Deep Fried Goodness

What is it about hot oil that makes things taste so good? At least I think they taste good. At the Del Mar Fair each year there is always some new item that has been deep fried. I hear the latest thing to hit the grease was the ignoble twinkie. You can have my twinkie, deep fried or otherwise. I will save the calories for something that actually tastes good.

As a child, fish and chips was one of my favorite comfort foods. Some renditions were so-so. Some were worthy of permanent recollection in childhood's best tastes. There was H.Salt Esquire (o.k), Mr. Fish and Chips (better), and Arthur Treacher's (the best). Who knew that an old English character actor would run such a great "chippie." The reason that fish tastes so good deep fried is that the batter completely seals the piece of fish. Every bit of flavor is encapsulated within the jacket of batter. The fish also retains every bit of moisture.

The English and Irish really do a nice job of fish and chips. Most often, the fish of choice in the chippies (chippers in Ireland) is spiny dogfish, a type of bottom dwelling shark. It is very good. In Ensenada fish taco stands they use "anjelito" or little angel for their fish of choice. This is the angel shark, another type of bottom dwelling shark. They are neither little nor angelic looking. In the UK and Ireland you will also find cod and skate wing. Skate is a type of ray, and is pretty tasty. The down side is the bones which are long and thin and run the length of the wing.

I have wonderful memories of a cold wet January in Ireland with my daughters Allison and Erika. We found two orders of fish and chips made a satisfying and inexpensive meal. There are two famous purveyors of fried fish in Dublin, Beshoff's and Leo Burdock's. Burdock's was founded in 1913 and has been in the same place ever since. Beshoff's near the O'Connell street spire was founded in 1916. Skip Beshoff's altogether. Go to Leo Burdocks. Delicious, full fillets of cod with crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside chips. By the way, do not ask for catsup. And certainly do not ask for tartar sauce. They will give you a hostile glare and point to some nasty packets in a bin. You don't need catsup or tartar sauce. The crispy, steamy, fresh fish and ethereal potatoes are best with a sprinkle of salt and a splash of malt vinegar. The down side to Burdock's is they have no tables, not even a place to stand and eat. Take your paper wrapped comfort food and find a curb or a park bench and chow down. We ate ours on a curb in front of one of the swankiest hotels in Dublin. I think we looked like little tourist urchins eating our peasant food. How rewarding to be a peasant.

I love to make fish and chips at home. At the Sun Street chippie we also cook onions in the batter (from what my guests tell me, the best onion rings ever), also try trimmed whole green onions, and green beans. Yes, you heard correctly. Green beans. Even people that swear they don't like green beans like these. Slices of zucchini, slices of acorn squash, and mushrooms all equally enjoy a battered hot oil spa treatment. Here are a few suggestions that can get you frying in no time.

1) Cook outside. Let me repeat that. Cook outside. The oil goes airborne and will cover every surface in your house. It doesn't wipe off. Do you want a fine coating of oil on your Van Gogh canvas in the living room? The smell will also linger for a week.

2) I use a propane burner outside that will give me sufficient heat. You need to cook at 375 degrees. NO COOLER. Use a candy thermometer if you lack experience.

3) Use a high quality vegetable oil (no canola), or peanut oil. Peanut oil is expensive but good at high temperatures and imparts no other flavors to the food.

4) Cook fries first. They take three to four times longer to cook than the fish. Veggies take about twice as long as fish. In your cooking progression start potatoes first, keep them in the oven on warm while veggies cook, then cook the fish.

5) Use a fresh, good quality white fish. Bass, cod, rock fish, halibut (halibut is insanely good made into chips), or ling cod (another favorite of mine, can be hard to find). Slice it into 1 1/2 inch strips for even coating and cooking.

6) Make a beer batter. Roughly 3 cups of flour. 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, dash of pepper, and 2/3 bottle of ice cold beer. My own personal favorite is Newcastle Brown Ale. It imparts a malty, rich flavor. The batter takes a little experience to read. Play with it. It should not be to thick. You want the batter light and airy. On the other hand, too thin, and the batter will run off without coating and remaining till being placed in the hot oil. Whisk ingredients together.

7) Buy a spider. Don't get ahead of yourselves bug-haters and arachnophobics. A spider is a cooking tool sold in Asian markets with a wire basket secured to a bamboo handle. The best tool for deep frying, especially if you do not own a "dedicated" single tasker deep fryer.

Go do a little tempura. But please, keep the twinkies out of my hot oil. That is just wrong somehow.

Friends For Lunch

On my Facebook page I commented we were having friends for lunch. My friend Scott retorted back, "do you like your friends sauteed or fried?" I suppose I ought to be more careful with my speech. We had friends over to enjoy lunch, not "we had friends for lunch." Radio commentator Dennis Prager frequently calls attention to the lack of precision in much of our communication. Something to ponder........................

What does one call a meal at two in the afternoon? Late lunch? Early dinner? We know the term for the meal done a little earlier-"brunch." Breakfast lunch. I believe we had "linner." Mexican Caesar salad, chiles rellenos, fresh tortillas, mixed fruit brought by Mike and Tara that included watermelon and cantaloupe from their home garden, lemon verbena agua fresca, and last but certainly not least a proper English trifle (even made in the special pedestaled trifle bowl). I think it was Brian and Hillary's best trifle ever. That is saying quite a lot as I have had some amazing trifles from the Harrison kitchen, but this one topped them all. A serious English trifle is nothing to be trifled with. Sorry, I just couldn't resist. Care to make some of this at home?

Lemon Verbena agua fresca:

I learned this one from my dear friend Mia McCarville, owner of Cedros Gardens in Solana Beach. She always has some creative teas and infusions going on. This is properly an infusion and could not be easier to make. They serve a tea at the duly famous Chez Pannise in Berkeley made from lemon verbena that is always in high demand.

Have you ever smelled lemon verbena (botanical name "aloysia triphylla")? If you have I am sure you have never forgotten the experience. It is a very easily grown herb hardy to zone 9. Originally from South America, it has been grown in Europe since the 16th century. It isn't grown because it is a garden stunner. It won't win any competitions for its looks. It doesn't need to. The smell is all it needs to win a place in your garden. The fragrance is hard to describe. First, it comes across fresh and clean. That is about the only way I can put it. Fresh, clean. And of course there is a scent reminiscent of lemons. Lemons yes, but more than citrus. Hints of spearamint, or yerba buena. Sue thinks it is slightly evocative of sage. It is a delicious perfume.

To make 1 gallon of Lemon Verbena water:

1 gallon purified or other good quality water (if you have tasted San Diego tap water, you understand why I make this distinction)

2 cups lemon verbena leaves stemmed and chopped into roughly 1/2 pieces

Allow leaves to infuse into the water for about three hours for best taste.

It is not necessary to "sun brew" this. Strain and serve cold. You may add a bit of simple syrup if you like your tea sweet, but it is really quite unnecessary. It is delicious as is.

This drink goes so well with Mexican or spicy food. Before summer is over, have some on a hot, humid day. You will be astounded at how refreshing this beverage is. I am grabbing a glass and heading for the hammock.

The Simple Things

One of the greatest joys of gardening is the ability to produce something extremely simple but so profoundly exquisite it can not be had anywhere at any price. That is the report from the garden this week. I want to share with you 4 items that may seem lowly and common, but that soar to stratospheric heights of flavor. Heights unattainable despite years of culinary training. These sublime moments of flavor met each other in one solitary week. And God was the chef. I want to talk about corn, pluots, oranges, and figs.

It has been a good week here at Papa John's Farm. That is Christiana's name for our little place.

Sweet Corn:
Sunday evening I brought corn on the cob to church for pot luck. Small ears, only a scant five inches long. Yellow and white bi-color. Extra sugar gene for sugar enhanced sweetness. If you enjoyed one, you know what I am talking about. One hour from field to table. The sweetest, most tender corn I have ever eaten. No one put butter or salt on their corn. It was beyond perfect as it was. If you want to try this for next year plant a short day variety. For San Diego it should be 65 days or less.

Oranges:
We brought oranges to a birthday party as our food contribution. What Oranges!!!!!Midnight, sweet seedless Valencia orange. The color of this orange is a deep, reddish orange, maybe three shades darker than any other Valencia I have seen. No Seeds! Did you hear that? No Seeds. Extremely rare for a Valencia. Very floral overtones, extremely sweet, intense Spanish orange scent. So juicy you will need paper towels around to prepare the fruit for the table. This tree was nearly killed in a tree felling incident two years ago. I am so glad it survived; there is no comparable orange I have ever discovered.

Pluots:
Three years ago we planted six pluot trees in my Father's yard. He is becoming quite the fruit orchardist now. If you have never had a pluot from a home orchard make friends with someone who has some. Better yet, go buy a couple of trees. Pluots are 2/3 plum and 1/3 apricot in their breeding. Huge, incredibly colored fruit, in many shapes and sizes. The thing I love is the complexity of flavor. Tart skin with sweet flesh that is almost too sweet. Lots of floral notes. Rich musky undertones on some. You really can't describe the flavor. Just get your hands on some.

Figs:
The best for last. Our first figs of the season ripened today. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden fig leaves became the first clothing in history. At the British Museum, artful fig leaves were always at arms length to provide "cover" for art pieces should ladies be present in Victorian times. In biblical times figs provided shade as well as fruit. Figs were used fresh, dried, and made into cakes. In fact they were a staple in the Hebrew diet. Fig trees were so prized that they became symbols of peace and prosperity. God told Moses that in Canaan each man would be under his own vine and under his own fig tree. A fig tree became a symbol of God's care and provision. A fig tree was more than a mere plant in the garden. It was a an arboreal gift from YHWH. Today we picked our first Tuscan Strawberry fig and a few large, plump, amber colored honey figs. Bonaventura and Mary Lane respectively. These trees are perhaps more cherished by me due to their scarcity. Impossible to find at any price. Three years ago there were four available all year: one for me, one for my brother Chris' birthday, and two for Tom and Kay Chino at world famous Chino Farms. That is scarcity. I am still looking for one for my mother. I am afraid if you want one, you must go the very end of the line.

For dinner: Mary Lane figs drizzled with a little barrel aged balsamic vinegar paired with a Devonshire farm cheese with dried cranberries from England that I have been aging since last December. Such simplicity, but the combination of the cheese, the balsamic, and the figs is ten times more than the mere sum of their parts. Delightful.

God of Heaven and Earth, thank you, that I may sit under my own vine and under my own fig tree. Thank you for the loved ones in my life with whom I can share such sublimely simple delights.

Some weeks in the garden are like this, but not many. Not many at all.

Cioppino: What a Noble Use for Those Tomatoes

On Thursday I wrote about the beauty of perfect tomatoes. I was shopping at my local market yesterday and looked at what passes for tomatoes for non-gardeners. I do not mean to take an elitist stance here toward people that buy their tomatoes. Rather, I am sad for them. What mealy, tough, thick skinned, unripened plastic spheres they must suffer with. To have the luxury of using fresh, ripe tomatoes from the garden for pedestrian use such as spaghetti sauce or in this recipe's case-cioppino, what a delightful decadence. I almost feel guilty. I said "almost."

I have a confession to make. For all cooking other than baking I never use any recipe. I'll explain sometime why using a recipe in baking IS supremely important, but not today. The difficulty comes when I have prepared something people enjoy and they ask for the "recipe." I'm certain that request is met by some dumb looks on my part. I just go into the kitchen and create. So..........therefore it is sometimes tough to translate a dish to the language of a recipe. Does that make sense?

Cioppino, I start with a large stock pot. I saute 1 large sweet Maui onion along with 6-7 pressed garlic cloves in 2 tbsps good quality olive oil. After the onions and garlic are translucent I add 1 cup Marsala wine, 1/2 c Grahams port, 1 c Chardonnay wine, reduce by about a third. I then filled a standard size stock pot (10"w x 7"h) to 51/2 " with assorted tomatoes. And I do mean assorted. Each brings distinct color and flavor, so I like the variety. Cook on very low heat for 4-5 hours. Put it in the fridge covered overnight.

Have you noticed that Lasagna, spaghetti sauce and many other tomato dishes taste better the next day. A recent article in Bon Apetit explained the chemistry and affirmed the urban legend. It does taste better the next day because of the marriage and interaction of all the flavors. So......put your dish in the fridge overnight.

The next day, press all the contents through a food mill. Discard the skins and seeds. Add 1 quart + 1 cup chicken stock to the stock pot and reduce by 25%. Now add some salt and pepper to taste. Add your favorite herbs. I used about 2 T fresh basil, maybe a little more. 1 T fresh English thyme, 1 T fresh lime thyme, 1 T fresh parsley, 1 T fresh summer savory. Do the herbs according to your own taste. Toward the end add, 6 oz. heavy cream.

Last step: SEAFOOD. That is the highlight of this dish. I added 1 1/2 cubed halibut, 1 pound Mexican white shrimp, 1 pound medium scallops, 1 pound cleaned calamari, 1/2 pound cleaned small octopus, 1/2 pound small bay shrimp, and 1/2 pound mussels. I wish I had added more mussels. They totally make the dish. Just before adding the seafood heat the soup base to very high simmer. Next, add the thawed seafood. DO NOT OVERCOOK. The seafood should cook in less than five minutes. Turn off the heat. Heat some really good bread and buckle your seat belts.

This is an extravagant, expensive, and time consuming dish. Invite some friends over that mean a lot to your life and share it with them. Show them you care for and love them by serving them this dish. I may do this only once a year. Celebrate and enjoy the feast!

For a wine. I will throw you a ringer. Serve ice cold sparkling red sweet wine or "soft red" Lambrusco. Trader Joe's has nice ones imported from Italy for around $5.00. It goes so well with the cioppino.

What music for the meal? A little Beppe Gambetta instrumental or some Andrea Boccelli. A trip to the Amalfi coast for less than $50.00. Mangia!!

Goodbye Tomatoes, It Was Great While It Lasted

I picked the last of the tomatoes this week, along with the peppers. One of the tragedies and sorrows of this world is that things come to an end. Tomato plants only go so long. They begin to slow fruit production, they fall prey to disease and eventually just shut down. Sobering thought to ponder: it sounds just like your life and mine. I hope you celebrate every day of your life. As long as my tomatoes bless me with fruit I celebrate them.

I don't use the word celebrate lightly. I fondly recall a meal at Abolonetti on fisherman's wharf in Monterey. It was one of the best meals of my life. I can still taste it. Great meals are like that, aren't they? Time is frozen. Ten years later, my taste buds still react to the memory of that magical meal. One of the high points of lunch was a perfect tomato. Perfection in breeding, size, flavor, and ripeness. One large tomato. Cubed, drizzled with balsamic vinegar, framed with a chiffonade of sweet basil leaves. It was heavenly. I knew something special had happened. Sand-dabs with beurre blanc, very nice rice pilaf, and one, solitary, perfect tomato. In that moment, I knew I had found the culinary "holy grail." A perfect meal. Oh, how rarely that ever happens in a lifetime. According to my wife, everyone around me knew I was in a rapturous state of gastronomic euphoria as well.

The tomatoes this year were worthy of that marvelous ethereal tomato of my past. Black Krim, a Russian heirloom. Deep, dark, chocolaty red. Meaty, almost no seeds. Large, irregularly shaped. You would never buy this tomato if you saw it in a market, not on a bet. But taste it........a little salt, maybe a little balsamic. Let it linger in your mouth. WOW!!! This tomato will make all the sensors and buds in your mouth go "red-phone." Trust me when I say your tongue won't know what hit it. It has suffusions and subtleties of musky delight that make your eyes nearly roll back in your head. Super yields on top of all that. It makes you thank God above and Ronald Reagan that the "cold war" ended. This tomato immigrated to the U.S. after glasnost. It is probably the best tasting tomato I have ever tried.

Pink Caspian. It sounds like a character form a C.S. Lewis novel. Thank the USSR again. What were they doing over there? Breeding tomatoes next to the missile siloes? Huge, a pound or better, meaty, almost seedless fruits. Soft, pinky red. And FLAVOR. Utterly delicious.

Jubilee, a new one to me. The color was sensational. A bright, clear, intense yellow, yellow- orange. Large fruits, again, almost no seeds. Very thin skinned, long-keeping. These were perhaps our favorites this year. Not large amounts of fruit, but oh those that were there. They were so bright they were like sentinels. On a plate they were electric and vibrant. So many evenings those bright yellow lights were the highlight of the evening meal.

Goodbye tomatoes. Till next year..............if God wills.

Dinner Last Night: Cappellini with fresh basil pesto with grilled chicken breast

People really need to grow basil. It is the easiest vegetable or herb to start from seed. One packet of seed can yield a garden full of herb. My son-in-law Jerry is a pesto fanatic and he does a nice job of it. They usually buy basil in plastic bags in the produce section. It is frightfully expensive. A few ounces for $3.99. For around three dollars you can get a few dozen plants from one seed packet. Another advantage to starting plants from seed is, your selection of varieties is greatly expanded. This year we planted "Parfumo di Genovese." Loosely translated "Perfume of Genoa." It grew better than many varieties we have planted in the past and had less flower production.

Yesterday the basil needed a haircut, so the barber of Seville visited, gave the plants a haircut and left beautiful basil leaves to turn into pesto. It makes a great dinner. The whole process took less than half an hour.

Basil Pesto

1 cup toasted pine nuts (you may substitute almonds at lower cost)
2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup grated pecorino romano cheese
5 cups washed and drained basil leaves
1 cup washed and drained parsley leaves
4 cloves garlic
1/4 cup good quality olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Pulse pressed garlic in food processor, add basil and parsley leaves. Pulse till finely chopped, add pine nuts, then cheese, continuing to pulse and blend ingredients.

Add lemon juice. Run processor while slowly blending in the oil. Adjust oil by feel and look.

Cook angel hair to al dente. Massage the pesto into the pasta with gloved hands. Top with char-grilled chicken and more romano cheese.

Eat!!!! What a great supper that was. Add a nice 3-4 oz glass of Pinot noir to keep the blood vessels open. Yum.

Still Weeding................Six trashcans full and counting.

Where do all these weeds come from? Harvested some gorgeous beets from the upper garden while I was weeding. Have you ever eaten roasted beets? They are fabulous. Recipe to follow. I have a badminton game to run to.

Weeds, Water, and Work

My garden is in dreadful shape right now. After such a glorious and productive spring and early summer everything has gone kaddywhampus. How could this have happened? I went on a tiny vacation. While I was away San Diego had a heat wave along with steamy air. My babies, all those yummy veggies, luscious, fragrant tomatoes, and luxurious strawberries suffered. My arch enemies, the weeds and grasses benefited from the greenhouse conditions and grew to Jack-in-the-beanstalk proportions. I am discouraged. When I am discouraged I become complacent. Complacency leads to less labor................arghhhhhhh!!!!! What a vicious cycle.

Get out there. Adjust the watering. Add some heads or emitters. WEED THE GARDEN!!!! Do not be discouraged. Why you ask? Well, the best planting weather of the year is fast approaching. Heard the expression "timing is everything?" Very true in trapeze. Also true in gardening. Weed, prep the soil, check your watering. Wednesday is greenery pick-up day, so I want to get all the cans full and out to the curb. You should too.

Good Morning, What's for Breakfast (at least the coffee is good)

We had a brief overnight visit from some new dear friends. Nathan, his wife Amber, and April members of Matthew Fite's church spent the night at our home after a week in Mexico. I love Mexico, its people, the land and its beauty, and its OCEAN with its productive waters. As much as I love much of Mexico, there are the parts that appall me; putting used toilet paper in a trash can (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?), the dust and dirt that clings to every square inch of everything, the squalor, the corruption. When I return across that invisible and yet so very real demarcation we call the border I want to get on my knees and kiss the ground.

My wife's cousin David climbed Everest a few years back. He recalls how indescribably filthy and unsanitary Kathmandu was. Then he started trekking to the mountains was shocked beyond belief how utterly disgusting the inns were as he ascended the Himalayas. Lice, bed bugs, rotten food, privies (if one could call them that) that had not been cleaned in two centuries. When he returned to Kathmandu he thought he had gone to heaven. Never saw anything so clean and lovely in his life. Everything is relative I suppose.

What nice thing do you do for folks that have roughed it in Mexico all week. First, let them take a shower. For our friend's first breakfast back on American soil, Sue suggested I make breakfast sandwiches for them. Great idea. On a Sunday morning? In a pastor's home on Sunday morning? Forget about it. Terrible idea. We had a cold breakfast cereal buffet.

If............I had prepared breakfast sandwiches I would do so as follows:

Use croissant, nothing else will do. Croissants are $5.50 a dozen at Costco for pete's sake, and they are very, very good.

Canadian bacon or cook up some bacon.

Pan fry eggs (I like my yolks slightly runny)

Cheese. Yes, say cheeeeeeeeese with me. Maybe some kerrygold cheedar, gruyere, swiss, havarti, goats milk edom is great.

A little bit of mayo, some dijon.

25 seconds in the Micro.

Voila!!!

At the men's breakfast I prepare each week this is always a favorite.

We viewed the film Julie and Julia last evening. A very delightful film, even Sam liked it. I was ready to rush off to Paris by the end of the film. As a child I used to watch Graham Kerr, Julia Child, and later Jaques Pepin. They made food come alive. They enjoyed the preparation as much as the dining. Cooking was fun and it was art. These three chefs were the seed of all things culinary in my life. It brought back a lot of memories seeing those black and white episodes of Julia in the kitchen. Graham Kerr would always get someone out of the audience and invite them to a tiny table to eat the meal he prepared. I always wanted to be the one to share that meal!

One of the most distinguishing marks of being human is the art of food. I can't be dogmatic on this, but I am pretty certain animals do not ponder the "taste" of food. They just eat. Voraciously sometimes, but without any real assessment of quality. How about the aesthetic of food? Does the dog ask for a little candlelight and soft music as he eats? Fine china and white tablecloths? Roaming violins? How about presentation? A swirl of some sauce perhaps? Flowers in the dish? Perhaps a little sprig of parsley or escarole. Which wine pairs with Alpo? James Boswell, the English author called man the "cooking animal." All living beings eat, but only man cooks.

God places hospitality as one of the highest human values. In fact, Paul in his letter to Timothy demands of elders and pastors the practice of hospitality. When are you coming over?

Starting Out

I have been cooking since I was a child. My mother just set me loose in the kitchen and I have been there ever since. Cooking a meal and sharing it with my family is my favorite way to end the day. Good food, table talk, and time around the table is the highlight of the evening. Almost everyone we know are intimidated by food preparation. My goal is to prepare delicious, nutritious, and economical meals, enjoy each other's company as we prepare the food, and thank God for His provision. I enjoy teaching other people to do the same thing.