Fried Green Tomatoes or: Hey winter, you're coming already?

This summer Matt (my partner) and I endeavored to claim our very own bit of the world in the form of four modest containers full of plants. 

The tomatoes had an unfortunate start in the form of squirrels run moisture-mad by the drought.  Eventually we got a small number, but by the time the weather turned nippy there were an number that were not going to make it to ripe before this state got way too cold to even think about going outside to look at plants.

We had friends and their adorable baby stay with us this week and decided that it was the perfect time to gorge ourselves on delicious under-ripe fried fruit.

Fried Green Tomatoes 

What you need: 
8 green tomatoes
3 eggs
3/4 cup of milk
1 1/2 cups of flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
4 teaspoons kosher (or sea) salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
vegetable oil

What you do:

1. Slice tomatoes approximately 1/4 inch thick
2. Mix eggs and milk together in a bowl, put flour onto a plate and a mixture of bread crumbs, cornmeal and salt on another plate.
3. In a large skillet warm a 1/2 inch of vegetable oil over a medium heat. You can test to make sure the oil is hot enough when some of the batter that gunks all up on your fingers while you're working on battering the tomatoes is all bubbly when you drop it in the oil.
4.  Coat tomato slices in flour, then the egg mixture and bread crumbs.
5. Place battered tomato slices in oil (don't crowd the tomatoes! they shouldn't touch in the pan or they'll stick all up together)
6. Turn when they're brown on the down side and allow to get brown on the other side. 
7. Place on a plate with a paper towel, or a cooling rack so they don't pool in the oil.
8. Eat them all up, they're delicious.

We ate ours with Cheesy Polenta, here's how I made it:

Cheesy Polenta

What you need: 
2 cups milk
2 cups water
1 cup polenta (dry, not the sausage roll stuff made for slicing)
3/4 cups of your favorite cheddar
1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher (or sea) salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
4 tablespoon of butter

What you do:

1. Bring milk and water to a boil in a medium sauce pan.
2. Stir in polenta and turn down to a simmer
3. Once mixture is just about as thick as you would like it add the 1/2 cup cheese, salt and pepper. 
4. Spoon out, garnish with a pinch of the remainder of the cheese. 

Chaos in the Kitchen or: Ben, Katie-Bug and Big Tone Make a Mess and Some Rules

Right around the time I started to realize that food was interesting (but long before it began to wholly consume my consciousness) my cousin Ben stayed with my family.  This was the summer after my freshman year of college, my sister was still in High School and at home.

The condition upon which Ben lived in "The Hovel" (a partitioned off portion of our unfinished basement that the graduating Literature major managed to make charming in an old type-writer, starving artist kind of way) was that he would regularly cook meals for the family.

It is possible that I romanticize these meals and their preparation, but if I do my whole family does as well. 

Ben would mole-out of The Hovel, squinting in the mid-morning sun, make a cup of tea and toast with peanut-butter (someday I'll tell you about the peanut butter wars of that summer) and jam.  We would watch PBS, "Sunrise Earth" if it was early enough (it almost never was) and mostly "History Detectives."  Ben would leaf through his cook books, or think and talk about that night's recipes. A list would be made.  I have fond memories of trips to the People's Food Co-op, using tiny scoops to fill bags with spices, buying bulk food that then was exotic and novel and now are staples of my diet.

But the cooking bit was the really exciting part. Sometimes my sister, my cousin Tony (Big Tone), or Ben's sister, Sammie would help, but mostly not. Mostly we sat at the counter and watched the chaos happen. Ben had a knack for using every pot and pan in the kitchen. It was an event, a delicious, messy event that lasted for whole afternoons.

At some point my sister began  to ask questions. She was not confident in her ability to cook much of anything, and marveled at Ben's unbridled confidence in a kitchen. "How do you know what to do?" she wondered more than once.

That's when the rules started coming:

Rule # 1 : Be a Rebel. 

The rules came fast and random (I promise to tell you all of them over time).  Soon they ended up on hot pink post-it notes sprinkled around the kitchen, hiding in cupboards and behind spices. 

They were a neon, mis-numbered manifesto on how to have a humorous, chaotic, delicious kitchen where the first rule was to break the rules.

Most of us have tee-shirts now.

Part of me would like to re-write the Chaos in the Kitchen rules and put them around my own cupboards now, but I know the magic isn't something that can simply be recaptured but a few cheekily placed post-it notes.

I do try to keep that spirit in my cooking though. I rarely try the same recipe twice, preferring to experiment and deviate.  To rebel against a recipe, to scoff at Bittman (and then go running to Bittman to figure out what went wrong). To let myself be extravagant. To try things that feel impossible in the glossy pages of cook books. To let myself be confident. To play with my food. To dirty all the pans.

In my current grad-school life there are a lot of rules, a lot of expectations.  Some of them are real and some are self-imposed. It's become really important to put on an apron, take off my socks (Rule # 11: Take off your socks when you’re ‘bout to get serious in the kitchen.), pull up my  hair, and make some things and break some rules. 

Ben now owns a small organic livestock CSA out of Stockbridge, Michigan called Bending Sickle Community Farm. Please visit their website.  

Ben with his goats as featured in AnnArbor.com .

Winter Vegetable Navy Bean Soup or: Soup is My Nemesis

Soup is my nemesis. I'm not good at it. I'm good at a fair number of things in a kitchen, but soup is hard for me.  It's not that my soup is bad it's just that it could be better, (with the exception of one dreamy batch of potato leek) every damn time.

This soup was decent. The flavor was good, but the vegetables were just slightly overcooked. The recipe that appears below is with the (timing) changes I hope to make next time, flavoring/amounts etc. are all as they were.

Winter Vegetable Navy Bean Soup

What you need:
4-6 cups of vegetable or chicken stock
3 leeks, chopped fine
2 shallots, chopped fine
4 garlic cloves, minced 
2 pinches red pepper flakes
1 cup chopped portobello mushrooms
1.5 tablespoons fresh rosemary 
2 tablespoons fresh basil
1 tablespoon fresh sage
2 -3 cups winter squash, cubed
2 potatoes cubed with skin
3 celery stalks, chopped fine
2 large carrots
1.5-3 cups of water
42-56oz of navy beans
2 cups swiss chard
salt and pepper to taste



What you do: 
1. I made my own stock (something I'll surely post about later), if you choose to make your own fresh stock get that going as you chop your vegetables
2. Saute your leeks, shallots, garlic and pepper flakes until translucent, add to stock.
3. Saute mushrooms  in a little water until soft and add to stock.
4. Add herbs to stock and bring to a boil.
5. Add squash, potatoes, carrots and celery boil until they begin to become tender (approximately 10 minutes?)
6. Add beans and bring to boil.
7. Turn down to simmer, add swiss chard.
8. Allow chard to soften.
9. Serve. (we ate this soup with homemade bread and a good Parmesan on top)


I watched Vicky Christina Bacelona and Julie and Julia and had a glass of wine while I made this soup, but I'm fairly sure that's not necessary.

Once I figure out how to master this bread I will post that recipe too.

A Recipe Box (A Food Journal, An Appetite Scrapbook)

Recently I took up the romantic notion of putting together a recipe box. I fantasized of sitting down at my kitchen table copying, by hand, successfully completed recipes. I wistfully imagined shuffling through a mostly-alphabetically-organized box and pulling out a sauce splattered card. I imagined my children and grandchildren lovingly looking for their favorite cookie recipe carefully written in a delicate, slanted, loopy hand.

This (unfortunately) is really a fantastic fantasy. None of these things are likely to happen (least of all a 26-year-in development of lovely, loopy, delicate handwriting). While in many ways I am an analog girl, certain modes are more appropriate for sharing and longevity than a floury box of creased index cards.