Cooking
is a passion of mine, and why I love to read cookbooks, watch
cooking shows and spend time in the kitchen trying to expand my
culinary skills. Ethnic foods and dishes made with fresh-from-the-garden
produce take top prize at our family table. Your family may be
excited about some other aspect of food preparation--home-baked
treats, outdoor grilling, or even chocolate in any form!-and that's
great.
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A passionate kitchen
works: it almost always provides delicious, nourishing
food; it gathers people together offering comfort, community,
and even love; it gives the cook opportunities to be creative,
nurturing and imaginative.
When food is fresh and cooked with care, fabulous meals
and eating experiences explode in even the smallest families
or at the most budget-conscious tables.
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Note the picture to
the left of a picture-perfect traditional Paella to feed
an army, made by our son and daughter-in-law, inspired
by her passionate bit of Spanish heritage and his Eagle
Scout's love of open fire cooking!
Tastes as great as
it looks.
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If you're inexperienced
in the kitchen, you don't have to start with Paella. Sometimes
it's just choosing fresh over canned or processed foods,
sometimes it's adding new herbs and spices to ramp up
a dish's flavor, or trying to stick to locally grown,
in- season foods.
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It takes
courage, sometimes, to add different herbs, or extra garlic,
or to use an old familiar ingredient in a new way that will
make just the right touch in a recipe. I can remember thinking,
every time I ate them, what great, sweet flavor leeks add to
so many dishes, dishes like potato soup, or Beef Burgundy. I'm
still looking for new ways to use leeks, and hope to grow more
of them in family garden this year. (Your ideas welcome!)
New combinations don't always work, of course. But, if made
with a sprinkle of love, tasters are agreeable and look forward
to our next effort. We all realize by now that fast food is
not a good choice for us or our children. Slow-cooked food,
even simple 20-minute meals from your kitchen and made with
fresh, hopefully local ingredients, can make a big difference
in our kids' lives, and our own.
We have control of what we eat and how we cook: we can skip
the fast food, stay at home and avoid takeout (thus saving $$)
and make cooking and eating together a joy and an adventure.
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page]
In this corner of the Kitchen I'll suggest some of my favorite
books based on good food and great cooking, and offer new and
old favorite recipes, some taken from my Seasons of Love Cookbook:
Recipes, Rituals and Reflections, (my work in progress), some
from a cookbook I helped put together from the writers at Wings
Press, Winging It in the Kitchen, and some from
my cooking columns, Country Farm Cooking and Soul Seasonings.
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So…If
you'd like to know more about the history of our return
to sustainable, homegrown cooking, try Thomas McNamee's
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, (she's the chef
who inspired the new White House vegetable and herb
gardens).
The book is a leisurely but detailed stroll through
the past 50 years of trying to change our country's
way of looking at food, and offers great ideas for
your own cookery. The type of book you read 1 chapter
a day!
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Also
deservedly popular right now is Julie and Julia
by Juliet Powell, (the book, not the movie
which is also fun), as it shows with detail and
some hysteria Julie's journey to acquire more
cooking skills and eat better food.
Her
journey is ours, magnified.
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Winging It
in the Kitchen is a collection of widely varied,
imaginative and delicious recipes by the authors at
Wings Press.
Because they're busy writers, these are recipes that
get dinner out in a hurry. That, and the obviously
piquant connections of many recipes to the stories
these authors have fabricated out of highly fertile
imaginations, make this a unique and priceless blend
of practical, resourceful and ingenious.
[read
more here]
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PERFECTLY
SIMPLE ITALIAN SOUP
Pomidoro Soup: adapted from friend Patty Taft |
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Ingredients:
- 1 lb. Italian sausage,
casing removed and broken up in small pieces
- 1 medium green pepper,
diced into ¾ in. pieces
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 2 large cloves garlic
chopped
- 1 28 oz. can tomatoes,
broken up
- 2- 8 oz. cans tomato
sauce
- 2 c. chicken stock
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- ¾ cup small
pasta, such as ditalini, cooked
- grated Pecorino Romano
cheese to taste
Directions:
- Brown sausage, peppers,
onions and garlic in medium stockpot, adding garlic during
the last minute or so. Drain excess fat
- Add remaining ingredients
except pasta and grated cheese
- Cover and simmer
for 15-20 minutes.
- Add pasta and cheese
just before serving.
Makes 6 (1-1/3c) servings
Note from Ellie:
If my sausage is not "hot", I add a quarter tsp.
red pepper flakes.
For yesterday's pot
I doubled the recipe, using two quarts of (home-canned)
tomatoes and three small cans of Hunt's tomato sauce, and
doubling everything else.
Enjoy!
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