Putting down roots

Salad of Purple Cherokee, Green Zebra, & Roasted Peppers

I'm a slow learner. I can live with that, provided the  emphasis ends up on the noun rather than its descriptor, at least in the main. You might think that slow learners would also be gradual learners, that the rate at which we assimilate knowledge might be in some sense proportional to the time it takes for the process to complete. You might think that, but you would be wrong, as I just learned from the tomato plant.

Too Much of a Good Thing? Mac-n-Cheese, v2.0

All-American Super Cheesy Mac-n-Cheese

In our first post, we waxed philosophical on the gustatory wonder and sundry therapeutic benefits of a classic macaroni and cheese, but offered precious little in the way of actual cooking. On our next pass, we began to think about actually making the dish, and wondered about the the appropriateness of breadcrumb toppings, cheeses other than cheddar, and the optimal pasta shape. While the end result - ziti baked in a sauce of bechamel, provolone & parmigiano - was good, maybe even satisfying, it nevertheless fell short of transporting. And a truly classic mac-n-cheese must, above all else, transport us somewhere: Perhaps to a time when we were younger, or in circumstances more care-free, or maybe precisely where we are now, but with softer edges.

With this schmaltzy sentiment firmly ensconced, for this week's installment, I decided to try a riff on the undeniably classic, if not particularly gourmet, version from 1937 known simply as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (or, if you're Canadian, Kraft Dinner). What could be more iconic than a lifeboat-orange, rib-gluing plate of Kraft? The problem, of course, is that it basically tastes like crap. Which is not surprising, considering you could probably whip up a box from the original 1937 production run and probably eat it without getting sick. Hey, give credit where it's due: I've fed it to my kids, more than once, and I invariably sneak a bite. So what I'm after is the essence of Kraft - a thick, creamy sauce; a blazing orange so rarely found in nature - but with the taste of real cheese, minus the food colorings, some texture to the pasta, and ideally a consistency a bit less like Elmer's.

Meat, Braise, Love

Short Ribs, Carrots, and Potatoes in a Zinfandel-Chili Braise

Just for the record, I've neither read the book, seen the movie, nor, for that matter, given any serious consideration to either, for the simple reason that, fairly or unfairly, I'm reasonably certain that I'd be repulsed but, like a car accident, find it impossible to look away. I strongly suspect that the experience would be very much like being force-fed Indian desserts while attending one of those made-for-TV mega-church Sunday sermons: Cloyingly sweet and offensively preachy, all at the same time. Although, come  to think, perhaps there's a novel strategy in there for producing a decent fois gras.

Still, while I don't really mind dishing out snippy reviews of books I haven't read, this post is about food, specifically the sort of food that you get to smell all day long while it cooks, that makes you want to open your best red wine and eat in your PJs at the same time, the sort of food that can make a girl's toes curl. For better or worse (likely both), my wife doesn't really eat land animals, so my best shot at getting a toe-curling endorsement, inasmuch as cooking is concerned, is probably mac-n-cheese, but that is the subject of another post. Today, I want to talk about braising. Specifically, braising hunks of prehistoric-looking meat, wrapped in butcher's paper and replete with large bones and the potential to disturb small children when first unwrapped. Producing a braise in your own kitchen is a bit like making porn in your own bed: It rewards practice, because if you can get it just right, it's the best you'll ever have, and all the times you can't, it'll still be a long way from sucking.

It matters where it's roasted

Buy it, grind it, brew it, and serve it. Fresh.

I hate the taste of oxidation. Or, having puzzled over the chemical processes involved, I should say  that I hate the change in flavors and aromas caused by reduction-oxidation, but that takes too long, and efficiency matters in the kitchen. Furthermore, while my math skills may be passable and I find physics fascinating, chemistry has, at least since the 7th grade, given me a headache: Something about all that rote memorization and what I always took to be an unhealthy and mind-numbing emphasis on the "what" at the expense of the "how".

In any case, suffice it to say that the taste and smell of  foods - and, more to the point, beverages -  changes due to contact with the air we breathe, and most of these changes are not for the better. Oxidation creates that nasty metallic taste, the perception of acridness, of overcooked. This process is particularly acute in two of my favorite beverages, wine and coffee (water, by my accounting the only other liquid truly essential to the sustenance of life, seems a bit more stable).

In the case of coffee, the important thing to know is that the process of oxidation begins immediately, and the engine for this process is heat (the excellent if slightly more technical discussion I base this on may be found here).

The Pirate Lord of the Hot Line

Prologue: Two cross-country flights with three young children and unavoidable transfers in both directions, separated by less than 72 hours in-country, on my non-native coast, for a theocratic church wedding packed with in-laws and people I don't know well enough to drink with... Clearly, quality reading material is essential packing, somewhere just below, and possibly preceding, a decent pair of shoes and a clean shirt for the wedding itself. I show up to SFO without so much as a day-old copy of the Times.

Actually, I'm taking at least a little literary license. Not with the horrors of the 15 or so hours my family would  spend in the care and company of commercial air carriers, not with the other factual particulars, but with the implication that I forgot to pack something to read. I spent many years traveling for work in a previous life, mostly long-haul, and, while I have forgotten virtually every essential one can forget at one point or another (passport, socks and underwear, foreign currency), I have learned - the hard way - never, not ever, to travel without a book. If at all possible, not without backup. I left our house without a book on Thursday morning because I knew we'd be at the airport with loads of time and access to a passable bookstore, and I really, really like picking out new stuff to read with my hands: The tactile sensation of the pages, their weight in one's hand, even the font chosen for printing - all these things matter. While I, like you, buy most of my books online for convenience and price, I will mourn the inevitable death of the physical bookstore, and I regret that my children will, in all likelihood, never even know what I'm talking about.

Also, for the record, any insinuation that either my in-laws, or the family they're marrying into, were anything other than lovely would be grossly unfair: They were, to a name, lovely people who had the foresight to cater cute little mac-n-cheese ramekins and chicken in zinc buckets for the kids alongside plenty of booze for the grownups. I can't speak to the wedding cake, except to say that it looked very classy, without so much as a single square meter of overworked fondant in sight, and it got raves from the munchkins. (Granted, the bar for that last bit consists of little more than sugar, but still.) Even the church service was manageable, and I say that as a non-practicing Jew: I don't think we had to spend more than a few hours on our knees or otherwise flagellating ourselves. Kidding.

In the event, I bought two books with vastly inflated, travel-desperation sorts of profit margins: "All The Pretty Horses", by Cormac McCarthy (arguably America's greatest writer of fiction and whose work I carefully ration in order to extend for as long as possible the literary cherry-popping that only a McCarthy first page can deliver), and "Cooking Dirty", by Jason Sheehan (a food writer I had not previously heard of and whose book I bought largely on a whim). Jay Sheehan's book is a revelation if only because, like food itself, so much of what is produced is irredeemable shite, the moral equivalent of an Applebee's salad bar, that one often forgets what the real thing, done properly, can be like.