  Butter, sugar and heat could not improve on the familiar crunch of a radish right out of the ground, rinsed first of course.
     For the week, then, my record is 1 for 2 or in baseball terms, I'm batting .500.  And that's not a bad average to have.

     A question for my readers:  What vegetable is only sold fresh, never canned or frozen?  Answer tomorrow.

Braised Brussels Sprouts

4 strips bacon, diced                                        2 Tbsp whole grain mustard

2 lbs Brussels sprouts, halved                       1 Fuji apple, cored and diced

1/2 cup thinly sliced onion                             4 Tbsp butter, diced

1/4 cup unsweetened apple juice                  2 Tbsp cider vinegar

                                         salt & pepper to taste

     Cook the bacon in a large saute pan over medium heat until crisp, 7-10 minutes.  Transfer bacon to a paper towel lined plate then increase the heat to high.  Add Brussels sprouts and onion and cook until sprouts begin to brown, about 5 minutes; season with salt.

     Deglaze the pan with the apple juice, scraping up any browned bits on the bottom.  Add mustard, cover, reduce heat to medium-low and cook sprouts until nearly fork tender, 6 minutes.  Add diced apple, cover and cook until tender, 3 minutes.

     Stir in butter, vinegar and bacon then season with salt and pepper.

Serves 6

Cuisine at Home, Issue #92, April 2012, p. 43

A Culinary Caper

     Over the weekend I planted some recently purchased herbs in my porch pots.  Soon I will enjoy their use in a variety of different food preparations.  Parsley, oregano, chives, cilantro, and thyme will be a delight to the palate.
     But little did I know that when I bought a jar of preserved capers yesterday at the grocery store I was also adding to my list of essential herbs.  Capers look like little peppercorns but I never really knew what they actually were.  They are the unopened flower buds of a Mediterranean bush, Capparis spinosa, which have been gathered from the wild.  This process has gone on for thousands of years, according to Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.  Capers were even used by spice merchants as an informal currency, as was salt.

     The caper bush is distantly related to the cabbage family as is evident by its pungent sulfur compounds.  They dominate the raw flower bud which grows in parts of Europe where the bush flourishes in the nutrient-poor soil of the Middle East.  It has even been seen growing up between the cracks of the sidewalk and in the broken asphalt of roadways.  But by the time it reaches the Americas this tender immature flower bud has been preserved in one of several ways: in brine, in vinegar, or dry salted.  It is used as a sour-salty accent in foods and sauces, especially fish.  One taste tester commented that capers have the same burst of flavor as Dijon mustard.  And that makes sense since both the caper and mustard are related to the cabbage.

     I have a new found herb to add to those growing outside.  Now to experiment with some recipes that call for capers and to appreciate their distinct flavor and qualities.

A Pan for All Seasons

     Last night I browned some pork chops in my cast iron frying pan.  It was a Christmas gift from my family and it will be a cherished treasure for a long, long time.  Cast iron is an amazing material. 
     Recently in a Time magazine article Josh Ozersky spoke in glowing terms of a similar pan in his possession that he purchased in Jersey City over 20 years ago.  It was manufactured and distributed by the Lodge Manufacturing Co., a  116 year old family owned business located in South Pittsburg, Tennessee by Joseph Lodge.  Many of their original products, now over a century old, are still in use.  And in these days of high tech must have gadgets the primeval pan is making a comeback.  Cast iron cookware sales have grown from 4% of the cookware market to 10% in the past decade and last year, Ozersky writes, industry sales reached $114 million.
     And the reasons are obvious, he goes on to say.  "Heavy pans take longer to get hot than thin ones, but they hold their heat longer, and they are, for practical purposes, indestructable.  This pan, this mute dense tool, roots us to our parents and grandparents and the hundreds of generations that came before them...Everyone that was ever made, whether by Lodge or one of the thousands of nameless smithies across America, is basically the same: a heavy unbending piece of metal that picks up a patina with long use and grows to fit the hands that hold it."
     "Iron pans are no good for making Hot Pockets, Lean Cuisines or tofu tetrazzini," Ozersky admits.  "They're made for an elemental kind of cooking that uses whole ingredients and live fire, that has become marginal in the age we live in.  You don't leave them in the sink to soak; you don't even wash them."
     I'm really pleased by the timeless gift I've been given.  Now if I could only learn to cook fried chicken in it.

Tutu's Casserole

     On my weekly menu planner I listed Sunday's meal as "Tutu's Casserole."  You won't find that dish in any cookbook.  The reality of it is that there is no recipe for it, anywhere.  It refers to one of my mother's signature meals.  When she became a grandmother she boldly announced that she would be called "Tutu" because that means grandmother in Hawaiian.  How she knew that remains a mystery, but Tutu it was for our daughters.  And Tutu loved to cook.  She was good at it and as far back as I can remember she never used a printed recipe for anything she made.  That included the grape jam and strawberry preserves that she made from home grown ingredients as well as the phenomenal chocolate cake with vanilla icing and the sweet and gooey pineapple upside down cake that I used to take back to my college dorm each Sunday evening.  It was years later that my fraternity brothers finally confessed that they would wait at the dorm to help me bring in my belongings just to have a piece of one of those amazing desserts.
     Tutu also made some pretty tasty main meals, too.  Another specialty was her beef stew with dumplings.  Those dumplings were so light they almost floated off the stew.  She also made the best fried butterflied shrimp I have ever had.  And she loved to cook my Dad's favorite meals, too.  She thought nothing of preparing things like boiled cow's tongue, kidney, liver and brains, oh yes, and pig's feet, too.  But she would not cook lamb, because my Father didn't care for it.
     And when she hosted special Friday night meals with our daughters they were amazed with the way she could turn a simple meal into a feast.  Allison recalls the best broccoli at Tutu's house.  Can you imagine a child liking cooked broccoli?  But served with a hamburger and a side of fresh strawberries sprinkled with confectioner's sugar there was nothing better in the universe.  And Rudi still compares everyone else's pancakes to Tutu's as they were thin, bulging with chocolate chips that had a crisp edge on them from the griddle, served with real maple syrup.  Tutu cooked using real ingredients and I guess that made a difference.  There were no pre-packaged meals or artificial additives in our house.  Fresh eggs, meat, milk,  produce and bread were delivered to the door each week.  And Tutu created masterpieces from these basic elements.
     So I can only tell you that Tutu's Casserole combined crumbled sausage, large sea shell pasta, tomato sauce and peas to make a simple but filling meal for everyone at the table.  As for the recipe, I guess you will just have to create it yourself, just like Tutu did.



Out takes

     I didn't get to use every picture that I took on my Great American Culinary Tour.  There were some good ones that didn't make the cut.  So today I will provide a montage of the out takes from my trip through Vermont: