How To Eat (that)

We've been cooking. We've been cooking a lot. We made a one-day-a-week restaurant in a pizza joint. We went down to California and cooked food for 2,000 at Phelp's Winery. We've taught cooking classes. I taught a class on dim sum. I've served, I've cooked, I've chefed, I've bussed. I've marveled at my husband's ability to remain cool and charming through equipment breakdowns, food shortages and my unwaivering inability to wait tables.

Now we're opening a restaurant.

From when I started this weblog until now, my perspective on food has changed quite a bit. Life on the other side of the apron is a laborious one. Food, as it goes out the kitchen door, isn't as interesting as when it arrives at your plate. Cooking for reals is hard. In reading other weblogs about food, I have found a severe and passionate hate for most food writing. From the New York Times to the lady who insists on calling herself girl, I have learned to roll my eyes away from the pages upon pages of food drivel.

It is no compliment to call someone a foodie. Indeed, should you be called a foodie by someone wearing a white apron, you are being sneered at.

So, how does one write about food without turning the subject into a precious little princess never to be treated like the dirty little commodity that she is?

This, my friends, is something that I have wondered about for nearly a year.

In reading My Years in France, by Julia Child, I was struck by the fact that she was, in many ways, the first famous foodie. Where she was once completely ignorant about food, she wormed her way into the kitchen and into chefdom. She was, however, not a chef of the people.

She didn't have to work along side crass cooks who can only pronounce the unlatin names for genitalia. She didn't have food return to the kitchen because the salad didn't display enough feta. She never saw the scowl of over-entitled diners who consider themselves experts in something they've never done. Julia Child never poured half a pitcher of beer down a woman's back (on accident - really). I love what she did for our country, but she was a home cook and a home cook she will remain.

I've come to dislike food television for all of it's cake making contests and pedestrian shows put on by pedestrian hosts with perky smiles and no skill. Anthony Bourdain? Predictable, snot-nosed brat (but at least he's cut himself while working). Andrew Zimmer? How many gross things can that man eat and why can't he learn the appropriate etiquette for eating them? In the end, food has stopped being entertaining to me.

My mother, who died in April, used to consider cooking as her form of prayer. I've come to agree with her. True cooking, true creation is not nearly as exciting as tantrums and flailing about. It's quiet and it's sacred. Even, as I've come to learn from my husband, in the restaurant kitchen.

Still it remains – the question – how do you write about food without the trite goo that sticks to your fingers as you type?

I don't know. I will keep trying.

After roasting the Ballotine in the oven, Erik de-glazed the skillet by putting it over heat and whisking in red wine and chicken broth (made from the bones from the chicken) and a teaspoon of flour.

The crispy bits – the roasted garlic and roasting juices – combined with the liquids and stomped out a powerful gravy.

Once the sauce thickened, Erik added a shot of Clear Creek Apple Brandy .

Served over the sliced Ballotine, life got really, really, really good.

How quickly can you bone out a chicken? Jacques Pepin can rip the flesh from a chicken in less than 90 seconds. Me? 9 minutes plus a running start of prayer and bribes.

Boning out a chicken is the first step to Chicken Ballotine – a bird that is stuffed, rolled and trussed up tighter that a hussy on Halloween.

Then comes the stuffing of roasted sweet potato in one half of the bird and lentils and mustard greens in the other. Each leg has it’s own flavor which is kind of exciting for those of us with limited attention spans.

The trussing has always gotten me in trouble, causing the bird to look like a Picasso Ballotine –a disfigured but essentially good thing that makes for an interesting presentation. This past Ballotine, knot gods behind me, the thing looked (mmostly) right.


























Ballotine Stuffing:
Roasted sweet potato with caramelized red onion

Black lentils and mustard greens sautéed with garlic and salt

We roasted the thing at 350° for nearly 90 minutes.

If I had to do all over again, I’d lower the temperature a bit on the back side of the cooking time.

The lemons added to the skillet roast beautifully and go well is duck cracklins, should you have them about.

We had a happy growing and gathering moment the other day. Erik and I found a quince tree on our property.

We had also harvested our tomatoes. The Seattle tomatoes did relatively nothing on the vine. Some had been volunteers (they tasted terrible) others were simply under ripe. The cherry and yellow plum tomatoes did the best.

Our Eastern Washington garden produced tons of stewing tomatoes and a few white heirloom tomatoes. In the end, with our travel schedule, we had to stew, puree, strain and freeze everything.

So this is what happened:
Half an onion
Two pounds of yellow tomatoes
A whole quince, cut in two
Some salt
Olive oil to coat

Roast at 350° until soft (about and hour)

Puree.

Strain.

Taste.

Should be tart and bright and perfect over an artichoke heart dressing or over roasted leg of lamb.

The simple beauty of a hotdog is an American Truth. In a time when being an American means something different than it used to, the hotdog still stands proud to be at the ballpark, the county fair and the Costco. The hotdog doesn’t question or have political agendas. It just wants to experience the traditions of this country with everyone who can stand to eat mystery animal bits.

The American Truths at Costco have become a dicey little game for us. Before leaving Missoula yesterday, we went and got a hotdog at Costco. It was early, but we were hungry and no longer willing to spend our money on the restaurants of The Most Food Forsaken Town of America.

We’ve danced this hot waltz with the devil before. Eat the hotdog. Release the hotdog. Regret hotdog.

But they’re only a buck a piece!

So we go back. Still we load the sucker up with mustard and saurkraut and we one-two –three-it into the phrase Never Again.

What draws us back to the Costco hotdog?

I’ll tell you what it is: Because they’re there. They aren’t loyal to you, but they’re there.