Layered Foods

Almost all of the Grandkids

The kids and grandkids and friends with kids have all left the building and the house is so quiet I could scream.  You get used to a certain level of noise, especially with Byxbees, and when it stops you miss it.  We had a ball with Kent and Valley and their 3, plus the 2 grandkids who live nearby.  We did a lot of cooking and a lot of laughing and it was a grand visit.  At one point we had a s’mores feast and one of the grandkids made a double, which was very hard to eat and it started me wondering about why we all love to layer food.  I don’t care if it is a triple-decker club sandwich or a five-color Jell-O mold, everyone seems to love to layer food - and the more layers the better.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have lots of layered food. My mother was not into Jell-O molds or lasagna and I’m reasonably sure that layered dips hadn’t been invented.  I was, however, exposed to one layered food and that was Seven Layer Cake.  Every time our lovely Aunt Gigi would come to visit us from New York City, she would take the train from Grand Central Station and she always stopped at Schrafft’s to pick up some treats. Schrafft’s was a great NYC restaurant that started as a chocolate store and they made the very best Seven Layer Cakes in the world, which Gigi knew we all adored.  She would walk in the door laden with white boxes tied with white and red string and we were all bursting with excitement to see what goodies she had for us.

As I got older and started eating outside the home, I became exposed to lots and lots of layered food.  I can remember my first moussaka in some restaurant in Milwaukee, which was followed by a sticky sweet baklava.  I remember going into New York and finding a really old family restaurant in Little Italy where I had lasagna, which must have had six or seven layers of pasta and filling, all for two dollars a plate.  Who knew that I would also have room for a layered Tiramisu.  I thought it was the finest thing I had ever eaten until I tried Cindy’s.  Pat Lucas, a dear friend and neighbor in Winona Minnesota taught me a great deal about cooking, especially Italian and French, and she once made an Italian Torte appetizer that was similar to this one which knocked my socks off.  She also used to make a great variety of French Verrines, which were as beautiful as they were delicious.  I have since learned that almost every culture has some sort of national dish that is layered and classified as comfort food, regardless of how difficult it might look to make. I have also figured out that most savory layered food is quite economical, which is why every culture has one.  Here are two from Japan, one easy and fun to eat, the other a real pain to make but delicious to eat.

One of the most fun evenings I ever had was when Cindy and I did a high-end bar crawl around the bars in the fancy hotels surrounding lower Central Park. Our goal was to find someone who could make a perfect Pousse Café, that ethereal after dinner drink of layered liqueurs.  We finally succeeded at Doubles, the bar in the Sherry Netherland Hotel.  Now that was a night to remember! 

Layered Vegetable Lasagna

From bottom: eggplant, onion/garlic/sweet potato

Here are two photos of my recent addition to my layering concepts. I had one sweet potato and two eggplants from the garden.  I caramelized some garlic and onions - lots of them actually - then just browned the sliced sweet potato and eggplants.  I made a quick filler with two eggs, yogurt and shredded Parmesan, which I seasoned with oregano.  Then it was just layering in an oiled bread pan: eggplant, onion/garlic, filler, sweet potato, repeat.  I topped it all with shredded mozzarella and baked it for forty minutes.  Nothing fancy, but it looked and tasted like a million bucks.  The beauty with this type of dish is that I could have added or substituted almost anything - seared tofu, bits of meats, sautéed spinach - the list is endless and it is just a question of what you have to work with and what you enjoy eating.

Now the challenge. Take a look at this site and tell me if you know of any layered food that isn’t shown in the photos.  I find it mind-boggling.   Ciao, Wm

Concept Cuisine for Confident Cooks

While living in Moscow I managed to keep a daily blog going and it usually ended with something about the dinner we had had the night before.  My job as a supportive spouse was to take care of the household affairs, which included - but was not limited to - shopping and cooking.   I enjoyed doing both and obviously many of the readers of the blog enjoyed the food photos and descriptions.  Some thought I should pull them together and do a cookbook. 

Not knowing much about the process I wrote to one of our readers, Andi Bidwell, who has worked Betty Crocker/General Mills for more than thirty years.  Cindy met her in the mid-seventies when they were both in the same Swedish language course. They became friends and have stayed in touch over the years.  Since Andi had had lots of experience with editing cookbooks and such, I asked her what she thought of the idea of putting my stuff together.  Andi is diplomatic, and her response - while not coming out and saying DON’T - certainly made me rethink my venture.  She said that while my descriptions were fun to read and made sense to those already familiar with the cooking process, they were far short of being recipes. She reminded me that recipes are meant to be precise steps that can be replicated with the same result 99% of the time.  She suggested that a handful of this and a pinch of that were rather imprecise measurements. 

I hadn’t thought about any of that and of course she was correct. Now there is no way in hell that I’m going to ever do precise recipes. I find them boring and repetitive and unimaginative. That is not to say I haven’t used a recipe to create something the first time, but after that it is just the concept I remember and then let the juices flow to create something similar but different.  I remember when I first started to cook in the late sixties.  I did not come from a rich tradition of culinary arts being displayed daily in our home as a child.  My mother would have rather been a showgirl or a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall than a cook.  That is not to say we ate badly - she did the very best she could with whatever we could afford - but when your heart isn’t in it, you just can’t excel.  So when I got interested in cooking I needed other role models.

My first was the marvelously entertaining and talented Graham Kerr.  He had a TV show in 1969 called the Galloping Gourmet and his personality made cooking look like so much fun.  I would watch his show as often as possible and I purchased his three cookbooks and worked my way through them.  If you have the time, here is an episode that captures his style. It took me another several years before I would prepare this but it has since become a standard in my ‘really fancy’ category of dessert making. 

I did almost end up in jail in 1970 as a direct result of my wanting to create one of his other desserts, Chinese Gooseberry Rice Pudding.  This was a rice pudding mold that was decorated with Chinese Gooseberries, which are now called kiwis.  The recipe called for injecting the kiwis with Cointreau and letting them sit in the fridge overnight.  At the time Colin was only one year old and needed some stuff from the pharmacy, so I was getting that when I asked for a hypodermic needle.  You must remember that I had a full beard, long hair and beads – yes, beads.  I had to wait a very long time for the stuff for Colin when all of a sudden in came two of Amherst’s finest police officers who approached me and asked why I wanted a hypodermic needle. As I was trying to explain the recipe, I realized that they thought I was using drugs, and I became rather tongue-tied.  Finally I think they realized that a young father getting stuff for his son was not a big risk and they let me go, but without the hypodermic needle.  (PS they are now available in all cooking stores but the needles are quite large.  You can get better ones at pet stores.)

I digress.  Every night I would go to bed and read a chapter or two in the New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne, which had whole chapters on different aspects of cooking.  There were whole sections on pasta, beef, bread, etc. and they got me thinking about the concept of cooking as opposed to the specifics of recipes.  I would then try to create a dish from what I had read about the concept. Then I would try to find a recipe for something similar and see what others did which again got me to experiment with the dish once again.

Therefore, since a cookbook is beyond my desire to conform, I shall endeavor to create something that is strong on concepts for confident cooks and we’ll see where it goes.  We shall be entertaining family for the next week or so and my time will be devoted to shopping and cooking for them, so CCCC will be on hold for a wee bit.  Let me leave you with this cartoon.  Always feel free to ask me to remove your name from the Blog List if this get too much for you.   

Happy Bastille Day and Happy Anniversary to Cindy Emmans who has been married to the same adorable man for twenty-nine years today!

Clean Up Complete

They Took it All This Morning

The backyard is once again free of debris and is recovering from the storm.  The front curb however doesn’t look so hot since all the debris is there waiting for pickup from the city, which so far is two days late.  As we were cleaning up the back I noticed that in addition to the tree and limbs from other trees being snapped off, many branches were intertwined with others, almost like braiding hair.  That must have been some strong wind that wasn’t in the straight line they described as a derecho; little cyclones happened too, something that we’ve experienced here before.

Bath for Bird Brains

I cut the snapped tree about three feet from the base and then Cindy had a great idea.  We have a new birdbath that has a reservoir of a gallon of water so that we don’t have to keep filling it all the time.  It is either meant to be hung from a tree or hook, or it can fit over a 4x4.  No birds seemed interested in it when it was hanging from a hook; perhaps they didn’t like the motion. Cindy suggested that I shape the top of the dead tree trunk so that it would have a cap that is 4x4x4 inches.  I did so, leveled it out and slipped the birdbath on top and it works like a charm.  Clever Gal!

We spent Sunday night in Washington in preparation for a Monday luncheon, part of the NBCC International initiative.  We stayed at the Sofitel, right across the street from the White House. It was 104° and quite humid, but we managed to take a quick walk and visit the Smithsonian Museum of American Crafts, known as the Renwick Gallery.  (Yes, I visited a museum, but I knew it was air-conditioned!) I must say I was rather impressed with the size of the place, very manageable, while at the same time being filled with a wide variety of portraits, furniture, glass and other all-American crafts.  It also has great views of the Old Executive Building and White House from large windows.  The museum is right next to Blair House.  When I was working in the Office of Protocol for the Carter Administration, I would visit this house often since it was where many of the foreign heads of state would state during official state visits.  The rooms are fantastic and my favorite is the Lee Dining Room.  Lots of history there!

When we left we noticed that the weather was about to break and we dashed though Lafayette Square and got back to the Sofitel just before the skies opened and the temperatures dropped.  We were safely ensconced in Le Bar enjoying the best Mojitos I’ve had in ages.  The bartender, Marvin, was from El Salvador and had been with Sofitel for more than four years and knew his stuff.  As we talked with him he asked if we had ever been to a Sofitel before and we told him that not only had we met in the Minneapolis Sofitel, but also that our first two dates were in the Sofitel.  Well he thought that was just too cool and the next thing we knew he was opening a lovely bottle of Taittinger Brut Champagne and gave us each a glass of the bubbly.  What a treat!

With more rain threatening we met our friend Tom at the hotel and decided to stay and eat there:  good choice, marvelous food and service.  We took care of business the next day and then on the way home stopped for some wine and booze at Calvert Woodley, a place that has been in business for more than thirty years.  We found great bargains, knowledgeable and friendly people were on hand to assist, and we enjoyed wandering around the aisles looking at marvelous wines. We just don’t have places like this in Charles Town.

Sometime in the next few weeks, I’m going to start posting segments about cooking. I’m going to call it Concept Cuisine for Confident Cooks.  It will be dedicated to Terry Greer, who sadly passed away last Saturday.  She was a wonderful lady who approached cooking the way she approached life; keep it simple, keep it honest and share it with friends. 

Ciao, William

Charles Town WV: Party Central

We are well into our ninth day of 95°+ weather and it is getting rather boring.  We manage to do our exercise routines in the early morning and then the gardening after coffee so that we can get everything done before noon.  Afternoons are just intolerable and we either go and do some shopping or just stay inside and work on our computers.

Yesterday was no exception and the grand Fourth of July party that was supposed to be outside was moved indoors, except for the kids.  Either the kids - ages three months to thirteen years - wanted to distance themselves from the adults or they have a strong desire to increase their internal temperatures.  We adults marveled at how they could keep crawling into this plastic inflatable slide set that must have been 110°, and slide down for two seconds and then repeat the process.  Finally someone realized that there was supposed to be water running through the slide and then it all made a bit more sense. The kids loved it.

There must have been about fifty people at the potluck and I must admit it was a lot of fun.  We are all united against the Dirty Rotten Nasty Nazi Dictators that run the HOA and with this common purpose we found enough common ground to have lots of conversations.  The food was fantastic ranging from chicken mole poblano to hot dogs and everything in between.  Swedish meatballs, Peruvian Causa con Pollo, vegetable soup, chicken tenders, salads of all colors and flavors, including our famous three bean salad with lots of garlic, cakes and fruit and chips and dips, truly a multi-national feast for the eyes, nose and taste buds.  There was a lot of cold beer and we had brought wine to share.  About two hours into the party, which started at 5:30 for us, the hostess announced that it was time for shots.  This is the line of demarcation for us, the old timers, and the rest of the younger crowd.  The thought of throwing back shots of tequila chased by bottles of beer has zero appeal to either of us.  We did realize that it would be a good time for us to begin to make our exit since we knew the shots would go on and on and on until they began playing with explosives!

We watched the Fireworks on the Mall on TV and enjoyed the music - and they certainly had some top grade fireworks.  This year the fireworks outside our house ended by eleven, which shows that the neighborhood is maturing.  Five years ago at our first party here the show went on until well after one in the morning.  Cindy said that there was a whole lot of debris from the fireworks when she went out for her run, but it was cleared up by early this afternoon and it appears no one was injured.

Ciao for now, Wm