Chop, chop, toss, pop

this blog is moving to www.marthacarlin.com, partly because the links on blogger only work about half the time. Frustrating.....

Another busy afternoon in the kitchen. After a morning of cleaning up computer files and sorting things for the upcoming garage sale,cooking seemed like a good break. John wanted something light for dinner –soup and salads. At first thought that seems like it wouldn’t take too much time to put together. Not so,not so. One of John’s favorite things is gazpacho. I decided to surprise him with a batch. This requires a great deal of chopping. Chopped tomatoes,chopped peppers,chopped onions,chopped parsley,chopped cucumbers –toss in some worcestershire sauce,tomato juice,broth (I used veggie),hot sauce,salt,pepper and this recipe had a hard boiled egg thrown in. Interesting but not my favorite. I need another recipe. John liked it though.

On the salad front more chop –thus the chop,chop. On the menu –potato salad,spicy bean salad,Jamie Oliver’s wild rice salad,fruit salad and tomato salad –all of which required chopping.

Potato salad –boil a small bag of new potatoes,drain and cut in to smaller pieces. While they are still hot toss them with a mix of 6T olive oil and 2T lemon juice,then add dill,capers,a small amount of diced onion or shallot,chives if you have them and 1/4 c. of plain yogurt (I life Fage 2%) –salt and pepper to taste.

Spicy bean salad –I make this all the time but it is never the same since I don’t use a recipe –toss in two cans of beans (any will do). Today I used black beans and cannellini beans. Add diced peppers –red,yellow,orange or green,diced red onion,herbs (basil and parsley if you have them),corn (frozen or fresh cut off the cob and roasted in the oven). Today I roasted the fresh cut corn with some cumin,cayenne and salt. Add sriracha or other hot sauce to taste and either oil and vinegar dressing or buttermilk ranch. Today I used ranch. I also tossed in some sun-dried tomatoes. Today’s batch was a bit spicier than usual but it didn’t stop John and Mary Mac from devouring it. Jack is not a fan.

Rice salad –cook long grain and wild rice according to package and then cool. Add fresh herbs –basil,parsley and mint,about one sprig of each,chopped. Add 8oz of diced roasted red peppers. Toss with lemon dressing –3T olive oil,1 T lemon juice shaken in a jar with salt and pepper. Sometimes I add feta or goat cheese and black olives but not today.

Tomato salad –I vary this one all the time too –using different vinegars,adding cheese or leaving it out,adding olives or leaving them out,adding beans or leaving them out. Today’s mix –diced beefsteak tomatoe tossed with red wine vinegar and oil dressing (3T oil and 1 T vinegar shaken in a jar with salt and pepper),added tiny balls of fresh mozzarella,fresh basil leaves and half a cup of cannellini beans.

Fruit salad –cut up 1 peach,1 pluot,1 plum,1 apple,5 strawberries,1/4 cantelope and toss together.

By the time I finished all the chopping and got this on the table it had been about two and half hours. The time flew though because I love being in the kitchen. Chopping is a form of meditation for me. The rhythmic motion of the knife on the cutting board can really absorb me and clean my mind. Its like a dance moving from one ingredient to another –chop,chop,toss,stir,taste.

We have enough of the salads to have a nice lunch tomorrow with fresh peaches I am hoping to get at the Parker Farmer’s Market. It is nearing the end of the season so its anybody’s guess as to whether there will be peaches tomorrow. My taste buds hope so.

After the dinner clean up,I decided to make a dessert mess. This happens with me a lot. Poor John is usually the clean up guy. He gets everything in the dishwasher and the counters clean and I turn right around and start making a mess again. Isn’t it that way with life though. Just when you think you’ve got everything straightened out something new comes along to stir things up. Well my new mess involved stirring –lots of it. I decided to make the base custard from Ciao Bella so I could cool it over night and make Key Lime and graham cracker gelato tomorrow. Besides,I need to use up my Longmont Dairy Milk. They have the best milk going –no hormones,fresh,local,grass fed cows…. But I am required to buy a minimum of 3 half gallons a week. We don’t always drink this much so it leaves me coming up with ideas of what to do with it. Sometimes I make yogurt. Today it is gelato. The base recipe calls for 4 cups of whole milk,1 cup of whipping cream,1 cup of sugar and 4 egg yolks. The milk and cream are mixed and warmed in a sauce pan to 170 degrees. While this is going on the sugar and egg yolks are beaten to pale yellow. When the milk reaches 170 you temper the eggs –that means to put a little bit of the warm milk in the eggs while you whisk them briskly,adding milk a little at time until the eggs are mixed with the milk. Then you cook it further on low to 185 degrees stirring constantly until it coats the back of a wooden spoon. This takes a little while and gets kind of hot standing over the stove. When you are finished you have to strain the custard mixture through a fine strainer to get out any egg that has solidified. This takes quite a while. Lucky for me Jack found it interesting and came to the rescue. Now it is cooling on the counter awaiting a night in the freezer. More tomorrow on how delicious the gelato is –along with the recipe if you want to make it.

Finally,we finished off the evening with a favorite movie –Lord of the Rings and some pop corn,the old fashioned way. I popped it in a pan with oil –none of that microwave stuff with artificial flavors. This is an art in itself. It can be hard to get it right without burning the pan. Cover the bottom of the pan with oil and heat it up with one kernel in the pan. When that kernel pops you know your pan is ready. Add about half a cup of popcorn. Put the lid on and keep shaking the pan to make sure the popped corn rises to the top and the unpopped kernels stay at the bottom to continue popping. That’s the real trick to not burning it –constant movement. Once the sound of popping slows you know its time to take it off the heat. If you wait for every last kernel to pop you are probably going to have a burnt pan. Resist the urge. Then toss with season –we add cajun and salt along with a little real butter.

Finally after 4 long hours,I retire to the couch with my bowl to revisit “Lord of the Rings”. We all love this movie though Jack was afraid of Gollum when he was little. I love Galadriel’s monologue at the beginning.

“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Must that once was is lost,for none now live who remember it.”

I am not sure what year Tolkein wrote the book but it was a number of years ago. I think her monologue is timeless. With each generation comes change and something is lost of the past. Today for example,few know how to grow their own food and children don’t know where most of their food comes from other than the grocery store. We are losing our knowledge of how things are made because nothing is made here in the US anymore. In another generation all those skills will be lost. There are hundreds of varieties of seeds that are no longer grown and will eventually pass away from memory. Youth want their electronic devices more than their sense of smell (see previous blog entry). Change is inevitable. It will happen no matter how we try to stop it. So how do we embrace the change while still trying to steer it in a good direction.

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”–Galadriel to Frodo. So true. So true. Never think that you don’t matter. You do and you can make a difference.

Well enough wandering through my mind for the day. Like I said,you never know what you mind find here.

Zucchini, Zucchini and More Zucchini

Last night I decided to tackle the countertop of zucchinis that had been accumulating all week. This time of year you just can’t give them away fast enough. Well,let’s face it. You can’t really give them away at all. My neighbor,Cathy said,“Sure I take some if you put them in zucchini bread”.

With that little nudge I decided to shred my 8 zucchinis and make some bread. Of course,one of the was about a foot and a half long by itself. By the time I shredded them all I had three large bowls of zucchini. I decided I would try a few different recipes rather than sticking with the tried and true. That usually doesn’t turn out the way I am planning. I started with a zucchini carrot bread from a cook book my cousin gave me. It was a little bit different due to the carrots and the recipe also included honey –a nice touch for a bee keeper. I started this batch around 7pm and quickly figured out it wasn’t going to use up much of my raw materials. It only required 1 cup of zucchini and I had at least 20 cups! So I popped two loaves in the oven and started on Paula Dean’s recipe which takes at least 3 cups of the stuff. Then I moved on from Paula Dean’s recipe to my friend’s recipe. This is the “go to”best recipe. She prints me a copy to keep every year and every year I lose it. My recipes are a little like my garden –chaotic! I have them in stacks,books,stuffed inside other cookbooks,you name it. Every once in a while I try to organize them but it doesn’t work very well. I keeping thinking I am just going to put together a cookbook of all my favorites and then get rid of all the papers. One of these days. At least if I put the zucchini bread recipe here,I will know where to find it the next time I can’t find it. Many thanks to my friend Kelly for sharing her recipe and helping me bake a loaf or two on ocassion:

3 cups flour ,1 tsp salt,1 tsp soda,3 tsp cinnamon,1/4 tsp baking powder

3 beaten eggs,2 cups sugar,3 tsp vanilla,1 cup vegetable oil,3 cups shredded zucchini,1 cup chopped walnuts

Sift dry ingredients together. Beat eggs and add sugar,vanilla and oil. Stir in zucchini. Add dry ingredients and blend. Stir in nuts. Bake in 2 greased and floured loaf pans for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Sometimes I add chocolate chips.

I finally went to bed at 11:30 with loaves of varying sizes and about 3 dozen muffins. Its even hard to give away and extra large loaf so I try to make them smaller. But I still had one large bowl of shredded zucchini left. More for the morning.

I got up at 6 am,on a Saturday no less,and started cooking again. This time I decided to break up the monotony while baking the zucchini bread. Did I mention that I had 2 boxes of peaches delivered to my house last night from the high school fundraiser? I also promised Mary Mac I would make her something sweet for breakfast. I started out with the Chico Hot Springs Resort Carmel Rolls. These are yeast bread honey buns that are totally decadent. I made the dough and put it aside to rise while I started on a double batch of peach muffin/bread from a great recipe my neighbor Cathy gave me. While those were cooking I stared down the bowl of zucchini and tried to decide what to do. You can only give away so many loaves of the bread. I remembered a recipe I saw for curried zucchini soup. I dug around in my cookbooks and magazines until I found it. It is easy to make and tastes great.

1 T olive oil,1 medium onion –chopped,Coarse salt,2 garlic cloves –minced,2 tsp curry powder,1 1/2 lbs of zucchini –I used shredded or you can dice or slice,1 baking potato –peeled and diced,1/3 cup sliced almonds –toasted for garnish

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and 1 T of salt ( use less and add later,it was a bit salty);cook,stirring occasionally,until the onion is soft,4 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and curry powder;cook,stirring constantly,until fragrant,about 1 minute.

Add the zucchini,potato,and 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil;reduce heat and simmer until veggies are tender,about 15 minutes.

Puree the soup in batches in a blender (do not fill more than halfway) until smooth;server immediately. Garnish with almonds.

I made a trip batch of this yummy stuff. I gave two large jars away,saved one for myself and spilled about a half gallon all over the kitchen counter. Lucky for me my neighbor had come over to get a sticky bun and ran around the counter to help me clean up my disaster. By this time I was pretty much over my zucchini but I still had half of the largest one that I hadn’t shredded yet. I left it on the counter and headed out to pull weeds and water the garden –enough indoor chores. I even decided to take some honey from one of my hives –more on that another day.

As luck would have it my artistically talented Lindsay managed to come up with the grande finale for the large half a zucchini I had left on my counter. After we got home from the movie (The Help –more on that another day) she sat down at the table with me while I was typing this and started carving.

Zucchini as Art