You are a better cook than Paul Newman, I promise

Homemade tomato sauce is a big source of drama and mystique for many people. As my beloved Marcella Hazan says, somewhere in Marcella's Italian Kitchen--but I can't find the exact quote so I'll have to paraphrase--"there is nothing so false as the image of the old Italian matriarch, stooped over her hot oven for hours, stirring a simmering pot of tomato sauce." While there are some slow-cooking and complicated sauces, a tasty and basic tomato sauce can be made with little fuss. There are even delicious uncooked tomato sauces.

However, my method should not be mistaken for a Great Italian Masterpiece, either. One thing I have learned about Italians in my years working on a cooking magazine (and being half Italian, and visiting the country several times) is that they are very opinionated about food, to put it really mildly. But at the end of the day, we're all just people trying to turn vegetables into something healthy and tasty with a minimum of fuss. I believe my sauces accomplish that, and that you can make good sauce too.

To begin: the most important thing, and any Italian would agree with me, is quality ingredients. There are a lot of different kinds of tomatoes, and where they grow and how ripe they are really determines their flavor. The store can be overwhelming--which ones will be tasty? which ones are going to be mealy and flavorless?

Sometimes I luck out and sometimes I fail. I can't really guide you towards the best varieties because I just don't know. My only advice would be to not think a tomato will taste good just because it looks great--some of the scary looking heirloom ones are the best (but some are gross)-- and buy something locally grown, which will mean totally different kinds for different regions. Local tomatoes will be fresher, and it's nice to support your community. (Eating local is a big subject that deserves more attention but...later...and anyway, it's pretty well covered in the food press right now.) And, maybe your local tomato actually won't be that great, but hey--at least it didn't have to fly all the way from Holland just to suck.

(We are not going to discuss San Marzanos or other canned tomatoes here, but I can tell you more about them if you are interested.)

Whatever tomatos I buy, I like to let them sit around for a few days--at room temperature. NEVER refrigerate your tomatoes. Don't do it. And don't buy tomatoes that are in the refrigerated section. It totally messes them up and makes them spongy and bland. Let them sit around on the counter for a few days. If they get wrinkly, no problem. I've actually seen recipes that call for wrinkled tomatoes. This is one that I got at the Triangle farmer's market after it sat for a couple of days.


One more thing. Before I started my sauce, I tasted the tomatoes. These were really acidic. Good, but wow. Tongue searing. Good to know, as I would add some sugar to the sauce later. So, taste.

Along with tomatoes, a sauce can have just garlic, basil, and olive oil, and/or onions, and/or celery...whatever you want. Of course you can read and try different recipes, but at the end of the day, it's your choice.

I've learned that I really like my sauce with onion, garlic, celery and carrot. Not too much carrot, just one small one or less. It also gives a nice bright color. But if I don't have carrot or celery, that's OK. But I HAVE to have garlic and onion. That is the bare minimum. So chop your stuff up...(I used half this carrot) (garlic not pictured for some reason) (I was out of celery):


And put it in a pot with some olive oil.


Some recipes will say that onions and garlic should go first, then carrots, or whatever but--I just put it all in together. You know the other night while I was making this sauce I was also making a turkey meatloaf for Scott's lunches, and granola for the week. I have to be efficient.

Cook all your stuff up in olive oil over medium heat until it's soft. Stir often so it doesn't stick and brown. Maybe about 15 mins depending on if you have carrots or not (they are slow). And..oh...olive oil. Another ingredient where you need to consider quality. Sorry, no room to talk about it here. Just make sure you like the flavor of the olive oil you are using. "Lite" olive oil really has no flavor (that's what is "lite" about it) and I do not recommend it.

(Side note: of course onions, carrots and garlic all should be chosen carefully and taste good too, but as they aren't the star ingredients, it's not so important to spend time on them here.)

When the onions etc are soft, add your chopped tomatoes. For this amount of stuff I did...I don't know maybe a pound and a half of tomatoes. Some recipes say to seed and skin the tomatoes, but I don't do this, surprise surprise.

Let it all cook up for awhile. Lower the heat so it's not bubbling out of control. Add salt and pepper, and sugar if you think your tomatoes need it. Don't go hog wild with adding all kinds of spices from the spice rack. Choose a fresh herb or two and add that toward the end. If you don't have a fresh herb, well, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you can use dried spices to come up with some combo that makes it really "your" sauce, and that is fun.

Lately I have been really into using rosemary, which I used to only do in the winter but am now doing all the time (until I get sick of it). I had some basil plants all summer, but I recently let them die. They really struggled in the heat, I had to water them constantly, and after awhile they just didn't taste that great. So instead I just sneak down to my neighbor's apartment and snip a length of rosemary while the tomatoes cook. It grows everywhere in Austin, which I found truly magical when I moved here (but, I think it is common like, everywhere but New England where I grew up).

Of course, I pushed it all the way in, this is just so you can see it.

If you are using basil, don't add it till the very end. Rosemary I think needs a longer simmer. But the flavors of basil really pop if not cooked too long. Throw in some chopped or whole leaves right at the end.

Let the whole thing simmer about half an hour. When the sauce is done (which I determine somewhat arbitrarily and by it smelling really good) you can fridge it, as I did, or use it right away, or put it in the blender to make it really smooth (which I did the next day before reheating) (take out the rosemary if blending or before serving, too!). You can also stir in a little tomato paste, which is kind of a cheat to the no packaging experiment, and I didn't do it but...I do have a jar in the fridge. It's like a shot of tomato essence and can be a nice touch. This rosemary sauce also is nice with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, per Marcella. I didn't do it this time though.

So that's it for sauce, for now. There really is so much to say, and there are books written on it and everyone makes a big fuss about having"the best" sauce, and having grandmas secret recipe for "gravy" and blah, blah, blah. All that stuff is fun, but it shouldn't put you off making your own. All you have to do is love and respect your ingredients and enjoy your time in the kitchen and you'll do just fine.

Cheese sandwich with deep thoughts

This is a cheese sandwich made with homemade cheese, roasted hatch chiles, olive oil, and ten-grain bread from Central Market. It is toasted. I have included this photo and description simply to make the rest of this entry less boring, because there is no more food talk or photos. But doesn't this sandwich look great! it was. MMMMM don't forget the salt!

Meanwhile. The weeks of no packaging are long over. Here are some thoughts on the experiment.

1. It's not over. I'm still sticking to it as best I can. I have this idea to transform my refrigerator and cupboards into entirely name-brand-free zones. As I run out of condiments, I will make them and you will get to read about it. There is still so much fun to be had.

2. I realized that when I feel accountable (thanks readers!) it's really very easy to never forget your shopping bags or containers, and to think ahead a little bit. It was a little more effort, but what isn't at first? And for me, this effort isn't the same as "work." I love being in the kitchen with NPR or some music to sing to while I chop, chop, chop. But, this brings me to my third point:

3. It's not for everyone. But, we can all do something for the environment. For me, it's very easy to reduce my packaging and waste overall. But maybe it is not so easy for you. Maybe you are a busy mom and your kids really love Shark Bites. Maybe your job is very demanding and time in the kitchen is just more work, no matter how you look at it. I hope things can change, and that people can build stronger connections to the foods we eat and where they come from, but still, I totally get it. Major cooking is not for everyone. But what can you do?

Let's first consider an area where I majorly fail in environmental stewardship: exercise. Physical fitness and I have a very tenuous relationship, and in order for me to not be morbidly obese, I have to make it easy for myself. I drive eight miles to one of Austin's best gyms and use the machines, when I could just run around the neighborhood. I drive to yoga class when I could do it at home. Yes, I could have a major attitude readjustment...be more disciplined, learn not to feel embarrassed when people drive by and I'm out there sweating like an animal and tripping over tree roots; not get distracted by my iPod and run into traffic; vacuum enough that I'm not doing downward dog into a carpet covered in actual dog hair... but if I'm serious about staying in shape, these things aren't going to happen. Just like most of you are not going to make your own Saltines.

We all have changes we can and can't make. Play to your strengths, I say. If you are someone who loves exercising outside, maybe you can ride your bike to work instead of driving. If you love growing flowers, maybe you can learn to grow some veggies, too. If you love meeting new people, maybe you can go volunteer to pick up trash with KAB (Scott and I did this once, and it was fun, but not as much fun as cooking and dancing to Thriller). Few of us can do ALL of this...but all of us can do something, and make it fun.

The other tortilla...and a quick digression to Puerto Rico

Because "tortillas" are so prevalent in our society, as well as in a bunch of other societies (with Mexico leading the pack), the "tortilla Española" is a little confusing to Americans. This dish has nothing to do with flour, corn, or tacos. It is actually more like a potato and egg omelet.

I still don't know very much about tortilla Española, though my awareness of it has slowly increased in recent years...it seems to keep coming up here and there. I first heard of it in about 2003, when Intermezzo (my main employer) almost ran a recipe for it but ended up cutting the article. Epicurious.com has only two recipes for TE*, the earliest dating back to 2000. (Epicurious is the website of Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, and has thousands of recipes in its database.) I think the TE is an ordinary, everyday food eaten throughout Spain in many variations; I don't remember eating it when I was there, though I think many bars offered little portions of it as tapas.

But finally, I did eat it...in Puerto Rico. Scott and I went to San Juan and the British Virgin Islands last fall. In San Juan we stayed at this tiny, fabulous, really inexpensive guesthouse called Andalucia. It was in a great location with many amazing restaurants nearby. The neighborhood (Ocean Park) was not built up and touristy and just sketchy enough to be charming but not dangerous.

Across the street from Andalucia is a hugely popular bakery/restaurant/deli called Kasalta. We ate there every day for breakfast, most days for lunch, and after dinner each night we'd stop by on the way back to the guesthouse for baked goods to eat in bed while watching bad TV. The best thing we had there was a sandwich called the "Elena Ruth." This was a baguette with roasted turkey (like from a real roast turkey, not cold cuts), cranberry sauce, Swiss cheese and mayo, served toasted and warm. To many people who know me as a vegetarian and mayonnaise hater, it is no doubt very strange to hear me praising this sandwich. I could do a whole separate blog on the vegetarian thing, but the super-short version is, I sometimes eat meat when I'm traveling. And the Elena Ruth is amazing! We would take them to the beach with cans of Coke and a cookie for dessert. Sandy perfection.

But breakfast at Kasalta was also pretty awesome. This is where we first had the tortilla. I knew what it was by sight and by name: a thick, golden, firm cake cut into wedges (links to pics below). Served cold right out of the display case, the tortilla was a dense layer of egg and potato...mild yet nourishing, rich with olive oil, and just excellent with a cup of coffee.

Back to the present. I'd been thinking that potatoes were an ideal choice for a package-free carb, and a lot easier than rolling out pasta. The only problem is, I don't LOVE potatoes. I mean, they are fine, but...never my first choice.

But when I got my eggs from Mr. Milagro, it suddenly struck me that tortilla Española was kind of a perfect food. And with the inevitable addition of roasted hatch chiles--they are in everything I eat this month--it was sounding better and better.

I used a combination of a recipe in my big yellow Gourmet cookbook (probably the same one they have online) and the step-by-step instructions I found in this About.com article. The first thing to do, in either case, was "poach" the potatoes (Yukon golds) in a huge amount of olive oil. How "poaching" in oil is different from deep frying, I'm not quite sure. But I did it. I sliced the potatoes (About.com method, and what I remembered from Kasalta) rather than dicing (Gourmet), heated up a huge amount of olive oil (which I'd recently bought in bulk from Wheatsville Coop) and added minced onion and the potato slices. Immediately I knew what I had done wrong--added too much stuff at once and lowered the temperature of the oil. So I removed half, and kept on poaching.



Apologies for this stupid picture. I was trying to reduce the resolution, and cropped out one corner instead.

When they were tender enough to eat, I transferred them with a slotted spoon to a strainer set over a bowl, added salt, and let them drain. Then I did the other half, strained them, etc. Then, though this put me at risk for third-degree burns, I strained the oil through a strainer and into a jar to reuse. The potatoes didn't seem to have absorbed that much.

Then I tossed up the potatoes with like, 4 or 5 eggs, a good amount of previously roasted and chopped hatch chiles, salt, and pepper. The mixture went back into the pot to cook.

Once again, I immediately sensed a mistake. I just KNEW that they were going to stick and that I would not be able to do the "flip" so beautifully illustrated in About.com. I needed seasoned cast iron without the high walls, and I didn't have it. Can you believe I don't have a cast iron pan? Ridiculous.

So I tried to flip it, spilled egg everywhere, swore creatively, and shoveled it as best I could back into the pan to finish cooking. Then, I "transferred" (scooped) the whole thing onto a plate for serving. It doesn't look like the About pictures, does it?

However! it was awesome anyway. We ate it for dinner, and I had it cold the next day for breakfast. Just goes to show you can totally screw up and still have a great meal. But I would like to try it again with the right kind of cookware and see if I can get the perfect little cake. Maybe I'll try to make minis in my nonstick omelet pan.

In the meantime, I urge everyone to go to Puerto Rico. It is a pretty cheap destination, the food is amazing, and you don't even need a passport.

*Just realized Epicurious has a few more recipes if you search "Spanish omelet."

Eggxactly the cliche title I was hoping for

Well. The two weeks are up. And I still have a lot to post. I think for now I will talk about eggs.

Last Wednesday I went to the farmer's market here in Austin at the Triangle, a little development on North Lamar and Guadalupe, in the same plaza as beloved Mandolas. I was looking for Milagro eggs specifically, but was tempted by a lot of other produce too, mostly okra and zucchini. In the end I didn't get any, fearing I wouldn't use it fast enough. It wouldn't be the first time I had a fridgeful of rotting okra.

But I did get my eggs, from this guy:

I had brought my own container to put them in, just a cardboard egg container from last time I bought some. But the guy, whom I shall call Mr. Milagro, has his own system. You pay twenty-five cents deposit to get one of his plastic egg things, and then trade it in for reuse every time you come back for new eggs. Total cost, $4.25 for a dozen eggs.

(PS, it is a nice departure from magazine-land writing for me to post this without Mr. Milagro's real name. I could probably look it up, but I think I just won't bother. So deliciously lazy!) (PPS, I just tried to find a website for Milagro and can't, anyone know?)

I have to say, I would have paid more! Totally unprompted, Mr. Milagro told me all about how he has several kinds of hens (I forget how many...) and they all lay eggs in slightly different colors and shapes. Casual inspection revealed most to be different shades of brown, with one that was kind of light-blueish. The hens eat an assortment of ten different whole grains, plus veggie scraps (but no onion or garlic).

(photo no longer sideways thanks to Rohan!)

At home, I saw the eggs were all slightly different sizes, and some had much harder shells than others. Honestly I can't comment whether or not they tasted different than my usual almost-as-expensive organic eggs, because I used them in this really condiment- and flavor-heavy preparation (shocking for me, I know!).


(this image no longer sideways thanks to ME!)

This was the "final dinner" of my no-packaging project. It was kind of a melange of leftovers. Tortillas made with dough left over from last time I made them (for fish tacos), homemade salsa (from same tacos) mixed with some leftover roasted hatch chiles (from tomatillo sauce and tortilla Espanola), strained yogurt (not homemade...), homemade refried beans, and a kind of home-fry hash brown thing. I realize none of these above-referenced meals and ingredients have been blogged yet. All will be, in bite-sized portions so as not to bore and overwhelm.

But what else can I say about about the eggs for now? Oh, well I did use three for banana bread, and have a few more left. I'll fry one up for a real taste-test and let you know how it is. But I am really happy that I have found a source for them that is truly local, from someone who cares about his chickens and feeds them well, and that generates no waste from packaging.

Tomatillo salsa with hatch

A couple of posts ago I said I would give the recipe (by which I mean "guidelines," because it's not an exact science with me) for the tomatillo salsa I used on my tortilla/egg/cheese thing. I roasted some hatch chiles the other night for something else and thought the pics made sense here too.

This time of year in Texas we have hatch chiles from Hatch, New Mexico. So that is what I've been using, but at other times of the year, I use poblanos. Poblanos are the real workhorse chile in my life--mostly mild but sometimes spicy, especially up near the stem. They are generally available even in the crappiest of grocery stores, and are pretty cheap. But this time of year, in the southwest, it's hatch all the way.

Here are the hatchies fresh. They are usually all green but you can see a few starting to blush.
There are "hot" and "mild" hatch chiles...but as with all chiles, it's a gamble. The mild can be completely heat-free, or they can be pretty spicy. The hot are generally medium to medium-hot, but some of them will unexpectedly make your teeth bleed. So I buy three mild and three hot, and then combine.

First thing to do is roast. You do this right on an open flame, either a gas stove or a grill. You want nearly the whole surface to be charred but not coal-black and not ashy. Just deep brown and blistered. But if it goes too dark that's really ok too. Believe me I've screwed up many and it's fine.


Yeah, my stove is kind of dirty.

These are about 1/4 done. Keep turning till the whole surface is blistered, put them in a bowl and cover them. Let them sit for like half an hour. If you do this first, you can chop other things while you wait.

Next, remove them from the bowl. They will be all limp and soggy. Chop the stem and very top off. Stand over the sink and kind of split them open lengthwise, and rub off all the charred skin and simultaneously remove the seeds. Do not give in to the temptation to run them under water to speed things up. I have been told this washes away the essential smoky flavor. Just get rid of as much char as you can (there will be some left) and as many seeds as you can. Put on cutting board and dice. Put in a bowl together and mix up so the hots and milds are fully mingling. For this recipe you only need about half of this. Save the other half for something else.

Now we do the tomatillos. These are widely available here, and I used to buy them all the time in the northeast too (and my CSA farm grew them). In the store, they look like this.

At home, pull off the papery husk, wash them (they are kind of sticky, that's ok) and cut out the hard bit around the core. Then finely chop, or, as I tried, grate them.

It worked pretty well, but then you end up with this leftover skin. The skin is tasty so I diced it and used it too. This is also a good trick for tomatoes, especially when you don't want their skin (like in sauce).

Now that you know your ingredients and methods, here is the recipe. I am 100% making this up as I go along. I've made this a million times and never really keep track of any quantities. Insert "about" in front of every ingredient listed and adjust to your tastes. (This is what I love about this blog--so different from my regular job editing recipes and measuring tablespoons of olive oil, etc.)

Tomatillo Salsa (Salsa Verde) a la Jes
Yields: about 4 cups

olive oil or other cooking oil if you object to the taste of olive
1/2 onion, diced
a few cloves garlic, minced
1 pound fresh tomatillos, diced or grated
3 hatch chiles, hot, mild or a mix, or 2 to 3 poblanos, roasted and diced
1 lime
1 bunch cilantro
Salt

Heat up some olive oil. Just a couple tablespoons. Add the onion and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.
Add the tomatillo and cook about 10 minutes. Mixture will start to really meld together.
Add the chiles. Simmer it all together for awhile...Don't overdo it or it will start to dry out. Probably no more than half an hour.
At some point, add a squeeze of lime juice and season with salt.
Turn off the heat and stir in cilantro. This is really up to you how much you use. I would use nearly a whole bunch. You can use either just the leaves, if you are patient enough to pull them all off, or just chop up the leafy top with a bit of stem. If you don't love cilantro, use considerably less.
Let it sit off the heat for awhile. At least 20 minutes or so.
Depending on your preference, you might want to blend it up in a food processor or blender. But I like it chunky.
Serve as a topping for enchiladas, burritos, eggs, or chill and use as dip.

Bloody, bloody plums

In the middle of cooking my tortilla and cheese dinner the other night, I had to run to the store because my dog was out of chicken. While I was there I decided we needed something sweet...I was out of chocolate chips, my usual snack. There are no bulk bins at Ridiculous Randalls, so all I had was produce. So I got a bunch of plums.

When I was a kid plums were my favorite fruit ever. I have such vivid memories of standing in front of the fridge and chowing them down on hot summer days. But I've struggled to recapture that flavor. I don't know if plums are going downhill in general or maybe we just had really good ones in Vermont?

I took a chance and got three, which I decided I would cook and then eat on one of the homemade tortillas--it would be a little makeshift crostata/tart. I sliced them into thin wedges and cooked them with a generous squeeze of lemon juice and a few spoonfuls of turbinado sugar. I cooked until the juice got sticky and they were quite jelly-like and glazed.

For the "crust" I rolled out a slightly thicker tortilla, and heated up little canola oil in my nonstick pan (I had visions of a puffy, fritter-like crust but there was no way I was deep frying...way too messy, fattening, and hot...but maybe with a little oil I'd get some richness). I cooked the tortilla and topped it with the hot plums, and sprinkled them with a little more sugar. It looked great:

Put it in the fridge to cool down. After dinner we shared it. Well, it was amazing. The plums seemed to be both more sweet and more sour than when fresh. They actually slightly burned my tongue--in a fabulous way. I was glad I hadn't added cinnamon or vanilla as I'd been thinking of. They were pure and perfect, like the plums of childhood summers but on steroids. The tortilla didn't really add much for me, but Scott liked it a lot.

A couple days later I cooked up a big batch of plums in the same way. This time they came out even better, not sure why. The color was the most beautiful electric red--the perfect thing to eat while watching my current favorite show True Blood! I dished out a bowlful, and poured a glass of my red hibiscus tea (in a light blue glass so that it appeared even darker red)!

Unfortunately my camera can't capture the brilliance, but it was fabulous. I cheesily savored every tongue-searing, sweetly acidic bite. A poor substitute for a nice bottle of O negative, but still good.

Homemade cheese, curdly fun

The other night when I made tortillas, I also made cheese. Nothing fabulous, but it was technically curdled milk, and it tasted pretty good.

What I made was basically paneer, the kind of cheese they use in Indian food (saag paneer, etc). I found a recipe but it didn't work so I won't link to it. Fortunately, I saw my friend Charlie make this a couple years ago, so I knew what was going wrong and how to fix it.

The first thing you do is heat up some milk. I did four cups of 2%. When it just starts to boil, I was told to add 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice. Well this did nothing...the milk just kept on foaming. I squeezed in a whole lemon until it looked the way it did when Charlie made it, like this:

Then I lined a colander with a (clean) dishtowel and poured the mixture through, and squeezed till it looked like this.

Then I sort of rinsed the curds a little and wrapped the towel around the stuff to make a ball, and squeezed and rinsed some more so it would be cool enough to handle. Then I hung it up from a cabinet handle with my iPod cord for like...it said 20 minutes but I had it up there a lot longer.

Finally I took it down (not a lot of liquid drained out during its hanging, but this is what the recipe said to do, and Charlie did it, so...) and took the curds out and...Well I struggled with how to proceed at this point. I needed to compress them into a firm block. I eventually settled on putting them in a Tupperware, with another Tup over them (fitting inside) and on top of that, a pot of black beans that were soaking for the next day:

I let it sit this way for like 20 minutes while I did other stuff. Then I took the patty o' cheese out by inverting the container and whacking it. Then I cut the sucker into little cubes. I could have eaten them at this point, but wanted them to be a little more appetizing and snazzy, so I toasted them on a dry skillet. They browned up nicely, and I sprinkled them with kosher salt while they were still hot. I wanted to use Adobo seasoning, but that would be against the spirit of this project.

And that is it. They were so good and perfect for our dinner. They were slightly chewy and crumbly, I'm not sure they could have melted, like I I had wanted to do quesadillas, but maybe I'll try it sometime. Here is how they ended up in our finished dinner.

Next time: a recipe for tomatillo poblano sauce! (the green component).

Those are the homemade tortillas, and there are two fried eggs under there, then the sauce, cheese and avos.