The Importance of Courses

Good morning.

Here I am back from a long stay in Northern California. More about that in another post.

Today, I am going to write about eating in courses.
Serving meals in courses. Ways to have courses without help in the kitchen, even.

I was reading a good cookbook about how the Italians eat their main meal. If you think about it you can remember the familiar words, even familiar to those who don't really know Italian, like me.

First course in Italian is: Antipasti.  What is served before the pasta. This includes all appetizers, plain or fancy, raw or cooked. I have come to the conclusion that the lack of an antipasto is the main flaw in family meals in the USA. (If there are indeed family meals. Well, I know there are, if only between old couples who are used to the former ways of sitting down together to eat.).

The antipasto's main function is to take the edge off the appetite.  And to prepare for the main meal. This sounds so simple it's stupid, but it is important because, one, it does give the innards a chance to get prepared. And, two, it slows down the pace of the meal.  Too often, more than an hour is spent preparing dinner, and then we wolf it down in ten minutes and adios Jesus.  What's the sense in that?

If everybody sits down ( it's important to be seated for that course) then we get to come to the realization that dinner is served.  We sip our drink, our wine or our cocktail, eat our two crackers and an olive, chat a bit, anticipate, and take in a breath or two.  What's not good about that?

The cook is going to have to jump up for the finishing of the rest of the meal, but that just gives the diner or diners a chance to have another olive. Or another spoon of soup. Or another bruschetta. Everyone takes a breath, and, voila!! fifteen minutes has been expended on appreciation of all the effort that has taken place on the kitchen to feed us all.  The simplest antipasto I ever saw was the big bowl of cut-up apples that a young woman served while we waited for a stew. They were nice, they didn't take away the appetite, and they certainly calmed down the kids who were wild after a day at the zoo.

Second course in the Italian meal is the pasta. That is what logically comes after the antipasto.  It can be any free-standing pasta dish, or rice dish.  It is not a hog sized share. That means, nowhere near a main course serving. But it is another chance to appreciate the cook's efforts in another sphere; it gives us something new to talk about, something new to pour a drink for, and another chance to breathe. Right here let me say that for the family meal, this course can meld right into the next course, which is the main course...primi piatti.

Primi piatti means "first plates," and means the main course.  This is where the meat comes in if you are serving it. From a practical standpoint, the family meal should be melded with the pasta or rice course. But people are always writing in to Dear Abby telling how disturbed they are by their loved one's habit of eating all of one type of food on their plate, then the next, then the next. Do they not realize that those eaters are just trying to provide themselves with a pasta/rice course, a meat course, a salad course, and that that is a very natural way of eating?  

After the main course, it's salad or fruit.  Salad instead of dessert? Yes, and it's very satisfying. It freshens the palate, and you don't need anything more. You really don't crave it, once you are out of the habit of sweets at the end of dinner.

Italians mainly eat sweet pastry, pies and such, in the afternoon with coffee. Like merienda. That keeps that heavy sugar out of the end of the evening and besides, it is really delicious to have a sweet and coffee at four o clock.

I guess the main point of this, in such busy households as we have, with such harried cooks, is that we should have a seated appetizer before the main meal. This doesn't include the peanuts and cocktails or wine that  some people have as they cook or anticipate dinner.  But every meal needs a prepare yourself and take a breath course before digging in to the main dish.

Alas, in many households, dinner means rushing out, rushing in, and dumping a huge sack of semi-inedibles out onto the table so that everyone can grab for themselves. This prospect makes me feel so sad that I don't even want to contemplate it further! YAZZYBEL

don't fall down

How often do we senior citizens hear those words!

We hear them and quail inside because we know all too well that we have heard an injunction with which it's beyond our power to comply, endeavor as we may.

Nobody falls thinking about it, until in the split second as we are falling, we may think, This time i am falling. Then we hit and with a bang, and think , "This time it is serious."

I fell in my garage at 2:30 in the garage on May 16.
I was alone and really hit hard flying through the air headfirst into the pantry shelves.  I felt my head and felt a wound and lots of blood. I immediately realized that my left wrist was broken and that I had to get into the house and the phone, so I inch-wormed my way up the steps, flipped onto my back and pushed into the living room in pools of blood, to the phone. I pulled the cord, phone fell down, called 911 and within 5 minutes was in the hands of the most capable very young First Responders you could want. 
     They sent me to UCSD Trauma Center for an evening of patchwork.  Thank God that I did not get worse injured, that I did not lose consciousness, that the phone was on its hook as it almost never is---and for the wonderful young lifesavers. Since then, with wonderful neighbors, friends, and nurses, i have been eking along okay.  What an ordeal. Thank God.  YAZZYBEL

Something I Forgot about Tortilla Soup

 I forgot to say that chicken tortilla soup should be made from simmered whole chickens, or at least big chunks of chickens with bones, and the meat falls off the bones and is shredded into the soup.

Chicken tortilla soup made of boiled chicken breasts that are cubed into the soup is just plain not as good. The shredded texture goes so well with the bits of drowned tortilla and vegetables and cheese (not too much) and the broth should have a rich quality of tortilla and Mexican spices within the rich chicken caldo.

That's all I had to say.  Cut up cilantro and plenty of garlic and onion and tomato are good with me, and I love a hint of comino in everything.  Some zucchini is not amiss but no fillers like potato or rice or frijoles, por favor.  That's all.  Shredded, not cubed, chicken meat and I like some dark meat. YAZZYBEL

Tortilla Soup and Shrimp Cocktails

Good morning. I thought I'd write about a few delicious things I had to eat in Texas...tortilla soup, and shrimp cocktails today.

Shrimp cocktails used to appear on American menus in one form.  There was a cup of rich, thick tomato sauce, spicy and sweet. Sometimes there was horseradish in the sauce.  And there were big fat shrimps hanging over the edge of the bowl to dip into the sauce.  These were simply very tasty, and all of course depends on the quality of the shrimp. I am glad to say that good shrimp can still be had, though I'd avoid farmed shrimp at all costs and still would vote for wild Gulf of Mexico shrimp if possible.

Nowadays, the Mexican Shrimp Cocktail is finally taking over on the US side.  This cocktail still depends on fat huge shrimp to be excellent, but the rest of the picture has changed.  Most often served in a large-bowled goblet, the sauce is now an "agua," tasty and thin, in which the shrimp are immersed.  Chunks of avocado, and bits of chopped radish, are in the sauce. The seasonings are pleasant but incisive.  Chili (jalapeno?), vinegar, tomato, hierbas..You fish around for your next bite and when all the bites are gone you drink your agua and sigh with pleasure. I drink it anyway. Couldn't leave it. Which cocktail do I prefer? The Mexican, I guess, though I must say I never complain about any well put-together shrimp cocktail. Low in calories, high in flavor and satisfaction.

My first tortilla soup long ago was made by my mother, with a whole chicken making the broth, and each ingredient adding to a full-flavored chicken soup graced with sliced fried tortilla strips. I had a few tortilla soups on my trip, and there are the common ones (the stock was something other than whole-chicken based) and a very exceptional one I had with a rich, chicken-ful broth and just the right vegetables and chicken. I have had no chicken tortilla soup compared to the good one I had on this trip and I'm sorry I can't remember just where it was!!
YAZZYBEL

Two Strawberry Cakes

Listen! say my hordes of listeners. Weeks away from the blog, and you come back with tales of cake?

What better say I? I have spent the last few weeks in Tucson and San Antonio eating delicious food. Came back weighing one pound more than when I left. Not bad, not bad. And I am going to talk some more about the food of Texas among other things.

The two strawberry cakes were eaten in restaurants in El Paso and San Antonio. They were very different from each other, and very different from the fake flans and fake lava cakes that are proliferating in our middle class restaurants now.

The first one was eaten in a tiny restaurant outside of El Paso in a market/antique mall kind of place. Can't remember its name but the food was very good. I ordered Strawberry Cake for dessert.  This cake was a very pink strawberry-flavored cake as in a cake mix, but very tasty.  Between the layers was spread a generous layer of strawberry jam; over the top and sides was a pale pink strawberry buttercream frosting.  The cake was huge; I'd guess the slice was nearly a pound in weight. I ate it all.

Then in San Antonio, at Crumpets, I ordered Strawberry Cake again. I prayed it wouldnt be shortcake, and it wasn't.  The cake was white and pleasant; there was a creme anglaise filling and a whipped cream filling (three layers) with whipped cream covering all. There were mashed strawberries in the cake batter, baked in. The whole thing was moist and rich and refrigerated and was just scrumptious.

So there. I could not wait to tell people about that delicious cake.  I rarely see cake offered in a restaurant and of course I hardly ever make one any more; last one I made I think I mixed up my gluten free biscuit mix with flour so the whole thing was coarse and tasted like garbanzos.  Not too good.

I ate several tortilla soups on the trip and will discuss those later. Also ate my favorite meal: shrimp cocktail, which makes a surprisingly satisfying lunch all by itself. And makes you feel virtuous too when everyone else is eating fried things with fries on the side. YAZZYBEL

How Food That I Fed My Kids in the 70's was Better

Yes! The food that I fed my kids in the 70's  was better food than any mom can feed her kids today.

At the typical Safeway, say the one on Washington St. before it turned into Von's and then halfway back again, the meat counter alone was a miracle of choice and diversity. There before you was spread the treasure of a rich continent, and the only  thing holding you back was cost and talent.  Nothing held me back in those days, fortunately. I was still in my honeymoon of motherhood, in the seventies, when my husband lived at home, earned good money, and I didnt have to leave my little children in order to be liberated at work. And I loved to cook!

There before us was:
1. Veal shanks--oh how yummy to make osso bucco!
2. Veal chops and stew meat. Veal is delicious and was not criminal in those days.
3. Seafood in great variety: West Coast fish, oysters in little glass bottles if you wanted to get them that way, shrimps huge and pink from Texas or the Pacific, crayfish/lobster tails from South America (anybody remember those?), 
4.Beef both young and mature, huge steaks with BONES those anthropological mysteries that have disappeared from the grocer's meat counters, roasts of all sorts including seven bone roast which can be put into the oven in the am with a little onion and water, and left all day at two fifty degrees while you go to the zoo and aquarium and wherever else you choose to, returning home to the most delicious dinner ever at five or six...
5. Pork, pink and yummy...it was different. Pork chops were different. Or, I should say that pork is different now, for then they were of the quality that pork has been throughout the millenia...something just delicious and not hard as a brickbat after it's been grilled as now.
6. Lamb! Exotic, innocent lamb..delightful tiny chops, wonderful roasts and even wonderful lamb shoulder stew..(NOT exotic, but GOOD!)
7. Ground meats of all sorts...that did not give people e-coli for some reason even though processing was not what it now is...hmm...think of that...it was local and fresher, that's why!

The vegetable bins were less full of colorful stuff. Asian products were not in evidence much. But the vegetables that existed were huge, fresh and fine. Nothing had yet been genetically tampered with. Imagine that! If you didnt eat it expediently, it would rot or die...It was real.

The bread you made your 2000 cheese sandwiches or beef sandwiches or tuna sandwiches or chicken sandwiches with was  MUCH better food than what it is today.  It's probably, with oils, one of the most genetically altered substances that we are eating now.  Watch out. We must either give it up or go to a great deal of trouble and watchfulness to buy good flour and make out own.

I havent covered all foods (focussing on meat I know) because what made me think of all this is:
Veal Marengo.  Veal Marengo was invented by Napoleon's cook when they were out on the battlefield; The General was hungry, and the chef didnt have much at hand. It must have been during the Italian campaign because what evolved as the chef desperately threw a dish together was Veal Marengo.  Pimentoes are the crowning mark of Veal Marengo for me. I love pimentoes, the ordinary jarred kind by Dromedary, which I always have around.

I invented Chicken Marengo before I heard about the veal version, using chicken, onion, mushrooms, wine, and pimentoes. It was one of those dishes that you remember all your life when the flavors come together just right and it's perfect. When I read about Veal Marengo in a cookbook, I knew that I'd invented a good thing and Napoleon would have enjoyed it.

I thought about all that this morning when I made my egg, gently fried on a thin thin glaze of butter in the skillet, with a generous spoonful of pimentoes sizzling beside it. Try it. You'll like your Eggs Marengo. It will take you back to the days when food was actually better and could stand on its own in a simple, simple dish just like that. YAZZYBEL

Sunday Thoughts

Good morning. Well, if you read my Facebook entry of today, you know I went to church. I was a little late and missed most of the first Reading. I guess I was late because I was writing on Facebook.

The Forum, long called the Borum by my kids, (not meant for them)..was very good. It was about prayer and kind of tied in with what I wrote on FB.

After church, I came south and went to Von's, where I purchased lots of paper products, soap, etc., and a little food.  Came home and made Huevos Revueltos a la Mexicana. I used cubed up yellow pepper, green pepper, green onions and the family jalapeno. I call it that because it is huge and I can keep it in the vegetable bin and cut it up for my modest jalepeno demands. No tomatoes in my Huevos a la Mexicana, thank you.  I also, in loyalty to my adopted state of California, laid a slice of cheddar cheese over the top when done. It melted nicely down and I ate it with a gas-toasted tortilla. Yum YUm YUM.

Then I noticed in the paper that my favorite SF movie, Galaxy Quest was on and I'd missed almost all of it, so I turned it on and cried over my huevos a la Mexicana as I watched the ending of it. Why do I cry over a silly movie? Because it comes out perfectly, that's why; I mostly cry I think because of the unappreciated teenaged boy, a fan who gets his vindication in the success of a zany space journey. It's all there, folks: good and evil and laughs and chills, and very good actors playing very bad ones. Needless to repeat, I just love it.

The wind is stiff and chill again today; that is what spoils many days in my back yard here...well, we had some really balmy ones and perhaps we'll have them again...I'll be waiting. YAZZYBEL