meezenplace

I sat on a bench today.   

I sat on a bench overseeing the ocean 

On a high sea cliff 

Squinting in the sun. 

I sat on the bench and three pelicans skimmed by below me 

Wings fixed, searching baitfish. 

Today, I sat on a bench by the ocean. 

Wind and sun and salt and sea. 

A set of waves rolled in and broke on the beach, 

As though to their last end, their journey complete. 

I sat on a bench by the sea today  

When suddenly 

Nothing happened.   

Squid’s Stuffed Squid

While not a typical food for pelicans, squid are a forage species for many critters. They are plentiful and extremely healthy, being high in protein and very low in fat. Most people have had calamari as an appetizer, cut into rings, floured and flash fried. They are also a great ingredient in pasta, paella, risotto and many other recipes, being delicately flavored.

However, squid can be tricky to cook. After years of trial and error (with the result being a dish that resembled rubber bands in texture), I finally learned of a helpful rule of thumb – cook squid either less than three minutes or over 30. Either end of that spectrum will give you a very tender and tasty dish.

While I like squid lots of ways, one of my favorites has become Squid’s Stuffed Squid. For this dish you will need whole squid bodies and their tentacles. If you can get them cleaned, great. If whole, you will need to cut off the tentacles and pull out the guts without tearing the body. Be sure to get the thing that looks like a strip of plastic along with its rather gelatinous innards. Once you are set up with the cleaned, whole squid bodies, it goes something like this:

Place a pot of water on the stove and bring to a light boil. Drop the squid bodies into the boiling water for about 10-15 seconds, just long enough for them to set. This step will make stuffing them MUCH easier. Take the bodies out of the water and submerge in an ice bath to stop the cooking and set them aside

Chop the remaining tentacles finely.

Finely crumble a small amount of bulk sausage and saute until just done, breaking it up into the smallest pieces you can. When the sausage is just done, add the finely chopped tentacles and saute another 30 seconds. Remove from the pan in place in a small mixing bowl.

To the sausage/tentacle mixture add a couple tablespoons of panko, a couple of minced garlic cloves and chopped parsley. Season lightly with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.

When the mixture is cool enough to handle, stuff it into the whole squid bodies. You can do this with a small spoon, or place the mix in a baggie with one of the corners cut off and squeeze it into the body. Be sure that the mixture gets all the way to the tip end of the squid but don’t overfill as the mixture will expand as it is cooked. Once filled, close the open end with a toothpick. Drizzle the stuffed bodies with olive oil and perhaps a squeeze of lemon.

To cook, you can put these over a grill, broil in the oven on the low setting or saute in a non-stick pan. Grilling is my preference. Cook no more than a couple minutes, just long enough for grill marks to form and for the inside stuffing to be heated through. Remove from heat and serve immediately. If you have very large squid bodies you can cut them crosswise, they will hold together.

As an appetizer, figure 2 bodies per person.

A Spanish albarino would be a nice wine to drink with this.

Here is a music clip to enjoy while cooking squid and waiting for your real life to begin…

“Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.  He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices stuffed with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes.  Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys, which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”   

from Ulysses, James Joyce

If you’re like me and/or Leopold Bloom, some of the best dishes you have had in the last decade or so have been, well, offal.  While I admit that a “fine tang of faintly scented urine” seldom makes my mouth water, the appearance of organ meats on a menu makes my heart pitter-pat.   In fact, three of the very best things that have passed my lips and tickled my palate the last decade or so have been truly offal (I promise to quit jumping on this homonym with both feet for the time being).   

While it seems a shame to extol the virtues of a now shuttered establishment, Exhibit A in our organ meat tour was procured and devoured at the now-closed Standing Stone Brewing in Ashland, Oregon.  Weary from a day of fighting sleet and snow while driving from Seattle southward, we stopped in Ashland and landed at Standing Stone purely by accident.  Thirsty for a decent beer and unwilling to move the car, we shuffled in circles around the historic. A crust of sleeted snow covered the sidewalks of downtown Ashland and the mercury dipped into the twenty-somethings as the sun set. Falling faintly as though unto my last end through the door of Standing Stone we emerged into a warm and hospitable roadhouse that was Standing Stone.   Without looking at the menu, I knew this was the place.  

 Pondering either the burger or the fish and chips to go with a pint or three of their finest pilsner, our waitress informed us that there was still one serving left of the daily special – tongue taco served street-style with rice and beans. While I typically only eat Mexican food at restaurants that specialize in south of the border cuisine (if not run by actual people of Mexican ancestry) the prospect of a tongue taco made my selection easy.  Handing over my menu, I went with the special.  And, I am here to tell you, it was not only special, but delicious.  Clearly someone in the kitchen at Standing Stone was paying attention and cooking with intention.  Had I mre opportunities to stop for the night in Ashland, I would have been a regular there and perhaps they would still be in business.  When somebody coined the term Gastropub, it is kitchens at places like Standing Stone that they were thinking of.  The tongue itself was tender and delicious and the topping of salsa selections (fresca, verde and rojo) were all terrific.  Like Leopold Bloom, I tucked in with relish, both literally and figuratively.  I also ate them with house made tortilla chips and some rustic, lumpy guacamole.  So confessions?  I may have licked my plate.  

At the risk of having this column turn out to be more restaurant review than meditation on the virtues of offal, I offer Exhibit B: the daily terrine at The Simone, also now closed due to Covid complications.  The Simone was, quite frankly, the restaurant I would have selected without hesitation if you told me I had one last meal out.  While the food was fantastic and Chef Chip Smith is a peerless cook in the French tradition, the reason for the Simone being my final culinary destination is for the experience as a whole.  I don’t want to get into anything resembling a restaurant review, but the redeeming virtue of The Simone is that it is a decidedly analog experience from start to finish, thanks to the calm and poised atmosphere created by Tina Vaughn, spouse of Chef Chip. The Simone was a gastronomic refuge from the scurry of the digital age.  Being cheaper than Le Bernardin and Daniel was a virtue, but if I were to choose a restaurant just for the pure existential enjoyment that it brings, full stop, I would choose The Simone 7 out of 10 times over those two destinations.   

I bring up The Simone because it so happens that Chef Chip is an absolute master of the terrine, a special that changed daily depending on what was inspiring the chef.  Of course, the basis of these splendid slabs was liver, usually chicken but often duck.  Even people who say they hate liver (or any organ meat for that matter) are often beguiled by a nice pate or terrine.  As for me, I am happy unto bliss by the sight (not to mention smell) of a plate of sauteed chicken livers, seared on the outside but still a bare pink, covered with a red wine and shallot reduction.  But Chip Smith’s terrine?  These are works of art, liver ground into forcemeat, then studded with whole chunks of rabbit or lamb, pistachios, prunes and pignolis. Each day’s terrine at The Simone was a new creation, edible artistry. Thinking of this, I am reminded of the (now disgraced) chef Mario Batali who once said, “I create works of art and my patrons turn them into shit in 24 hours.”  Like a broken clock, even a thieving, sexually abusive chef is right twice a day (sorry Mario).   

My third and final argument for the inner organs of the beasts and fowl is from the Barcelona Wine Bar, a micro-chain outfit that I discovered while on a work-stay in the Brookline neighborhood of Boston.  BWB has some 20 locations scattered among 11 states, including (but not limited to) such odd locales as Nashville and Denver. As chain operations go, it is pretty good with a nice/affordable selection of wine from the Iberian Peninsula.  The regular menu is standard Spanish tapas fare (jamon, Manchego, patatas bravas, croquettes…), toned down for American tastes.  However, the two nights I was there, they had an off-menu special that was decidedly tuned-up – skewered, wood-grilled duck hearts slathered with a house-made green harissa paste.  The first night I ordered a second plate of hearts while the second night I just ordered two to begin with.  The hearts were grilled to a mellifluous medium rare.  The pumpers were plump, juicy and delicious and the green harissa provided just enough of a jolt to keep things interesting.  This special was not found on subsequent visits to other BWB locations, so this may have been a totally one and done deal.  Lesson being, when duck heart is offered, do not hesitate.  Since those visits, I have been trying to procure a stash of duck hearts myself, but to no avail.  It makes one wonder, What have they done with the hearts?   

While injecting politics into my eating is a sure-fire way of making me lose my appetite, I must admit there is at least a modicum of moral/ethical element to eating.  I am certainly not about to go vegan or even vegetarian as a political or even moral statement. However, I do seek the high ground when feasible and eating organ meats moves me modestly in that direction.  If we are going to murder animals for our gustatory enjoyment, the least we can do is make the most use of them as possible, not to mention preparing them with intention.  Those chicken feet?  They are terrific added to the carcasses when making a stock.  And that offal?  Much is delicious as I have noted above.  Thus, eating that liver, heart, gizzard, pancreas (sweetbreads?) and stomach (mmm, tripe) is an edible/ethical win-win.  Not only are they delicious but consuming them lifts an eater a few inches higher on the moral high ground.   

An Offal Dish 

Getting back to the original format of Meezenplace (my meezings, if not musings) I offer up my own organ concoction: Kung Pao Gizzard.  As noted above, gizzards are like rubber bands if not simmered first.  The side benefit to this is that you get a wonderful stock for chicken or turkey gravy, so save the poaching liquid, it’s pure gold.  Once you have softened the gizzards, you can use any recipe for Kung Pao that you like.  I particularly like this one.   

Kung Pao Gizzard 

Chicken Gizzards (a pound should make 4 servings) 

Coarsely onion, carrot, celery and leek 

Rinse gizzards thoroughly and trim the silver skin.  Place in a pot with the vegetables and cover with water.  Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer.  Skim any foam that is released.  Simmer very low for 2 hours, adding water if necessary.  Remove gizzards and vegetables from pan and reserve the remaining stock for another use (this will make amazing chicken gravy).  Coarsely chop gizzard meat into bite-size pieces, not too small.   

8 scallions, chopped coarsely 

1 stalk celery, chopped 

2 cups coarsely chopped zucchini 

1 cup coarsely chopped red pepper 

For the sauce: 

1 tbs dark soy sauce 

1 tbs light soy sauce 

3 tbs black rice vinegar 

1 tbs Shaoxing rice wine 

4 tsp sugar 

4 tsp cornstarch 

Mix sauce ingredients and set aside 

Black rice vinegar and Shaoxing wine are not on the shelves of Safeway, but ff you are going to the trouble of finding a pound of gizzards, you might as well procure those items as well.  Yes, it does make a difference.  

For the stir frying: 

Cooking oil (peanut oil is best but canola is OK) 

15 small dried chilis, halved and seeds removed 

2 tsp whole Sichuan peppercorns (see comment above regarding Shaoxing wine and black rice vinegar) 

6 cloves garlic, sliced 

8 slices ginger 

Roasted peanuts 

Get your wok smoking hot and then add the gizzards for about 30 seconds.  Remove from the wok and reserve. Add cooking oil and then the chilis and Sichuan peppercorns, sauté for 30 seconds.  Add the garlic and ginger and sauté another 30 seconds.  Add chopped vegetables and sauté about 2 minutes (don’t overcook, they should be still crisp).  Add the gizzards back to the wok and stir with veggies until well mixed.  Stir up the sauce and add to the wok all at once, stirring as you go.  The sauce will thicken quickly.  Once the sauce is distributed to coat all ingredients and thickened, add roasted peanuts.  Serve with white rice.   

OK, I admit this is just a chicken kung pao replacing cubed chicken breast with the simmered gizzards.  But, it is terrific, trust me on this.   

I can’t believe that none of my prior posts have included a musical clip from Bonnie Raitt. This one is from the late last century and features some tasty slide work on her Fender Strato-caster. Not too many songs about organ meats out there. Sometimes you just get lucky.  

Bonnie Raitt – Have A Heart – 11/26/1989 – Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium (Official) 

She sits
She sits on a folding chair
She sits on a folding chair in the sun next to a flatbed truck piled high with corn
It’s 92 in the shade but there is no shade
Just sun
And a truck
And corn on the cob
Parked in the lot of an abandoned mall
Cedar Mall
Cedar Mall, the shopping mall that delaminated the downtown of Owatonna, Minnesota
I pull up in a rental car
Now a stranger in my own home
I pull up and get out
I pull up and get out and I ask how much
Five dollars a dozen
Five dollars a dozen for the best corn on the cob
Bought off a flatbed truck
From a girl who sits
In the sun
On a folding chair
A strand of brown hair falling over her face
Is this corn local you ask, making conversation
Just making conversation
Her face falls like it will fall again, a hundred times, a thousand
No, it’s from Rochester

Recipe: Corn on the Cob

Most of the time, I think I can improve a dish, tweak it here, add a couple ingredients there…make it mine. Make it better. With corn on the cob, not so much. People grill it or cut off the kernels and saute with red pepper, etc. etc. And I’ve done all that. But really, you can’t improve corn on the cob much beyond butter. Salt. Pepper.

First, get good corn. Local if you can. Or from Rochester, that’s OK. Buy it from a flatbed truck, not a grocery store. Certainly not Walmart.

Then bring a large pot of well-salted water to a rolling boil. The water should be as salty as sea water. Put your corn in and cook for 3 minutes. That’s plenty. Melt some butter. Maybe squeeze some lime into it. When the corn is done, paint it with the butter and lime using a pastry brush. Salt. Pepper. Use good salt, not iodized.

That’s it.

Eat Well.

By popular demand (as in someone asked) I am sharing my recipe for black bean and corn salad.  This is a summertime staple, I make a batch a couple time a months in the warmer months, or when attending those things we used to do in olden times, backyard BBQ picnics.  This salad is great with a slab of salmon, a grilled chicken thigh, some tri-tip…a cold, clean white or rose wine is your go-to with this, or your house beer, in my case Pacifico.  I haven’t measured proportions on this in 20 years, so take these with a grain of salt and your own taste.  Boiling up your own black beans probably improves this dish, but I never seem to get around to that.  Adjust ingredients to your own taste. Regardless, putting this together several hours before eating so that the flavors meld together is highly recommended.

This recipe has a good lime tangy brightness.  If you don’t like that, back off on the lime. 

Black Bean and Corn Salad

One can black beans, rinsed

Equal amount corn (fresh is best, frozen works fine)

One cup chopped spring onion, red onion or green onions. 

One half red bell pepper, fine dice

Optional – One whole chopped jalepeno pepper (ribs and seeds removed)

¼ cup chopped green garlic, OR two cloves minced regular garlic

1 cup chopped cilantro

Chopped mint to taste (I use 10-12 leaves, cut into chiffonade)

Other chopped fresh herbs as available (oregano, marjoram, chives, lemon thyme…)

Salt and pepper to taste

Lime Vinaigrette Dressing

Juice of 2 limes

¼ cup EVOO

TBS ground cumin

Pinch cayenne

Place dressing ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid and shake vigorously.

Combine salad ingredients and toss well.  A couple hours before serving, drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss again lightly.  Expertly adjust seasonings. 

You asked for it, here it is. I love this in the autumn – tomatillos are in season and the salsa gives it a bright, clean flavor. Kick it up with as many jalepenos as you like. Please resist the urge to use canned salsa verde. It will not taste even remotely like this dish.

Pork Chili Verde

1-2 lbs pork shoulder cut into 1 inch cubes

Onion, coarsely chopped

1 carrot, coarsely chopped

3 garlic cloves, diced

16 very small new potatoes (I like the multi-colored ones) OR 1 large russet, chopped bite size 

1 cup each frozen peas and corn

1 cup chicken stock

1 cup reserved tomatillo cooking water

Chili Verde Salsa

8 large tomatillos, husks removed, rinsed well.

1 poblano pepper, seeds and white parts removed

1 jalepeno pepper, seeds white part removed (optional)

4 cloves garlic

Half an onion, coarsely chopped

Salt to taste

Large bunch cilantro (with stems)

To make salsa

Put tomatillos, peppers, garlic and onion in boiling water.  Cook until tomatillos are soft, about 15-20 minutes.  Remove veggies from water and let cool.  Reserve cooking water. When cooled, put veggies and cilantro in food processor with a ladle or two of cooled cooking water.  Pulse and then process until smooth.  Add more water if it’s too thick. It should be the consistency of dipping salsa.  Salt to taste. Set aside.

Assemble the stew

Add pork chunks to dutch oven or large cast iron pot on medium high with a bit of olive oil.  Brown well.  Add onion and carrot, saute 3 minutes.  Add garlic, cook a minute longer.  Add chicken stock and one cup reserved tomatillo cooking water.  This should about cover the pork/veggie mixture.  Bring to a boil then reduce to very low simmer and cover.  Simmer on very low (a few bubbles now and then) for 1.5 hours. Liquid should have reduced by about half.  If it gets too low, add more chicken stock and reserved cooking water.

Add potatoes and 2 cups tomatillo salsa.  Cook 30 minutes longer or until potatoes are tender.  Add peas and corn and cook 5 more minutes on low heat.  Correct seasonings.

Serve with warm tortillas and grated cotija cheese. Best with cerveza, but a hearty red wine works too.

Serves 4.

I fed a fox. 

She came up on my deck and sat on the lounge chair at night

Hid my rubber sandals and knocked over plants

I left her some cool water and kibble

And she stayed awhile

But the neighbors complained when their chickens and cats disappeared

So I quit leaving her food

No more fox.

A few nights ago, I dreamed that I was fly-fishing for steelhead in a river of potato leek soup. It would be reasonable to conclude that said dream was the result of too much garlic in the spaghetti sauce, but it would take an alarming amount of the stinking rose to affect my dreams thusly, given the copious amounts of it that I consume on a daily basis, usually to no discernable effect on my evening chimeras. 

More likely, this dream was due to my thoughts turning, as they will, to an upcoming excursion with the Birddog. As my partner in crime – my codelincuente, if you will – the Birddog accompanied me about ten years ago on a Missouri River trout-fishing trip in Montana in early October. Our luck holding as per usual, it snowed eight inches the night we arrived in Craig and temps plunged into the single digits. Did I mention that this was early October? 

Amazingly, a few fish took pity on us and impaled themselves on our drowned nymph lures (pheasant tails and zebra midges, if you must know) and we were… um… hooked. Over the next few visits to The Mo (as the locals call it) we caught on to the game, finally netting over a hundred trout between us in two days of angling (no whities counted; all rainbows and browns caught and released). These days, of course, we tie one hand behind our backs and fish only with floating dry flies, usually stalking visible, feeding fish. It bears noting that our efforts are amply enhanced by the services of guides like (Big) Dan Kelly and (Captain) Mike Guerin. 

Somewhere down the tracks, our fishing trips started to morph. Inspired by the likes of Jim Harrison, Russell Chatham, Tom McGuane, Richard Brautigan, and Guy de la Valdene, we began to cook our own dinners and pack our own shore lunches. Craig, Montana, boasts a decent restaurant that approaches fine dining, called Izaak’s (of Walton fame). There you can get fried walleye, bison steak, rib-eyes, double-wide pork chops, and pillowy ravioli. The drinks are strong and the waitresses are co-eds on leave from one of the local colleges (by local, I mean within 150 miles). Despite the existence of this perfectly serviceable eating establishment, the siren song of the cabin kitchen beckoned, and we began to book lodgings with a keen eye to cooking for ourselves. 

If memory serves (and it does so decreasingly), our first attempt at fly-camp cooking was in Maupin, Oregon, where we were chasing the salmon fly hatch on the famed Deschutes River. Due mostly to ineptitude, we had little luck with jungle fishing for the rainbows known locally as redsides, but the trip was made memorable by the nice batch of linguine vongole I whipped up on a Coleman stove. (Note to self: don’t set up a propane-fired camp stove on a plastic table ever again.) After this first al fresco attempt at fine dining, we realized that our culinary efforts would be better served with modern conveniences like stoves and refrigerators, not to mention cabinets stocked with pots, pans, cutting boards, and the like. Knives are another matter: when not subjected to the inspections of our fine TSA agents, I bring my own cutlery (classic Wüsthof blades suit me fine). 

Over the years, our cooking efforts have ramped up considerably. We’ve had BBQ ribs with home-brewed ancho chili sauce; T-bones and filet mignon smothered with compound butter; venison; pork shoulder braised several hours in tomatillo sauce; Flintstone-esque pork chops; panko-crusted pan-fried walleye; grilled quail painted with reduced balsamic vinegar; pasta with hot Italian sausage… you know, the usual. Last year’s Umpqua trip featured wood duck breasts wrapped in prosciutto and pan fried to medium rare, then finished with a honey and sherry vinegar sauce in the Italian style of sweet and sour. 

The side dish to the wood duck breast was equal to the main: Thomas Keller’s leek bread pudding. It is a concoction at once airy and spectacularly rich, the main ingredients being bread, leeks, cream, and eggs. Once you have had this so-called “side dish,” you will never go back to common bread dressing again. You can thank me next Thanksgiving. 

Speaking of sides, they are by no means at the margins of our meals. We often invest significant energy and effort into accompaniments like heavily-garlicked creamy polenta, mashed Yukon Gold potatoes studded with chanterelle mushrooms, sautéed chard, creamed spinach, salads made in the Greek-style, and sautéed French radishes. Desserts are an afterthought – think Pepperidge Farm cookies dunked in Laphroig, a peaty, smoky Scotch from the Isle of Islay.  

I would be remiss not to mention the shore lunches, which by necessity are more casual dining experiences, eaten standing up and without plates or cutlery. Sandwiches fit this bill nicely. Most guides are understandably less than enthused about putting together lunches in addition to their considerable catalog of professional chores, many of which are undertaken at 4:00 in the morning. Better that they focus on the fishing and let us take care of the eating. Our waterside repasts often include my version of the muffaletta sandwich, made famous by the Central Grocery in New Orleans. This sandwich stacks ham, salami, and mortadella meats with provolone and a spread made of both green and black olives. My other sammie specialty is roast beef piled high with thick slabs of red onion and sliced pickles. These have received the fishing-guide equivalent of a Michelin star. Last summer we went south of the border and made tacos, wrapping leftover tomatillo-braised shredded pork in soft tortillas with homemade pico de gallo. An ice-cold bottle of French roséfrom Provence met its match. A speckled brown trout was taken from the very next riffle – the perfect dessert.

I’m not sure why I dreamed about fishing in potato leek soup the other night, as this dish is not on the menu for our upcoming trip. A Freudian therapist would no doubt have a field day with such subconscious meanderings, but I am far less interested in what the dream says about my sex life than I am about the inexplicable fact that I did not taste the soup. Too much garlic? Not enough salt? Now we’ll never know. 

You might be thinking that these excursions are more about eating and less about fishing. If so, you should be disabused of that notion. The fishing here is serious, save for the goofy headgear that has become my “brand.” Last summer I hooked numerous rainbow and brown trout wearing a pith helmet of all things, an accoutrement that my Belgian work colleague admired with a single caveat: “It’s vaguely racist, though.” Tell that to Melania Trump. The winter prior, I landed a steelhead that surpassed sixteen pounds while wearing a Harris herringbone tweed flat cap. This haberdashery is a bit of tom-foolery – just trying to not take myself too seriously, a problem to which I am prone. 

Angling for the leviathans we seek is serious business (hats notwithstanding), and you’d better be ready – not to mention intensely focused and “in the moment,” as they say in Buddhist circles – lest you have not only your hat handed to you, but your rod shoved up your backside. Oregon winter steelhead are the Mike Tysons of fish, back when he was still a serious boxer and not a parody. Give me a couple of words to describe them and I will hand you “mean” and “angry” for starters. These are not worm-sippers dabbling your bobber; they slash at your sunken yarn egg pattern like stream-dwelling serial killers. When the strike indicator dives, you drive that hook into the heartless mouth of the steelhead with everything you’ve got. You know in a second whether you are hung up on some sunken old-growth Douglas fir or you have hooked up with underwater thunder. If the latter, any wandering thoughts of poaching a New York strip steak with fresh herb butter to a perfect medium rare go out the window. Nope, your mind and body are now joined in a zen-like effort to bring your fish to the net. A stray thought – say of the “bikini hatch” you saw last summer floating down the river in rubber inner tubes – will leave you limp-lined and defeated. 

Fly-fishing and cooking are two endeavors where “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” (as Jim McKay used to say on Wide World of Sports) are closely juxtaposed; it only makes sense to me that the two be combined. It’s amazing what a perfectly braised lamb shank – its meat falling off the bone and plonked into a bowl of creamy polenta – will do for you after your soul has been crushed by a screaming steelhead trout that snapped you off, the fish equivalent of extending you its middle finger. Maybe combine that shank with a bottle or two of Barolo and/or Barbera and you are soon sailing down Recovery Road. The moon comes up; the moon goes down. You live to fish another day. 

Upon further review, it occurs to me that I might benefit by increasing the number of activities in my life that require walking the tightrope between victory and defeat. Let’s face facts: those are two sides of the same coin, and you can’t have one without risking the other. If you’re like me (and I know I am), you live most of your life too near the middle of the road. Doing so leaves you only dreaming of steelhead, rather than catching them. Better to rouse yourself, get on the river once in a while, and get your line in the water. 

Braised Lamb Shanks (enough for two hearty eaters)

Set oven to 325 degrees.

Ingredients:

2 good-sized, bone-in lamb shanks

Salt and pepper

Half an onion, coarsely chopped

Two large carrots, coarsely chopped

One whole head of garlic

One large can of tomatoes

Half a bottle of wine (red or white; either is good) 

Two sprigs of fresh rosemary

Thyme

2 cups of beef broth (homemade – so much better than store-bought)

Season the shanks with the salt and pepper and brown them in a Dutch oven. Make sure they get a good brown crust on them. Remove from the pot. 

Put a little olive oil in the pot and sauté the onions and carrots. While they are sautéing, empty the tomatoes and their juice into a bowl and crush by hand, leaving them in fairly large chunks. Add the wine (white will give you a lighter sauce, red a richer one – both are good; it just depends on your mood). Bring the wine and vegetables to a rolling boil. Add the tomatoes, broth, rosemary, and thyme. Cut the head of garlic in two latitudinally, as though you were going to roast it, and add both halves to the pot. Add the lamb shanks and any meat juices that have accumulated. The shanks should be mostly submerged. If they’re not, top up the liquid with more wine and broth.

Put the pot in the oven and cook for 2 hours, checking periodically to make sure the shanks are still mostly covered. Top up with wine and broth if needed. Once the meat is falling off the bone, remove the shanks and tent them to keep them warm. Carefully skim the fat from the remaining liquid, tipping the pot to one side. Once most of the fat is off, take out the woody portions of the rosemary and thyme. Remove the garlic halves and squeeze out the garlic cloves.  Mash the softened vegetables with a potato masher or the back of a large spoon. Reduce the remaining liquid until it becomes a thick sauce and serve over the lamb shanks.

I like to put some nice creamy polenta in a bowl, stick in the shank bone pointing up, and then ladle some sauce around it. This makes for a pretty dramatic presentation. As for wine, this is the time for a badass Italian like a super Tuscan or Barolo. A French Rhone would do just fine as well. After a meal like this, it’s Dream On. 

Jerry:  Are you still master of your domain?

Elaine:  I am queen of the castle! 

Recent events in the kitchen left me head in hands, brow furrowed, my inner voice suggesting not-so-nice nostrums. I had ruined the homemade aioli, and in the process wasted two cups of impossibly expensive olive oil from Italy. And by ruined, I mean I’d created a separated, watery mess of egg yolks, lemon, garlic, and mustard from Dijon, France. A mess by any measure. Ish.

So, you may be asking, why go to the terrible trouble of making homemade aioli when a perfectly acceptable facsimile by Hellmann’s or Best Foods can be procured at every market in America? To that question, I can only reply: Have you ever had homemade aioli? It is to store-bought mayonnaise as Iberian jamon made from pigs that eat acorns under cork trees is to Hormel Black Label. Like so many things, it is the same, but different.

How this culinary disaster, this cocina catastrophe, happened is partially beside the point. Suffice to say that being in too great a rush is a situation with which I am all too familiar. Sensei says: Speed up by slowing down. In layman’s terms, I added the oil too fast, thereby preventing proper molecular emulsification. Turns out, making aioli is a chemistry experiment. Who knew! You can’t just dump the oil into the lemony yolk and mustard mixture; you have to drip it in with patience and practiced intention. Flub this process and you end up with a ruined mess of mayo-not-so-much. And not just a little off — I mean all the way ruined, in the “totally unusable” form of the word. In FEMA terms, an inedible Irma.

So there I stood, rubber spatula in hand, staring ashamed into the unusable, unsavory mess in my KitchenAid. Before I could get around to tossing the whole shebang down the Insinkerator, I decided to check in with the patron saint of home cooks and Francophiles everywhere to try to figure out how I had gone so horribly wrong.

Julia Child to the rescue.

Some time back, I procured a treasured volume of the book Julia and Jacques Cook at Home from Culpepper Books in Tacoma, WA, my former base of operation. Culpepper’s is a splendid little cranny, nooked into brick block between a bank and a very nice Italian joint called Europa Bistro. This bitty gem of a bookstore has an exceptional cookbook section. In addition to JJ@H, I have procured several other cooking books, including my de rigueur copy of Larousse Gastronomique. JJ@H reads as much like a work of fiction as a collection of recipes, with the key literary components of conflict, crisis, and resolution all present.

In the section on making your own mayonnaise, I learned that aioli is a lot like life: It is simple, but not easy. Aioli is important. Its creation is among the most elementary, foundational skills of cooking, but it is also oh-so-easy to screw up.

A frequent construct of the book is for Jacques and Julia to offer different approaches and techniques for the same dish. In her section, Julia not only offers tips on whipping up the perfect aioli, but devotes a lengthy section to its resuscitation if it should break.  DON’T THROW AWAY a separated aioli, she admonishes; it can almost always be resurrected. In fact, learning how to salvage this sauce is a critical kitchen skill on its own, because sooner or later, no matter how skilled one becomes, a moment of inattentiveness will cause you to bungle it. Madame Julia goes so far as to suggest ruining a batch on purpose, so you will know how to repair it when the time comes.  Acquiring this skill, she says, will provide the home cook with a profound sense of accomplishment and mastery. The idea is that fixing something is often more satisfying than creating it perfectly in the first place. It’s like The Nordstrom Way, but in the kitchen instead of women’s shoes.

You can read the full instructions in the manual (RTFM to my engineering friends), but here is the gist: Place a dab of Dijon (the mustard, not the town) in a metal bowl and whisk in a tablespoon of your dreck. As this emulsifies and thickens, keep adding more dreck in minuscule increments, all the while beating it as though your life depended upon it.  Before long, you will have a half a batch rescued, and then you can add the rest faster.

Following the tutelage of my patron saint, I saved the mayo, if not the day. And Julia was right about that mastery thing too. Seldom have I been so proud of myself.

There is a life lesson embedded in there somewhere, but I’ll resist the urge to emulsify you with it, my gentle readers. Suffice to say that while you can save a ruined aioli, you can’t un-grill an overdone steak (a particular bitch if you just took out a second mortgage to pay for that porterhouse, even at today’s low, low interest rates).

So am I the Master of My Domain, the Lord of the Manor? Depends on what time of day you ask. Thanks to a teaspoon of inspiration from Julia Child, though, for this one glorious moment, full of grace, Yes I Am.

Julia Child’s Food Processor Aioli

If you want to be super-authentic and become known as a true kitchen ninja, you can do this with a metal bowl and a hand whisk. I have done it this way, but it makes my wrist sore. 

 

Ingredients

2 large egg yolks (save the whites for something else; they are always nice to have around)

1.5 tsp. good Dijon mustard (the smooth stuff, not the whole grain)

1 tbsp. lemon juice (from a Meyer lemon, if you have one)

Dash each of salt and pepper

Up to 2 cups good oil (this greatly affects the taste of the dish; for a milder flavor, cut a good EVOO with canola oil).

Pulse the first 4 ingredients in your food processor until they are well combined. With the blade running, slowly (and by slowly, I mean excruciatingly so) drizzle in the oil — one drop at a time to start, then a steady thread, and finally a stream. Augment with minced or roasted garlic and/or finely chopped fresh herbs like parsley, chive, or chervil.

Eat Well.