meditations

WORST.PRESIDENT.EVER

Up to now I’ve been willing to defend Bush against the “worst president ever” argument on the grounds that Pierce, Buchanan and Harding at least deserve consideration. But as far as I’m concerned this puts him over the top

Bush war on cheese raises a stink in France

Banning Roquefort? High tariffs on truffles and foi gras and Pellegrino? I may starve!

UPDATE: While talking this over with Jodi she asked me for a one line summary of the history of this conflict. I came up with “We stuck it to the French with McDonald’s, and now are sticking it to ourselves by doing without good food.” Truly no one wins in a trade war.

Favorite Recipes #4: Indian Spiced Potatoes

My late mother gave me this, not sure of the original source.

Indian Spiced Potatoes

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon Butter (+ small amount to grease pan)
2 large onions
1 Tablespoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground tumeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2-6 cloves of garlic
Fresh ground pepper
3 large baking potatoes
1 cup heavy cream or half-et-half

Directions:
Peel onions, halve, then slice thinly crosswise.
Melt butter, add onions. Cook on medium, stirring regularly, for 30 minutes.
Peel and cut potatoes into thin slices.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl put cumin, tumeric, cayenne, salt and pepper.
Mince garlic, add to bowl. Stir.

Butter a 13" X 9" X " baking dish.

Place in half of potatoes in overlapping fashion into the pan and sprinkle with half of the spices.
Add onions and then add rest of potatoes, again in overlapping fashion.
Then add rest of spice mixture.
Pour cream over top.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for one hour.
Remove foil and cook for ten minutes to brown top.

Serves 4-6 easily.

Favorite Recipes #3: John Hinterberger's Clam Spaghetti

Speaking of having friends over for dinner the other night, here is the main course. It’s adapted from John Hinterberger’s (legendary) Clam Spaghetti recipe. Hinterberger was a long time writer for the Seattle Times and, as I remember, he would publish this on occasion with no two versions being quite the same. He would tweak the recipe over and over, sometimes there was wine, sometimes there were olives and/or pimento, etc. In his spirit I played with the recipe a bit and have settled on the following, although it’s definitely not something I follow to the letter, more of a Jazz fugue.

John Hinterberger's Clam Spaghetti

6 servings

½ cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
1 dried red chili pepper, finely chopped or 1 tsp red pepper flakes crushed
1 large onion, chopped
3-6 (to taste) large garlic cloves, minced or mashed
½ cup fresh basil leaves, chopped, or 2 tablespoons dried
2 tablespoon oregano
Salt and pepper
½ cup dry white wine
2 cans (4½ ounces) chopped clams, drained with liquid reserved
1/3 pound mushrooms, sliced
1 tablespoon butter
1 pound dried spaghetti or linguine (for this dinner I used Bucati)
Grated Romano or Parmesan cheese

1. Put ½ cup olive oil in a large saute pan and heat, adding the dried chili pepper, chopped onion and garlic cloves. Cook slowly for about 30 minutes or until the onions are very soft.

2. Add to pan the basil, oregano, salt and pepper, wine and liquid from the clams. Continue to simmer until the liquid is reduced by 1/4 to 1/3. Keep warm. In the meantime, in a separate pan sauté the mushrooms in a tablespoon of butter or olive oil and add to the mixture.

3. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook spaghetti until barely al dente.

4. As pasta is cooking, add the clams and cheese to the sauce and simmer at low heat for about 5 minutes. The cheese serves as a thickener and the amount you add depends on how much you reduced the liquid. I like to reduce it by about 25% and to add about 1/4 cup of cheese.

5. After draining the pasta, stir into the sauce and toss. Sprinkle generously with grated cheese and additional pepper.

Favorite Recipes #2: Chicken Tequila Fettucine

This has been one of my favorite dishes for almost fifteen years. It comes from a restaurant in Ames, Iowa called Aunt Maud’s.

Chicken Tequila Fettuccine

Ingredients:

3-4 oz butter
4 oz tequila
4 oz soy sauce
cilantro
12 0z heavy cream
large red onion
Tri-peppers (yellow, green, red)
chicken strips from 3-4 chicken breasts

Sauce:

• Cut chicken breasts and peppers into thin strips.
• Melt butter in frying pan, add red onions and sliced peppers and chicken. Saute until onions are near translucent.
• Add the chicken at the very end, stirring a couple times until the outside of the chicken has turned white from heat.
• Add tequila and soy sauce mix to pan, along with cilantro. Heat until reduced by approximately half.
• Add cream to pan and cook on medium-high heat until cream is reduced by half. Sauce is now ready.

The above amount of sauce should go very well with 1.5-2 pounds of pasta. Note that this sauce keeps pretty well in the freezer, so you can stop at this point if that’s your goal.

Finished Dish:

• In a large pot heat approximately 6 quarts of water. You may wish to add salt and/or a dash of olive oil depending on taste.


• Add pasta (the recipe is for fettuccine but I prefer linguini and use other shapes such as fusilli regularly) and cook until al dente.


• Drain the paste.


• Add sauce to pasta, allow to stand for a few minutes to let flavors soak in.


• Garnish with fresh black pepper and parmesan cheese to taste.

Good Recipes

It likely comes from spending so much of my life in “cerebral” pursuits, but ever since graduate school I’ve enjoyed escaping into several more tangible activities, and none more than cooking.

As an oldest child with parents who were largely absent due to their complex careers, I started cooking back in high school. It was something of a chore in those days. Then again, the ‘70s weren’t exactly known for their cuisine, sigh... In any event, I began to genuinely enjoy the activity in college (particularly due to the inspiration of a good friend and talented cook himself, John Trustman. At about the same time my mother, who during my childhood seemed to consider hot dogs a food group, herself turned into an amazing cook. Mom was almost entirely what I call a “recipe cook” in that over the years she compiled detailed recipes for thousands of interesting dishes from newspapers, cookbooks — she probably had over a thousand at her death — friends and magazines.

I lean more (a lot more) towards being an “ingredients cook,” meaning someone who can throw things — particularly the sorts of fresh ingredients you can find in the PNW and at Farmer’s Markets — together without a specific plan and have it (usually) come out well . Still, over the years I’ve compiled my own extensive set of recipes, some of which I “made up” from messing with ingredients and many of which mom passed on to me (whether I wanted them or not at the time).

A lot of these recipes just live in my head, or scratched on pieces of paper in my mom’s hard to read script, so rather than let them be lost to time I’m going to make an effort to post at least one a month going forward. Enjoy!