It's Happy Hour Somewhere

Lavender: Looks good, smells good, and makes a mean mixer

It's Friday afternoon, the sun has won its daily battle with the fog, and I'm making cocktails. Never let it be said that the Proximal Kitchen does not count booze as a food group.

We have lavender planted all over the property (wine country residents alternate between delusions of Tuscany and ones of Provence) and I often wonder what to do with all the precious stuff: We occasionally dry it and bundle it for gifts, we often use large quantities as our house-brand air freshener, and my wife has a great eye for incorporating it into our homegrown floral arrangements. However, as a cook, I always feel a bit guilty about not doing more with it - I mean, here we have this beautiful plant that we have paid to plant and water, that commands what strikes us as an absurd price in the marketplace, and that often gets cut and dumped into the green waste recycle bin at the end of the summer. Somehow, that just seems wrong.

My gut reaction is, unsurprisingly, to think of more ways to eat it. Lavender is, after all, a culinary herb: It does wonders for certain salads, I've seen all sorts of interesting lavender desserts (I'm not really a sweets person, but I'll take it on faith that they didn't all suck), and it provides a great touch of color and aroma as a garnish on the plate. But what I've come to learn is, the easiest and arguably best use of lavender is in cocktails: Try it in mojitos, margaritas, or - as I'm planning on doing as soon as I finish this post - just simply mixed with vodka and lots of fresh lime. And it's outstanding in (non-alcoholic, if you must) lemonade. The way to do it is to make a lavender simple syrup, and then use that in lieu of whatever sweet syrup your drink would have otherwise called for. It takes no time at all and can be stored for long periods in the fridge.

Lavender Simple Syrup

1. Combine 2 cups of sugar with 1 cup of water and bring to a low boil (watch it, you don't want to scorch it).
2. Throw in a large handful of lavender blossoms. It doesn't really matter which kind; we grow several, I just grab them all and strip the blossoms from the stems. Simmer gently until the flavor is extracted - maybe 15 minutes, there's plenty of slack here. 
3. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer, pressing gently on the blossoms to get all the goodness out.
4. Use in place of simple syrup in any cocktail or sweetened juice drink.

Guacamole Bomb

Avocados are in season. By that I mean, California's seasonal crop of perfectly ripe Haas avocados is on the market shelves, and the fruit can be had for a buck per - less, if you find them on the roadside. Ergo, we're ordering in from one of our favorite local taquerias, mainly to acquire the means of transferring the vat of guacamole I'm making from the bowl to boca.

Guacamole, for me, has many optional elements, but there are, as ever, several rules that ought always to be respected:

• First, accept that 'guac' is seasonal. Please don't tell me about the ones from Florida, or the dubious merits of the aguacate so common further south. Only the proper Haas develops the fat content that is so essential to the texture of great guacamole.
• Second, don't get it from a restaurant. I don't care how good your taqueria is, I assure you, they make crappy guacamole. I'm sure there is the exception that proves the rule, but seriously, it is significantly cheaper, and takes almost no time, to produce a vastly superior guacamole at home.
• Third, some components are optional, and some are not: Take cilantro, for instance; for me, it's essential, but my wife hates the stuff, and so I've learned to make a passable version without it. Tomatoes are optional, but never too many, and only if they're at the peak of summer ripeness - there is no more common offense than the bulking up of an otherwise fine avocado with too much mediocre tomato. I believe that a little red onion is close to mandatory, but you could probably skip it. Chilies are an interesting question: I, for one, do not believe that guacamole needs to be spicy (although certainly finely minced, fresh jalapenos make an unimpeachable addition). Lime juice, on the other hand, is not optional: Not only is it essential in maintaining the color of the final product, but the dish really cries out for a little acidity, particularly in the absence of heat.

5-Minute Kick-Ass Guacamole

1. Mince whatever condiments you're going to use before dealing with the avos (keeps them from oxidizing unnecessarily - brown guac is just nasty). A good baseline is to have on hand a tablespoon each of finely-diced red onion, tomato, cilantro, and jalapeno for each avocado. (Please take the time to mince the tomato and especially the onion and the chili pepper quite finely and uniformly, it makes a huge difference in the end.). Slice and seed a lime into sections.
2. The unlikely PK addition: Garlic. Cut a small amount of garlic - you'll want to end up with a quarter or an eighth of a teaspoon of garlic paste per avocado - and mince it very finely. To turn it into a paste (which is essential in order for it to incorporate properly), sprinkle a good pinch of kosher salt over the garlic and drag and press the flat side of a knife over it. The blunt force of the knife and the grinding action of the large salt crystals will turn the garlic into a uniform, oily paste that can be mixed.
3. Scoop out the flesh of the avocados (reserve the pits), turn it into an adequately large bowl, and mash with a fork. Incorporate the garlic paste and - here's the other PK secret ingredient - a teaspoon or so of olive oil for each avocado. I know, I'm adding fat to avocados, but trust me, it adds depth the to the flavor, and makes for an incomparable textures. And it's the good fat!
4. Squeeze in the lime to taste (hard to say on quantities, as limes vary so much, but I'd guess a half to one teaspoon of juice per fruit) and then gently mix in the desired proportions of the various condiments and season with salt and freshly cracked pepper, tasting as you go. (You'll need more salt than you think. Really. Don't go to all this bother to prepare and eat a bowl of pure fat and then skimp on seasoning.) Add the tomatoes after you've got an otherwise finished product to avoid breaking them up. 
5. Garnish with the pits from the avocados, some slices of lime, maybe a whole chile, and a sprig of cilantro. An earthenware or wooden bowl would be ideal, but anything non-reactive will do, it's just aesthetics at that point.

Why I'm trying to make a perfect mac-n-cheese

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

An old friend of mine and nascent PK supporter,  a certain Ms T (you know who you are), recently put in a request in for my best take on mac-n-cheese. Not just any mac-n-cheese, mind you, but a "rich, rich, rich, very adult mac-n-cheese". This, T must have intuited, sits squarely in our wheelhouse because, here at the Proximal Kitchen, we love cheese, we love pasta, and we're not scared of butter. But for me, and I suspect for T and probably most of you, it's also about much more than that: A deeply satisfying mac-n-cheese is the very epitome of comfort food and the right bite at the right time can transport us, in Proustian fashion, to a happy, child-like place. In short, I'm working on this recipe for T because mac-n-cheese makes me smile.

While I've made any number of variations on the classic, I haven't ever felt like I quite "got it"; maybe it's just that I've not yet made a mac-n-cheese that is my mac-n-cheese, that expresses everything I associate with mac-n-cheese in one piping hot, gooey, luxuriant mouthful of sclerotic wonderfulness. So I'm starting with primary research (aka, my favorite cookbooks), after which will come some experimental work on the cook top, and what I hope will end with my own personal favorite take on this definitive nectar of the home-cooking gods.

I say "my own personal favorite" because this particular little exercise - developing a recipe for a hugely nostalgic dish, on request, for a friend - is a microcosm of why I cook: I truly love preparing good food for, and enjoying it with, other people, but I also prefer to do so exclusively with foods that I like to eat, prepared how I think they ought to be prepared. Self-centered? Probably, but that misses the point: Cooking is at least as much about process as it is about product, and we should all like what we engage in, because when we choose an activity - any activity, excepting perhaps sleep - we are, by definition, choosing not to do all sorts of other, and otherwise wonderful, things with that particular piece of our life. Returning to the kitchen, it takes a considerable investment of time and money in order to construct a quality dish; the proper preparation of even the most humble and simply-dressed salad of leaves or box of dried pasta comes at the expense of the multitude of other things you could have done with that time or eaten instead. This may seem trivially obvious when the topic is food, but I really believe that it applies equally to the choices we make in our education, our career, the time we spend with our kids, the time I spend writing this blog.

I suspect I'll be on this thread for a little while, as long as it takes to build a recipe that makes me smile, and while I'm at it, I'm going to try to remind myself what Thoreau, who died at 45, had to say about the cost of a thing.

To market, to market

The Ortiz Brothers' fabulous vegetables.

In our little corner of the County, Tuesdays and Saturdays are market days. I don't know about your town, but I sincerely hope that you're fortunate enough to have convenient access to a weekly farmer's market; at the very least, if we all have to tolerate the silliness of the word "locovore", we should get some payback in the form of good, local foodstuffs, right? If I cared to do so, I can find a very good (and often larger) market on almost any day of the week, within a relatively short drive. But that, to me, would seem to defeat the point: I'm trying to eat stuff that was dug out of the same ground, in a largely literal sense, that my own house is built on. Avoiding car-time also offers its own attractions and advantages (less gasoline consumption, less wasted time, less opportunity for kids to whine, etc). I also like the imposed structure, because it forces, or at least encourages, me to think about what I'm buying, and why, and to actually use it, or risk the guilt of seeing good food go bad in the fridge while we chow down on boxed mac-n-cheese or whatever.

Of the two options, Saturday is by far the larger, and has some truly exceptional vendors that don't come to the Tuesday market, but I often prefer the Tuesday market by virtue of its navigability and more personal feel - the Saturday market can engender sensory overload, which is not necessarily conducive to a coherent approach to marketing, and almost invariably promotes impulse purchases of stuff that, as much I truly love, I really didn't need; and the shoppers at the Tuesday market, while more sparse, also tend to be more serious about buying food, which I find improves my dialogue with the farmers and subtly shifts the character of the market a shade further from tourism. (Hey, I love tourists - my town couldn't exist without them - I'm just saying.) But whichever format you prefer, it remains a basic truism of shopping for food that selectivity and purpose should be the final arbiters of what ultimately comes home. That, for me, is far easier said than done, particularly when confronted by a cornucopia of summer delights in all shapes, colors and sizes.

I believe there are at least two essential tactics to successfully navigating the market (and by success I mean getting the best products the market has to offer, that you actually want to eat and will in fact cook, in the appropriate quantities):

1. Take a lap. Walk past all the stalls, taking mental notes of which crops look like they're at their prime from a seasonal perspective, and which vendors have the finest examples thereof. You may see a gorgeous peach, only to see even finer ones later; or maybe you'll realize that, as nice as the peaches are, nectarines are better right now (this is, in fact, the case in our County); or, perhaps you'll realize that you've had enough of stone fruits and you'd rather have berries (which are just beginning to explode into their full potential right now).
2. Make a plan. Form an idea of what you're going to do with all this food. Don't just buy asparagus, peaches, and lamb because they all looked good individually - how are you going to prepare them, and will they work well together? Do you want to spend a lot or a little time in the kitchen, and do you want the oven on all day? Sometimes, I'll thumb through a cookbook, or I will have eaten something at a restaurant or seen something on TV, whatever, that I really want to try - this is the easy, although somewhat less interesting case, and all that it requires is a shopping list. More often, and both harder and more fun, is to go without much of a plan, except for some basic guidelines, such as "I need to feed several people, some of them don't eat meat, and I don't want to spend all night cooking while they're eating and drinking."

By way of a little case study, here is why I was shopping on my most recent trip: I am going to feed 2 couples, centered around a protein but with a starch and veg on the side; I want easy plating and very little a-la-minute prep; I'd like to have natural 'byproducts' from the main project to feed to the kids; and I'd like to serve it with some Rhone-style reds, including the Syrah that grows in our own backyard; and, as ever, I'd like it to be as locally sourced as possible."

Shiitake from the Alexander Valley

So I take my first lap around and perform my due diligence (this is not window-shopping, I move pretty efficiently; I don't piss around talking to everyone, unless there is a reason to do so, such as "what kind of potatoes are those", or "how old were the lambs at slaughter and who does your butchery").

Initial thoughts: Green vegetables of all sorts are in epic form, but not quite as 'baby' as they were a month ago; stone fruits lean more toward nectarines and plums than peaches by now; berries are getting revved up; and root veggies - potatoes, carrots, turnips, garlic - look exceptional. I notice the most astounding box of shiitake mushrooms - this one catches my eye and gets me thinking, because shiitake, in addition to being damn good in their own right, are, for me, the definitive example of the umami component of the palate.

Bernier Farms digs it up

Next, I strike up a conversation with a delightful woman from the Owen Family Farm,who describes their lambs as "humanely raised on our own local, evironmentally sustainable, family-owned farm in Hopland". OK, Hopland is technically in the next county, but c'mon! And when I ask her about butchery, she knows exactly who kills the animals, who cuts them, and in what conditions. This gets the ball rolling: Shiitake mushrooms - earthy, meaty, fresh from the next valley over; lamb - gamey meat, from what looks to be a great rancher in our neighboring county; and remember my Syrah - a gamey, earthy, leathery, bad-ass, big-boy red, grown in my backyard, which, to my palate, literally screams for lamb's meat. I also don't want to spend all night cooking and plating while my in-laws attack the wine cellar without me, I want leftovers, and it hasn't been that hot, so braising in the oven seems an obvious route. I grab a nice little shank, which just happens to be cut to exactly the right size for my cast iron braising pot, a box of little button-sized shiitake, and then - again thinking about the braise - grab a sweet torpedo onion the size of a nerf football from the Ortiz brothers and a bunch of baby carrots, some new Yukon Gold potatoes, and a head of garlic from Bernier Farms: Patiently Braised Shank of Owen Family Lamb with Shiitake Mushrooms and Home-Grown Syrah. I can't wait for Friday night! Keep an eye out for the final product in this weekend's post.

Carbo-Loading: Tagliatelle alla Bolognese "Old School"

Apologies, but the PK staff has been out of commission these last few days; a weak and unadvised deviation from the accepted rules of a young blog (which is to say, don't let the fields fallow), but  my wife, our new young Italian friend V., and I were entered in a triathlon relay race over the weekend. Between the pre-race prep, the race itself, and the shattering after-effects, all I can really say is, I dropped the proverbial ball. I did not, however, stop cooking.

That being the operative point - cooking - because, politics aside, this is a cooking blog, and what better excuse to cook than a pre-race meal? Case in point, a long-distance event (on the order of 10 hours as a team), from an exercise-physiology (and therefore culinary) point of view, means lots - lots - of carbs. Indeed, speaking purely from a personal perspective, one of the essential motivating factors in training for an endurance event is that you get to eat enormous quantities of food, and carbs in particular. And here in the Proximal Kitchen, carbs means pasta, and copious quantities thereof. Preferably served with bread. And, in a perfect world, washed down with a local wine (which, technically, is of course a carbohydrate - although the risk of poor performance and/or puking argue for not doing so on the night before an event). So, setting aside the pre-race alcohol constraint, I started rummaging around the fridge to see what was to hand.

I had a couple of boxes of tagliatelle that I really like, it's an organic, dried version of fresh egg pasta from an Italian maker called Buonaturae (relatively easy to find at natural food stores), so that seemed like a good start. Yes, I am well aware that dried tagliatelle is likely an Italian culinary heresy of some significance, but my view is this: Better to use a high-quality, properly-cooked dry pasta than a poor-quality fresh one, even for dishes calling for fresh pasta. The particulars of  making pasta by hand is fodder for another post, but for the purposes of this particular meal, suffice it to say that I find making good pasta at home a fairly difficult task, and the home cook must always be honest in assessing his or her strengths and weaknesses. Learn new things, but always play to your strengths - it's your kitchen, so cook what you like, in your style, and you will invariably end up more successful in both the process and the product.

The essential components of ragu

Next up, the sauce: I already had fresh garlic from my recent experiment with  pistou, some really nice onions from Bernier farms and, although I always try to keep canned tomatoes in the cupboard for just such an eventuality; I also found some leftover basic tomato sauce that I figured should be used, so I grabbed that as well. Finally, I pulled open the bottom-most drawer in our freezer, which is where I store all the bits of left over meat from other meals: A pack of Saveur chicken-pistachio sausages (sounded great, but not over pasta); an odd-looking piece of a lamb's shoulder that wouldn't fit in the braising pot the last time I use it; a pack of Hebrew National hot dogs (which, bizarre as it may sound, I have used to good effect as an endurance fuel, but again, hard to see it over pasta); and - last but certainly not least - a few packs of ground-to-order, grass-fed ground beef from my favorite local butcher, the Willowside Meats and Sausage Factory. I had ordered the ground beef for burgers (the background slider-shot from my recent french-fry post, and the subject of another forthcoming post), but I have found that the same 50/50 blend of brisket and chuck I often use for burgers makes an excellent ragu, and a plan began to coalesce: Tagliatelle alla Bolognese, the classic dish of pasta with a ragu of meat and vegetables from Bologna. All I'd need was a carrot for the sauce and some crusty bread to round out the plate. (All my favorite veggie stalls at the farmer's market, folks like Bernier Farms, the Ortiz Brothers, Foggy River, and Love Farms, have been overflowing with beautiful carrots, so things were looking up.)

You will find as many variations on the classic Italian ragu as you care to look for, but the essential ingredients, and the cooking process, are relatively consistent. It's also been a staple in our kitchen for a while, so I've been doing background research, both theoretical (cook books) and applied (prepared and eaten), for a while now. Personally, for a basic set of unimpeachable guidelines, I don't think you can do better than Marcella Hazan's version of the Bolognese classic (if you're going to own just one Italian cookbook, hers is an obvious choice; I could spend a long, happy life cooking and eating out of that one book). Note, however, that I've not mentioned pork, which is called for in the recipe-link previous; in the book itself, the basic version uses only beef, and pork is mentioned as a variation. This, too, got me curious, and so I did a little more digging.

It turns out that Bologna - much, I suppose, like the regulation of true pizza in Napoli, although I'm really no expert - has clearly defined rules for what constitutes a true Bolognese-style ragu, as codified by the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, and they include pancetta, which one presumably renders and then uses the fat of for the cooking of the vegetables. However, there are many variations on the basic formula, even from within Bologna, with and without pork, often including chicken livers (something I've not tried but just has to be good), and sometimes even mushrooms (which I think would taste great, but does not jibe with my reading of what constitutes a true ragu). While the intricacies of the proper pairing of pasta shape and texture to sauce are worthy of a dissertation-like effort, one thing on which it is universally agreed is that tagliatelle is unimpeachable. The economies of scale in home ragu production, and the ease with which it can be stored, dictate making enough for leftovers, and I would not hesitate to dress a stuffed pasta like cheese tortellini, but - for me - the ultimate application is actually in lasagna. That, however, involves an even more serious investment in time, one in which home-made pasta is essential, and therefore a project that I was not about to entertain for our pre-race feast. Larousse describes dressing a timbale of macaroni and sauteed mushrooms with ragu, something I've never had, but definitely plan to try - it ought to look impressive on the plate, and should please kids and company alike.

Considering the broad popularity of "Spaghetti Bolognese" in both the US and the UK, it remains a somewhat fascinating factoid that, much like polpettone (or "meatballs"), Italians would never serve a ragu over spaghetti. For what it's worth, this is a heresy that we at the Proximal Kitchen have practiced happily for years, to great effect, particularly for the kids - but still, truth be told, tagliatelle is far superior, as the flat shape of the noodle and the fresh-pasta consistency hold the sauce in a far more pleasing manner than will dried spaghetti.

Although hardly the definitive text on Italian cooking, I thought it would be interesting to see what our good friend Larousse had to say on the topic: The basic description is of "a thick sauce based on beef and vegetables, particularly tomato", so pretty much what I'd have expected at this point, although they also include chicken livers, and omit milk, which I take to be essential (and the Accademia is with me on this). The most entertaining, if not particularly informative, except from Gastronomique is that the sauce known as ragu is "a corruption of the French word ragout". I suspect a cultural anthropologist could make significant hay of that one statement in the broader historical context of continental European history.

Before we get to the recipe, I have to mention a quick lesson in the practical realities of multi-cultural cooking that I was lucky enough to receive, gratis, from my new friend and comrade with whom I shared this pre-race meal, the aforementioned Signore V. V. is from Rome and, being from Rome - arguably the spiritual capital of pasta - had an interesting opinion on the topic of what constitutes ragu. Firstly, upon my introduction of the dish as alla Bolognese, I was mildly embarrassed to learn that V. had no idea what I was talking about: Apparently, the definition of classic ragu as specifically Bolognese is, to a Roman, rather overly provincial. For V., ragu is ragu, and that is really the end of the story. Since I always think of the generic term 'ragu' as referring to almost any thick, stewed sauce of meat and vegetables, I asked about using other meats, as I've had all sorts of terrific ragu of rabbit, boar, oxtail, and of course with and without pork added to the classic beef version. On this, my Italian friend was clear: ragu is made from beef. Don't think too hard about it.

Tagliatelle alla Bolognese "Old School"

1. Prepare about two cups of small-dice soffritto for the base. Soffritto is just the Italian name for the classic French stock base, mirepoix. Or, just grab one large carrot, one large rib of celery, and a small onion (or double and halve accordingly, depending on the size of your veggies). Sweat the veggies over medium-low heat in a little olive oil (and/or butter) until soft, using a large, heavy pot (the classic Italian version calls for earthenware, but cast iron or - as I have done here - a heavy copper sauce pan works just fine).
2. Break up about a pound of ground beef, with a strong preference for a cut that is flavorful, not too lean (I would say minimum 20% fat), and of course from grass-fed, pasture-raised cattle. Turn the heat up to medium, add the meat to the veggies, and continue to stir and break up with a fork to ensure even cooking. There is no need to brown the meat, simply cook until it loses its raw color throughout.
3. Pour a cup of milk, along with some freshly grated nutmeg (not much - maybe an 1/8th of a teaspoon), to the meat and vegetables and allow the milk to cook off completely. This is important, as the fat from the milk will help protect the meat from all the acid to come.
4. Pour a cup of dry white wine over the meat  and allow that to boil almost completely away. (Always take care to stir in order to avoid any burning on the bottom, and to scrape the flavors concentrating on the walls of the pot back into the nascent sauce.)
5. Add a large can (28 to 32oz, typically) of crushed or pureed canned tomatoes to the pot. You can also use leftover basic tomato sauce, provided it is of very good quality and is very simple. And please, if you're going to all this trouble, don't use pre-made sauces that have more than a few ingredients. The other important thing here is the type of canned tomato: Cooking locally be damned, and you won't find them organic (if you do, please let me know), but you should only ever buy San Marzano tomatoes imported from Italy for use in tomato sauces. I'm sorry to be strict here, but this is really critical. And don't get suckered by "imported plum tomatoes" - if it doesn't say "San Marzano", don't buy it. It is the only tomato in the world that is acceptable for the multitude of sauces that depend on canned tomatoes. (With the notable exception of a classic pomodoro made from local heirlooms at the peak of ripeness, canned San Marzano tomatoes are almost invariably cheaper, far less work, and actually taste better, than fresh tomatoes. Trust me, or do the taste test, it really is true.)
6. Once the tomatoes have come to temperature, reduce to a low simmer, stirring occasionally. Allow to cook for at least 3 hours - 4 or 5 would be better, but really, I've found 3 to be plenty. You can actually leave it to its own devices, for the most part; just add a little water (or beef stock) whenever all the moisture evaporates. The sauce will be very thick when finished, will have almost no liquid, and the fat will separate (see picture above). Once fully reduced, season with salt and fresh black pepper. Sauce may be cooled and stored and even frozen with little deleterious effect.
7. Serve over tagliatelle, accompanied by freshly grated Parmigiano (Romano is less classic but also excellent), and garnished with chopped flat-leaf parsley. A hunk of crusty garlic bruschetta would be welcome.

Tagliatelle alla Bolognese with Sourdough Garlic Bruschetta and a glass of RRV Pinot