Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Calm Between the Storms

Calm Between the Storms


The weather is crisp and Thanksgiving has come and gone. It’s the calm between storms. The first round of marathon cooking is behind us, and the next round is about to begin. When I was growing up, I would help my mother in the kitchen to have something to do. I enjoyed the flurry of activity: the chopping, the stirring, the mixing. My mother always made interesting dishes. She lived in Morocco for her early years, so I was exposed to things like couscous and stuffed grape leaves and pomegranates at an early age. One of my favorite desserts is homemade baklava. The honey and pistachios combined in phyllo dough blend together perfectly.

Helping in the kitchen as a boy instilled in me a love of great food. Through the years many of my close friends have studied the culinary arts. Each one has passed on various bits of knowledge and inspired me to be creative in the kitchen. I’ve learned how to make homemade sushi, pasta, tamales, and baklava. All are well worth the effort, but my favorite foods are the simple ones—a tomato picked from the vine, grilled zucchini straight from the garden, blueberries right from the bush.

Food for me is about pleasure—mmmm, bacon—as well as sustenance. Too much of a good thing can be bad. I’m into moderation and real foods. My grandmother always cooked with margarine, but I prefer butter. My mother-in-law uses Splenda, but I like to use raw sugar. I’m always leery of products with too many unrecognizable ingredients and like to use foods with ingredients that don’t come from a laboratory. I like my animals to have had a relatively enjoyable existence and prefer to stay away from ingesting too many antibiotics and hormones and genetically modified foods—a task that is becoming increasingly difficult if you shop at a store. It just seems like common sense to me.

As I gear up for another round of marathon kitchen aerobics, I’ll be enjoying a handful of pomegranate seeds as I make homemade peppermint bark, chocolate macaroons, and pistachio biscotti. It’s a wonderful time of year.

Geoff

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Food, Glorious Food


Food, Glorious Food

This is my first blog entry for Running Press and what I hope to communicate in these few short words is an appreciation for cooking and well prepared food. Sure, it's nice to have a healthy appetite and enjoy sitting down to a favorite dish, but what I most enjoy is the creation of a meal from start to finish and the happy faces of those I've been fortunate to cook for.

I grew up in a food family, in fact I learned to cook, and I mean really experiment with ingredients and food pairing from a very early age. My grandfather ran a small Italian restaurant in north Jersey and as a young boy I would spend every possible waking moment at his side, he would take me everywhere on his rounds whenever he could: Mondays during the summer we would leave home at 4:00 a.m. and head to the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan to buy the freshest fish; Tuesday's we would make the rounds to various purveyors; Wednesday mornings I would watch as my grandfather made dough for bread, pasta, and pizzas, peel onions, make home made tomato sauce (not gravy, this was north Jersey after all).  I was his "little helper" as his customers came to call me.

What I hadn't realized at the time was that I was receiving the greatest education ever. He was a great teacher, his patience with me as I made mistakes along the way never wavered. I look back on the time spent cooking with my grandfather fondly.

One of the very first things I learned to make alongside Pop was pizza, very basic cheese pizza. The dough was always just right, the tomato sauce was fresh, homemade and wonderfully seasoned, and he used only the best mozzarella as a topping...and it was always cooked to perfection in a blazing hot pizza oven. This past weekend I tried my hand at my own pizza making prowess in my own wood-burning backyard pizza oven that I received as a birthday gift from my partner. I'll tell you that kneading the pizza dough, prepping the sauce, and then enjoying it fresh right from the oven brought me back to my childhood. It was truly a moment of pure and simple joy. 

Today, when I cook in the kitchen I use a cookbook in the way that Pop did, both for instruction and also inspiration. I will take a recipe and instinctively reshape it and tailor to my tastes...more garlic perhaps?  Nowadays I like to think that I'm a natural in the kitchen and I'm proud to say that I can pretty much make a really good meal from whatever might be in the fridge or pantry. I have my grandfather to thank for one of the greatest gifts, a true appreciation of food, artful preparation and presentation.

My future blog posts will vary, I'll touch on some of my favorite recipes, the very active food scene in my adopted city (Philadelphia), and other food related stuff. I'm really excited to be a part of Running Press Cooks.com and glad you're along for the ride.

Craig, @craigphilly1
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Monday, November 21, 2011

Boozy Milk Punch, and Other Foods in Jars


Friends and readers: hello! On Mondays I’ll recap edible adventures from the weekend. That’s when I have time to while away the hours trying authors’ recipes that have been bouncing around in my head.
To distract myself from packing for Thanksgiving, I dreamed up Christmas food gifts and got to work. First it was chocolate-covered pretzels (for neighbors and dog walkers) rolled in coconut, pulverized gingersnaps, grey sea salt, and or vanilla sugar: a meditative process if there ever were one. I considered what I would wear in our Christmas card pictures. And how will I dress the dog?
Next was a spicy cinnamon-vanilla simple syrup to be canned and gifted—but we’ll come back to this. After the syrup was cranberry ketchup from the Food in Jars cookbook: tart, plummy, and thick, canned into about 5 half-pints. You’ll have to wait for the book for this recipe, but I tweaked it with a little orange juice and an extra cinnamon stick. A fun/macabre aside: the splattery cranberry skins and seeds you’ll scrape into the bin will look like someone bled out in your house. What will the sanitation workers think?
Back to the syrup: I simmered, oh, 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar for every cup of water, and threw in cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods (but briefly—they can overpower), some heavenly vanilla beans, and whole cloves. I did my math wrong and instead of 6 half-pints, I got 7 halvsies and 1 whole pint. No matter! Here is the real reason for this post: a boozy milk punch that will fortify and sustain, no matter where you’re feasting come Thursday.
For a boozy punch base: stir together approximately 4 ounces of a flavored simple syrup (for a moderately sweet drink), 4 ounces brandy, scant 6 ounces bourbon, and 3 splashes of apple schnapps or liqueur. Throw some ice in a glass with 4 ounces of milk and 2 to 4 ounces of the punch. This will practically conjure holiday cheer out of thin air for you and a couple of friends. Refrigerate any leftover boozy punch and drink as needed with milk. (And the cinnamon syrup isn’t just a cocktail supplement: it’s delish in coffee, in sparkling water, on pancakes, or in a mug of tea.)
Safe travels and good food,
Kristen

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