'Twas good
Now Playing: holiday sick cooking
Topic: Cooking
The weather held out and we did go to Mig's for his 40th--he and it were jolly. We got there after the meal, so although my sweet potato pie was among ten other pies and appreciated by some, my appetizer-intended pork and rabbit rillettes didn't get eaten, although I did save some at home that we've been digging into. Only slightly like processed chicken spread, they are lovely with horseradish mustard from Drier's in Michigan.

We had bought a turkey in case the weather was too bad to travel and we could still do our own Thanksgiving so I cooked it all up the next day, with the best stuffing I ever made: day old cornbread, three kinds of crusty bread, sausage (unfortunately Jones instead of Jimmy Dean), apple, toasted pecans--it was killer. Man oh man. The best part. Felt very silly to cook such a feast the day after, though. Shameful, sorta. Something I don't tell just anyone. But with all those leftovers I made killer turkey pot pie, turkey soup and turkey chili, all good.

Now I'm planning a Christmas Eve meal at La Nonna's. I'll bring marinated squid and codfish--the rest will be takeout, but it will be lovely to spend Christmas Eve with Maria...

Merry merry.

Here turkey, turkey
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Cooking
If the snow holds off, we're going to my sister Calico's for Thanksgiving and to celebrate her husband Mig's 40th birthday. Rather than lay back and let someone else do all the cooking, he will spend the day doing one of the things he loves best, and one of the many things he does well, cooking a feast for a gang.

I love any excuse to cook (a baby shower, a New Year's party? and I get to bring something?--Hooray). And I love to cook Thanksgiving dinner, but with no dining room and only a tiny eating area in the kitchen full of two wriggly, strapping kids, I can't even have intimate dinner parties anymore, much less host holiday meals.

To Thanksgiving I will be bringing a terrine of some type, which may be oxtail if I can find some or maybe some rillettes instead. I have to shop and figure that out today as it's a bit of a project and needs to mellow a couple days before serving. I'll also be bring my killer sweet potato pie, which is not too sweet and has a flaky lard crust.

And a small turkey will hang around the Brizzi house in reserve in case the weather prohibits traveling two hours to Connecticut.

Here's my pie:

The Best Sweet Potato Pie Ever

Adapted from Big Mama's Old Black Pot (Stoke Gabriel Enterprises, 1987) by Ethel Dixon

2 medium to large sweet potatoes (1 and 1/2 lbs.)

for crust:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup chilled lard
1/4 cup water

for filling:

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1 12 oz. can evaporated milk

Preheat oven to 375?F. Scrub sweet potatoes, trim pointy ends off, and bake on a tray for about an hour or so or until soft. Lower oven temp to 350?F.

Meanwhile, make pie crust. Mix flour, salt and sugar in a medium bowl, then add the chilled lard and work quickly with your fingers until lumps shrink to pea size. Add water and mix together. The dough will be crumbly, depending on the humidity, but pat it together to make a flattish disk. Wrap in plastic wrap or wax paper and stick in the fridge to chill for half an hour.

Roll out dough on a floured flat surface (cutting board, marble slab or dishtowel-topped countertop), and put in a 9-inch pie plate, pinching up the sides so it can hold more filling.

When sweet potatoes are cool enough to handle, mash well with a potato masher or fork in the same or a fresh medium bowl. Add filling ingredients and mix well. A whisk is good. Pour into pie crust and bake until firm, about 60-70 minutes.

Cook vs. chef
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: A cook in chef's clothing
Is a chef better or more clever than a cook?

Obviously it depends on the chef and depends on the cook. The word "chef" implies training and skill at difficult tasks. To be a cook you merely have to know how to saute an onion. (My little kids, 3 and 4, are cooks then, since they helped me stir onions for my carbonnades de flamande the other day. They squabbled and fussed over whose turn it was, but they were both good at it, better than me at age 19 in France, spilling onions out of the tall pot, my Uncle Conrad (RIP) admonishing me that I'd never find a husband if I couldn't even cook onions right.)

A cook is an artist, a chef an architect: Cassatt to Corbusier. That's where lines blur because many architects are in fact artists as well as technically adept, like chefs are cooks who combine creativity and skill. In Michael Ruhlman's The Making of a Chef, accomplished trained Chef Uwe Hestnar says proudly "I am a cook."

I am not a chef but I play one on TV. Well, not yet, but in public anyway I have been known to don chef's whites to inspire confidence in my audience. And myself. Although I have spent untold hours in my own kitchen and those of caterers and restaurants who have employed me, I feel a bit of an impostor, since I don't have a certificate of graduation from culinary school, since I have never made a gallantine. I don't turn out prettily constructed dishes by the dozens at busy restaurants; my last line cook experience ended in tears, because as my husband tells me I run on only one speed: slow. I don't spend eleven-hour days on my feet, running non-stop in a frenzied flurry of multi-tasking--well, actually I do, I have two small children, but usually my eleven cooking-related hours in the course of a day are spent reading and writing about food, dreaming up a feast and and how I will make it and who I will serve it to.

But I'm proud and happy to wear chef's clothing. Not every celebrity chef has that certificate of graduation from chef school. I can bandy about the words "self-taught," I can learn from chefs and books whenever I can, and I can keep on practicing my craft.

I am more Cassatt than Corbusier. I cook to comfort people, not to impress. I cook to please, not to support the weight of thousands. I cook for love, I cook to express my creativity. I cook because cooking is an outlet for my artist's soul. I cook, like I write, because I have to.

But mostly I cook because I love to eat.

I don't think chef and cook are two different things. The lines blur, the definitions are vague. Both chefs and cooks feed people, some inspired by art, some by pleasure, some by pure need to make a living.

What do you think is the difference between a cook and a chef? Are they the same thing?

Like pea soup ...
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: ...Love pea soup.
Topic: Cooking
Forget about the Exorcist; split pea soup is anything but scary. Simple, frugal and rib-stickingly good, yes. Gross, never. There is little better on a cold October night when the spooks are looming.

I started mine today with a soffritto of onion, carrot, celery and garlic that softened in warm olive oil. Then I added about half a bag or so of split peas, stirred, added bay leaf, small handful of thyme sprigs, two small smoked pig hocks, lots of water, simmered for a very long time.

Later added diced red potato (1) to thicken, later still 1/3 of a cabbage, diced (which I don't usually include but hey it was there and available, begging to be used), seasoned and simmered more.

Last thing: lots of diced old Bronx bread (as in Arthur Avenue, one of New York's finest old Italian neighborhoods) sauteed with butter and olive oil in my biggest cast iron skillet. When crispy, heat off, and in went minced parsley and lots of crushed garlic to toss as the cubes cooled.

Sprinkled croutons liberally over deep shallow bowl of soup. Man oh man. Thick. Good. Pea-y.

Happy Halloween.

Denial in the bedroom
Mood:  hug me
Topic: Cooking
I don't know why I haven't come to terms with it yet. It was in the low 40s this morning and I still haven't put the flannel sheets on the bed. My nightwear is still a long T-shirt, flip flops and a seersucker bathrobe. Neither the flannel nightshirt, the fleece robe, nor the fuzzy slippers have yet to make an appearance.

But in the kitchen and on the patio I seem to have accepted that cold weather is here. I haven't grilled anything for a while, and I stopped feeding my garden a while back even though it's still producing splindly tomatoes, peppers and chard. I'm making soups and stews and roasting things. The other day I made a killer, hearty, rib-sticking Ukrainian borscht, similar to the one in the Russian chapter of Jeff Smith's Immigrant Ancestors cookbook). Tomorrow will be an African peanut stew with Gippert's chicken.

I may not have put the kids' bathing suits away yet, but I'm cranking out that winter fare with no trouble at all.

Luscious lambikins
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: My baaaaad carnivorous behavior
"Man was put on this earth to eat meat ... The Bible says so, dumbbell ... I mean look it up will ya? All them old bible peoples, they was always eating meat; soon as they found out eating apples was wrong ... It's true, on special occasions: goats and lambs. Who the hell ever hear of sacrificing a head of lettuce? You?"

--Carroll O' Connor as Archie Bunker


This weekend I'll be doing a cooking demonstration using lamb, the meatiest of meats and one of my favorites. It will be at the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival, where most attendees will be coming to fondle soft, colorful wool, not to taste heavy lamb stew at 10 a.m.

But it will be fun anyway. I'll be using a relatively cheap cut that wouldn't roast well, but will simmer slow and moist to a state of juicy succulence, full of mouth pleasing texture and flavor. It will probably be a Spanish stew, and it turns out that the meat I'll be using is from Merino lambs, a Spanish breed.

I just wrote a "Ravenous" column about lamb, and I didn't have enough space to include everything that I want to say about a topic that I'm so passionate about that I could write a book about it. But since lamb has so many detractors, maybe no one would buy it. But I think that can change. I have faith that lamb's popularity will someday approach that of the rest of the world. It's just too damn delicious.

The very thought of lamb evokes Mediterranean hills dotted with peaceful, grazing sheep, in parts of the world where grazing lands are too sparse or steep for beef cattle, in lamb-loving lands like France, Italy, Greece, Spain and North Africa.

Cost-effective and practical as they are delicious, sheep can survive in many climates and landforms. Additional bonuses are that the milk makes a tasty cheese (the subject of my 1 p.m. cooking demo) and the wool can also be used for clothing.

Like in China, where the word "meat" means pork, in the Middle East the same word stands in for both meat and sheep meat.

Since times B.C., lamb has been considered the festival and holiday meat for religious ceremonies and rituals: think sacrificial lamb. In 7th century Persia, lamb was marinated in pomegranate juice or yogurt to tenderize it. Medieval court cooks stewed it in wine or ale or pounded the meat to a puree and mixed it with eggs, spices and marrow.

The diet of a lamb affects its taste, so whether it feeds on grass or grain, its meat can be sweet or gamy. The meat's flavor can be affected by herbs in the grass, the vegetation of a French salt marsh, even the kind of water it drinks, some say.

I love to marinate lamb, but what comes from a really good naturally raised animal is so exquisite-tasting it doesn't need a lot of embellishments.

Lamb is "at once delicate and rich with faintly musky undertones" said Time-Life's Lamb in 1981.

I would love to go all out, lamb-wise, and stuff and roast a foresaddle of lamb, the front half, that serves 20, or a baron, the hind end. But lacking lots of lamb-loving friends (and lots of cash) I will have to console myself with simple lamb preparations like savory stews and marinated chops and these simple tasty grilled burgers made with ground lamb.


Lamburgers with Fresh Herbs

1 to 1-1/4 pounds ground lamb
2 fat cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs such as rosemary, thyme and spearmint
1/4 cup dry red wine
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt

Pita bread or rolls such as Kaiser
Plain yogurt
1 cucumber, seeded and grated or minced

Mix all but last three ingredients together gently but well. Shape into four patties and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or more. Grill over charcoal until cooked medium and serve in pita bread or on rolls with the fluff scooped out, topped with dollops of the yogurt spiked with the cucumber.

Why Tripe?
"Who will join me in a dish of tripe? It soothes, appeases the anger of the outraged, stills the fear of death, and reminds us of tripe eaten in former days, when there was always a half-filled pot of it on the stove."

--Gunter Grass


If you can't stomach the idea of eating animal stomach, reconsider your sad, deluded ways, and make trippa alla fiorentina, which is in my opinion heaven on earth: tender, savory, and truly toothsome.

And hey, a little fear-of-death stilling never hurt anyone, did it?

Sage old age
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Cooking
It's said that with age comes wisdom, a thought surely invented only to console. The extinction of so many brain cells seems to counteract any wise thoughts that might come along. However, I realized this morning as I cooked myself a scrambled egg, that after about thirty years of doing it I have finally figured out that if I don't put the egg in the pan until after the toast has been toasted and buttered, I won't face a plate of cold eggs.

My method is unlike anyone else's but the absolute only way I like them. I have to use a certain 7-inch well-seasoned cast iron pan, no other pan will do, and I set the gas flame at just above 2. Then I let the pan get good and hot, toss in a pat of butter, and tilt the pan to spread it around as it sizzles. As soon as the sizzle subsides but before the butter burns, I break in the egg, sprinkle it with salt, pepper and Tabasco, and stir it up with a fork.

I am never wearing my watch when I scramble an egg so I don't know how many seconds it takes to cook, but it is surely very few. When it's ready, it has just barely lost its runniness and much of the white and yellow is still distinct.

For me that is scrambled egg perfection, but I know that many food experts and egg aficionados would vehemently disagree, including the one I live with.

Am I wise now? Maybe not, but I have finally learned to make scrambled eggs exactly the way I like them.

Sorrow in The Big Hard, So Hard
Mood:  blue
Topic: food writing biz
The last bit of summer has flown by breathlessly, August like the blink of an eye. Now summer is leaving and leaves are falling and fall is sooner than soon.

I am horrified by the situation in New Orleans and Mississippi, too much suffering and misery, too much of Bush's concentration on the wrong Gulf.

I visited New Orleans only once, for a week a few years ago, and I fell madly in love, such that the wild city has haunted me ever since, becoming a setting for a novel in progress, inspiring my cooking and eating, drawing me to want very badly to return some day. Now the suffering of its citizens, the destruction of its unique cosmopolitan and exotic charms, the beauty of its architecture, people, music, food....it is all immensely tragic, and I am reminded not so much of the recent Asian tsunami but also of 9-11: another irrevocable, unpreventable, uncontrollable horror. I have to have faith that the area will heal and rebuild, that all the homeless ones will find new homes, new lives for themselves.



On a more personal note, last week I did my cooking demo at the local county fair. Although I was surely nervous and my show did have its flaws, I was quite pleased with the way things turned out. The Goddess of Garlic couldn't make her afternoon show, so I filled in and was much less nervous. It was wonderful experience, overall, and I was glad that I could do it and I can't wait to do it again.



Words of inspiration came from the recently deceased 115-year-old Henny van Andel-Schipperof of the Netherlands, whose advice for longevity was to keep breathing and eat pickled herring. Good advice!

S'lovely to be so busy
Mood:  happy
Topic: food writing biz
The next week or so will be be crazy with a deadline for a real food article (Afghani food), my presentation at the Dutchess County Fair on fresh tomato appeteasers, and the usual weekly "Ravenous" deadline (next week, okra!).

Not to mention soccer (yes, I'm a "soccer mom" now, and I love it!), birthday parties for three children this weekend, and two festivals, one of which I have volunteered to help at, cleaning up after its potluck dinner. Cleaning is far from my forte but at least I'm helping...

When I come up for air after all this end of summer craziness (end of summer, sob, sniff, don't remind me), I have a mile-long list of work projects: queries to write for articles, letters to agents to sell my food anthology, front of the book blurbs for food magazines, which have to be done "on spec," meaning all written and perfected before submitting. I have the topics but just need the angles. And the time to write them.

And the web site, www.jenniferbrizzi.com, still needs a lot of perfecting, notably that maddening navigation bar. But in spite of its lack of perfection, as of this morning it has gotten 110 hits, only 100 of which are me constantly checking to see how any hits it has!

Maybe if I stopped using so many parentheses when I write, I'd shoot to success!

Rejection sucks
Mood:  irritated
Topic: food writing biz
I e-mailed three (3) panel proposals to the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) for their conference in Seattle next spring. They e-mailed me back two (2) form rejections. I e-mailed them in hopes that they were still considering one...no dice...three rejections...no Seattle for me.

Bummer. My sweet husband's telling me that someday the IACP will be begging me to do panels. That helps. I dream on...

"If eels only looked a little less like eels more people would want to eat them."
--Clement Freud

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food."
--George Bernard Shaw

"I really, really love eels."
--Jennifer Brizzi

Not chilly enough for chili?
Mood:  hungry
Topic: Cooking
I know, I know, it's too hot for chili, but I had some ground venison that was gifted to us by a guy with a new vegetarian girlfriend, and ground meat doesn't keep long in the freezer.

Here a recipe for the chili I made yesterday. It was killer, zippy but not too hot, with a rich, complex flavor. This chili improves on standing and is at its best the day after it's made.

Venison Chili

Lean and flavorful venison is my favorite meat for chili, although sometimes I make it with ground turkey or no meat at all. My chili recipe has evolved a lot over the years, and the ingredients vary each time I make it. Sometimes I add beans, sometimes I don't. And the dried chile assortment varies according to what I have on hand.

2 dried chipotle chilies
1 dried puya chile
1 dried chile de arbol

2 tablespoons canola oil (when I have it I prefer corn oil for this)
1 and 1/2 pounds ground venison
2 teaspoons coarse sea salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 fresh jalape?o, seeded and chopped

1 tablespoon salt-free chili powder (I use Penzey's)
1/2 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1 teaspoon cumin
1 bay leaf
11 fresh plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped (I would normally use canned but my garden is currently overflowing with gorgeous plum tomatoes--if you don't like skins you can cut tiny crosses in them, then boil for 30 seconds and peel--I didn't bother)
1 12-ounce can Labatt Blue beer (you can certainly use whatever brand you have hanging around)

1 can small red beans (I used the excellent Mi Casa brand), drained and rinsed
Fresh chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)


Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil, then remove from heat. Place dried chilies in it and set aside for half an hour or longer.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large heavy saucepan on medium heat, then brown the meat until it loses its pink color. Add the salt, pepper, garlic, onion, celery and fresh jalape?o. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are translucent, about 15 minutes.

Deseed and mince the soaked dried chilies. Add them to the pot, along with all the remaining ingredients except the beans. Bring to a vigorous simmer, then lower to the barest simmer and cook for one hour, stirring occasionally. If the chili gets too dry, you can add a little water. Add beans and heat until cooked through. I love to serve this with lots of cilantro on top but I didn't have any on hand this time. Sour cream and/or grated cheddar or Monterey jack cheese would be lovely, too, if your tummy tolerates them.


With this intense chili, I served wedges of the following quick cornbread for dunking:

Corny Cornbread

You'll notice that the first ingredient is bacon grease from that jar you keep in the fridge. You do have a jar in your fridge, don't you? Even if you only have bacon once in a while, keep that fat to put a little dab in your greens, for flavoring the corn oil you fry chicken in, and for this cornbread. The fat makes the crust crispy and tasty. Okay, okay, substitute butter and it will be almost as good.

You will need a 10-inch cast iron skillet, and if you don't have one, you must buy one, from a yard sale or my favorite kitchen supply store, Warren Kitchen & Cutlery.

I always thought corn bread had to include buttermilk, be sugarless, and have more corn meal than flour, but I finally hit upon this combo, and it's now my standard recipe.

Normally I add two tablespoons of light brown sugar to the dry ingredients when I make this bread without the fresh corn, but with August's supersweet corn, sugar isn't needed.

3 tablespoons bacon grease
3/4 cup cornmeal (I order mine from Anson Mills in South Carolina)
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 egg
One ear fresh, local, in-season corn, boiled ten minutes, cooled, and the kernels cut off

Preheat oven to 425? F. Put the bacon grease in a 10-inch cast iron skillet and put it in the oven to melt while you're mixing the rest of the ingredients.

In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt. Add the milk and egg, mix well, then fold in the corn kernels.

Pour the mixture into the greasy skillet and bake for about 25 minutes, or until golden on top and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. (If you use the light brown sugar instead of the corn it will cook quicker.)

Hail to the Chef!
Now Playing: A miserable occupation
In yesterday's New York Times there is a heartbreaking story about Floridian Luis Diaz, who has been in jail since 1979 for a string of eight rapes that he didn't commit.

Recent DNA evidence may finally free him, but noteworthy is that at his trial in 1979 there were many discrepancies between reality and how he was described by the rape victims. One example was that his family and his co-workers at the restaurant where he worked as a fry cook testified that "he reeked of grease and onions after working long shifts behind the grill." The victims all denied the existence of that odor on the rapist.

Besides breaking my heart--Diaz left a wife and three children when he went to jail--the story reminded me of how I would offend myself after long shifts of working in kitchens. Especially if I fried anything, I would stink a most unappetizing smell, like rotten garlic sauteed in four-year-old cooking oil. Awful. It took a huge effort to scrub it out of my pores and hair at the end of the day, if I had any energy left. If I smelled like that every time I cooked a meal, I'd give up cooking. (Maybe.)

Chefs and cooks feeding hungry people in the summertime have a miserable existence. It's a labor of love to stand over a hot stove for ten to twelve hours when humidity and heat are at their max, not to mention dealing with the foot pain, the sweating, and if you're chubby as many cooks are, the horror of chafing in places you'd rather not be thinking about.

As we speak, thousands of chefs and cooks are toiling in hellholes to feed us. I couldn't do it. I mean, I've spent many hours in hot kitchens, but now I have the option of grilling it all outdoors or ordering takeout when it's too hot to cook.

In a couple weeks I'm doing a chef demo at the local county fair and will wear a particularly fine, soft, and very clean chef's jacket. I will feel like I am an impostor pretending to be a chef, though, because my shift will be less than an hour, and I can go home and change into a tank top and shorts and sit in front of the air conditioner with a tall glass of iced tea or a beer.

Thank you, chefs everywhere, for sweating and chafing for us so that we might eat.

I feel like I just jumped into the deep end of the pool
Mood:  accident prone
Topic: food writing biz
Well, I've gone and done it.

I just e-mailed the link to my web site www.jenniferbrizzi.com to a large collection of my friends and family, racy first bit of "Her Feet" and all. Perhaps they will all disown me ...

It's rather scary, although presumably as my friends and family they will be kind. Likely they will all be too busy to bother with it.

Yikes.

Gigs
Topic: food writing biz
Sofia's begging me to take her to the library, and how can a Mom refuse such a request? So this will be brief.

I'm going to be doing some chef demos at the huge Dutchess County Fair next month and then at the not-so-huge Sheep and Wool Festival in October. How exciting! I hope I have an audience.

And I'm going to write an article on the food of Afghanistan for FACES magazine.

The website, www.jenniferbrizzi.com , is getting presentable at last. There are still a couple kinks to work out, notably the nightmare of the navigation bar, but it's getting there!