Polenta waffles go way beyond breakfast and become first rate Valentine’s Day fare in these vids. First you made cashew-cilantro pesto. Then you do the waffles. And last, you get out the roasted red peppers and olives for Cross My Heart and Hope to Love Polenta Waffles.
Part 1, Cashew-Cilantro Pesto
Part 2, Bob’s Polenta Waffles
Part 3, Building Cross My Heart and Hope to Love Polenta Waffles
Many I met during holiday events asked about classes–both adult and kidlets. At the very least we’re planning to get something rolling with the kids. The series, Cooking with the Little Aunties, is open to girls 8 to 12.
Isn’t that just the way. The first does yeoman service path breaking, and then the second comes along with her flirty name and catchy clothes and skates all the way to the bank. Speaking of the bank, though, both numero uno, Cooking Beyond Measure, and Ms. Hippie Kitchen are both designed to help save 25 to 50 percent on our food bills–simply by taking back our kitchens.
Down to the two daze of signing books at Whole Foods Market Fremont–a half dozen copies of Hippie Kitchen still hoping to get asked to dance plus an ample stack of her older sister (wherein lies the coveted recipe for Thai Slaw and Rolled Ups). If you want a signed book for Christmas and are in Portland, cruise over. I promise to feed you very well–and the store is totally cool, with it’s support of local hipsters firmly in place. Thanks Whole Foods, Fremont. You people are the best.
(Thanks too, to Beth for coming in yesterday and scooping up an armload of books. Here’s to the delicious revolution! Besides that, it was very very excellent to see you.)
PS: Have you found me on Twitter and Facebook yet under HippieCook?
Ah, yes, I remember my own trip to Mexico as a food writer. Here’s one of my photos:
So Mark Bittman’s recent NYT piece on Mexican markets was a nice reminder of my own cruise-arama. Here he’s talking about how Mexican women get fresh veggies on the table pronto–but he apparently hasn’t got the flash cooking thing wired yet.
“Equally interesting to me was the huge variety of pre-chopped, mixed vegetables, carrots mixed with squash and cabbage, or nopales (cactus leaves) with peas, red peppers, mushrooms, and onions, or simply corn and squash. Bags and bags of these, and trays and trays of them, to be bought by the kilo, taken home, and quickly cooked for tortillas or stews or simply, for want of a better term, stir-fries.”
It’s true that when I first started working with the concept I too called this method of cooking stir-fries–hippie stir fries to be exact. That’s because it uses the Asian stir fry idea but without the oil or Asian veggies or flavors. Still stir fries didn’t quite capture it and my friend Laura couldn’t get behind the phrase. All a good thing, since eventually the term flash cooking came along. Here’s what I write in Hippie Kitchen:
On Flash Cooking—
My Dad called me “High Heat Johnson.” He had me pegged and knew I took after my mother. Mom’s friends said she couldn’t even spell the word patience.
So I come to flash cooking honestly. When I cruise into the kitchen I want stuff done now. I want to pull leftover grains and legumes from the icebox and spin them together with a bunch of vegetables pronto. So I turn the heat up full blast and go for it. I used to think this tendency an indolent cop out, but after traveling in other countries, I discovered that I’m not the only one flash cooking and that there’s not a thing in the universe wrong with this approach to food.
To flash cook vegetables, start with a puddle of water, spices if you’re in the mood, and high heat. The idea is to use just enough water to cook your vegetables, adding small pours as you go—making sure to get things that take the longest to cook in the pot first.
My favorite vehicle by far for flash cooking is a cast iron wok because it holds the heat so beautifully and turns the vegetables crisp tender in minutes. But as I’ve discovered cooking in other people’s kitchens, regular woks, heavy bottomed skillets, and generally any pot or pan rattling around in the cupboard will be your friend.
It is true that flash cooking is an Asian stir fry in spirit since there’s lots of vegetables and full blast heat. But that’s where the similarities end. That’s because flash cooking isn’t bound by a particular orchestration of bok choy, soy sauce, and their buddies. Instead flash cooked dishes are free to move about in the world of fusion cuisine.
Flash cooked dishes can also skip the heat entirely and use raw vegetables. So in truth, the idea behind flash cooking is more about the flash and less about the heat. It’s also a way cooks in hippie kitchens get to muster all the soul at their command and sketch out flavors that appeal in a thousand different hues.
So, get all those blues. Must be a thousand hues.
And be just differently used. You just know.
You sit there mesmerized.
By the depth of those eyes that you can’t categorize.
She got soul. She got soul. She got soul!
~Bluebird, Buffalo Springfield, 1966
You got soul?
Mesmerized?
Far out…
Lenore’s not two yet, and she’s already in the groove. Angela, her mom and next door neighbor, sent these images and says they weren’t posed. Rather Lenore loves to page through Hippie Kitchen, pausing particularly at page 159 where Iris (same-same from the Cat in the Cheese blog post here) is once again checking the scene out.
~~~~Meow, Lenore. Iris finds you rather fascinating too.~~~~
Here’s the rap on Hot Chile Cookies straight from the pages of Hippie Kitchen:
Hot Chile Cookies
The chile absolutely makes these cookies. Red chile flakes are such an affordable, easy boon to cooking. I use them so much that they sit out on my cutting board by the cinnamon and salt pots. Not surprising that they found their way into these sweets.
Spice plus sweet. An equation the Thais understand, and one the rest of us are cluing into as well. Neighbor Patrick Earnest is in the savvy camp. “Who’d a thunk? Red pepper flakes on cookies???” He dashed off in an email “Wow…Delish!”
Recipe Note
Cut a cube (stick for those who don’t speak cube) of butter into two cups of whole wheat flour laced with a half cup each: flax meal, wheat germ, and raw sugar. Leaven with two teaspoons of soda. Perk up with a pinch of salt and red chile. Stir in a cup of buttermilk that should yield a ball of semi-sticky dough ready for chilling.
Once the dough’s cool enough to hand, roll it out on board dusted with flour. Cut the cookies into wedges, paint with oil, sprinkle with more of your chunky raw sugar and red chile. Bake for ten or so in a medium oven. Cool on racks.
Details
~New to cutting butter into a floury mix? Pastry cutters or forks keep the
butter cool while you work, but I prefer my clean hands. The goal is to wind up with flattened bits of butter that will turn the cookies in the direction of a flaky pie crust.
~Oil to brush on the tops instead of melted butter? It was a necessity call. Butter might have been nice, but I used all I had in the dough.
~Cooling cookies on racks keeps the bottoms from getting soggy. Mom taught me that, and the racks pictured were hers. …tak, Mama
On Whole Wheat Flour in Goodies—
Whole wheat flour, flax meal, and wheat germ in cookies? Hey, there’s nothing like a little nutrition with your sweets. It will help you—as the Rolling Stones belted out in Ruby Tuesday—“catch your dreams before they slip away.”
Wheat, of course, is only one of the grains we can draw on. If you can’t deal with gluten try whizzing up any number of grains like barley, rye, buckwheat, millet, quinoa, or even the much maligned brown rice in your grinder—whether it be a first rate grain grinder or simply the little one you grind your coffee beans in. All’s fair game for creative cooks.
Plus you’ll discover how amazingly flavorful freshly ground grains are. Simply no contest between those and the stuff that sits around in bags and bins for months. Really and truly.
Afterthought on Sour Power—
I served these cookies with Bosc pears and lime wedges which got me to thinking that the next time I’ll try some fresh lime juice in the dough—like instead of the buttermilk, use half lime juice and half sweet milk. Or even experiment with a vegan approach, letting oil stand in for butter, and using half lime juice and half water—or all lime juice.
Healthy, thrifty, delicious, and green. That’s the whole point behind measure free. The idea that if we quit being slaves to paint-by-numbers recipes we’ll be likely to cook more, eat well, be healthy, and save a bundle on the food bill. So at the end of the day, it’s not really so much about whether you measure or not. It’s about whether your kitchen is your own–and that’s where Laura gets it.
Once we tasted her pumpkin pie and declared it a home run clear up, over and out of the park–every bit as good as the ones mama used to make–she divulged her secret.
“Acorn squash from the garden.” To her husband’s lifted brows, she explained that she was darned if she’d buy official pumpkin when she had perfectly good winter squash in the house.
Laura with some of her Liberty apple harvest a couple years ago
Yes! This is the kind of talk thrifty, innovative cooks understand. Cooks who are primarily concerned with where their ingredients are sourced. Cooks who realize that threads running through flavor and sustainability and health will make whole cloth if we just let them.
Speaking of health. Laura didn’t stop with the filling for her pumpkin pie. She made her butter crust from 100 percent whole wheat pastry flour–flour that I’d bet half a hundred, came from the organic bulk bins.
Yah. My kind of eating. My kind of cook. Laura gets it.
(Camera was nowhere in sight to capture Laura’s acorn squashes or her 2009 pie, but here’s one of my own winter squash harvests. Those spaghetti squashes are such charmers piled up in their basket.)
Life’s too short for store bought pie crust. Here’s a recipe note from Hippie Kitchen for pie crust the old fashioned way.
Home Made Pie Crust
Use two parts flour to one part fat for your crust. In the pie pictured, I used two cups of unbleached white flour (departing from my usual whole wheat pastry flour) and two or three pinches of salt to two cubes of cold butter pared off in thin bits with a knife. That way the butter is fairly easy to work into the flour by pressing the bits flat with your fingers and not putting too fine a point on things (see the details below). Then little splashes of ice water, using your hands to help the dough come together gently.
The idea with pie crust is to let the dough press itself together without stirring per se. Your hands are more guides than they are mixers. So just keep sprinkling water around on the parts that are still dry until the dough forms into a nice soft mound.
For this much dough you’ll have enough for a bottom shell and a small sugar cinnamon tart or something fun like that for the kitchen helpers. If you want to make a two crust pie, use 3 cups of flour and 3 cubes of butter. Then form the dough into 2 soft balls.
To roll your crust out, flour a board and a rolling pin–or even a wine bottle if a pin’s not around. Turn the dough fairly often and keep dusting with flour so things don’t stick.
I think you’ll be surprised at how easy pie crust is. The main trick is getting a dough that holds together by using just enough water to pat things together. That way you avoid trying to work with a dough that cracks because it’s too dry–as well as a dough that simply has more water than it needs.
Bake your pie in a hot, 425 degree oven for ten minutes to jump start the bottom crust. Then back the heat off a good hundred degrees for a slow cook on the filling. Check your pie now and again, and turn it, since if your oven’s like mine it’s hotter at the back. Pies are done when the tip of your sharp knife signals soft fruit within or a custard-type filling that lets the knife slip out clean.
Details
When I worked at My Mom’s Pie shop way back, I’d make pies during my off hours and take wedges into the owner, Jean McLaughlin. Her main tip was to not get up tight about working the fat into the flour perfectly. And I did find that my crusts got flakier when I didn’t worry about the little pea-sized bits and left rather big shards of butter here and there. I got two thumbs up from Jean too, who wondered if I was planning on opening my own shop.
I went to grad school instead, but I kept up with the pies and learned: to flatten the rim of the crimped crust so it doesn’t burn., bake in cast iron skillets that turn out such great bottom crusts, and that 100 percent whole wheat pastry flour makes a darn flaky crust–as these three lovely pies made last summer during raspberry and chard season show.
CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) and Big Food break my heart. That’s why cheap breakfasts don’t impress me. The hens and pigs pay so very pitifully for our pleasure. Factory farmers prostituting themselves under the guise of feeding the world–never mind the big bucks.
Given all that, why does this blog languish in the backwater of everyday cooking, making a big deal out of the measure free kitchen? A cutesy ploy? Not for this historian who’s thought some about Americans only getting measuring cups 100 years ago.
Here I am (front right) in Puebla, Mexico a few years back with on food writing assignment for the Smithsonian’s American Indian Magazine. What I saw in Puebla was the same thing I witnessed in Indian Country when I lived a decade with the Hopi and Navajo. Great food. Pride and creativity. Appreciation of sustainably sourced produce on which a community can depend. It’s all interwoven.
That’s the point, then. If we cooked more we’d care more. And we’d cook more if it was easy and fun–not some dutiful direction-following exercise.
Big Cooking really kicked in with Fannie Farmer. Fine and good–some might argue– for late-19th century Boston elites who wanted their help to follow orders from headquarters. But what about us? Do we really need to be told what to do in our kitchens? Other everyday cooks around the world don’t–southern France’s Provence and Asia included.
Unconvinced? How about this: Ethnic cookbooks superimpose measurements and prescriptive steps for our western taste–or lack of it. In effect, we get the blue print but not the heart and soul.
Like so many in the food biz, including the New York Time’s Mark Bittman, are confiding: everyday cooking just ain’t all it’s trumped up to be. No fine knife skills or knives required. No need to create a mini-masterpiece. Just going for it like women around the globe have for centuries. Using what’s in the cupboard to make good, healthy, affordable eats.
So Big Cooking? Buzz off:) Some of us are finally getting wise out here!
It’s official. We’re in a jobless recovery with unemployment rates above 10 percent–the highest since the late-1980s. Before we go off half-cocked and fearful about our financial futures, it serves us well to consider the term job-less. That’s right. It means fewer jobs than we’d like. But it doesn’t mean we’re out of work. There’s always plenty of that going around.
The problem is that we’ve become fixated on the cash economy–forgetting that like our grandparents, we can make much happen simply by the sweat of our own brows. Like in our own kitchens for example.
Here’s how a dollar spent on the food budget breaks down from the latest available USDA data (1996):
23 cents for the actual farm cost of the food item
38 cents for labor
8 cents on packaging
and 31 cents on the cost of doing business: factory operations, shipping, and advertising
Without putting too fine a point on things, we’ll save 10 to 40 percent on our food bills when we shop the bulk bins, cart our clean bottles back to the store for a refill on cooking oil, and do our own home-cooking. Not bad for a starting wage–and of course, when you take a flying leap of faith and embrace measurefree cooking, you’ll find your new job description entirely open to creative personal growth and whatever else grabs you.