cooking japanese style

Cooking Japanese Style is another little booklet from The International Recipe Series published in 1979 (Cooking French Style already had a recipe featured on here), with this excerpt from the intro:

Amid the misty mountains of Japan the plexiglass and steel of futuristic architecture complete with bamboo and paper of a more gentle and mysterious past...[r]ice is the basis for almost every meal.  Vegetables are cooked very little.  This way they retain their food value and flavor.  Seasonings play an important part in all dishes.  Soy sauce is used constantly.  Food is served in small delicate portions arranged to please the eye as much as the taste.

I love that first sentence but I'm wondering if they meant compete with instead of complete.  This is the booklet's sweetly tangy Mustard Pickled Eggplant -- the original recipe calls for half a teaspoon of MSG, but I just use half to a full teaspoon of ginger instead.  

Mustard Pickled Eggplant (from Cooking Japanese Style, The International Recipe Series)

1 medium eggplant

3 tablespoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon dry mustard (you can also use 1 generous tablespoon of actual wet mustard if you prefer)

3 tablespoons sweet sake

1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger or 1 teaspoon finely minced ginger 

Wash unpeeled eggplant and slice in 1/8 inch slices.  Soak in salted water for 1 hour.  Drain and arrange in a glass or china bowl.  Combine mustard with enough water to make a paste (if using dry powder).  Add to remaining ingredients and blend thoroughly.  Pour over eggplant.  Chill for 2 hours and serve.

fast, fresh & green

Susie Middleton's Fast, Fresh & Green (Chronicle Books, 2010) features 90-plus fairly easy to prepare recipes for those who love vegetables, and for those who'd probably love vegetables more if they knew how versatile and delicious they can be.  But Fast, Fresh & Green is not, as Middleton explains, a wholly vegetarian cookbook, so there will be occasional ingredients that involve meat or poultry or fish. She notes that her palate tends toward the Mediterranean from her years working at Al Forno Restaurant in Providence, and while a number of the dishes do have a Mediterranean flair, there are also other flavors to balance things out.

Fast, Fresh & Green has an enjoyably holistic yet relaxed approach towards preparing food, with advice as to how to get into the cooking "zone" and a general sense of openness where recipes are concerned, working with what vegetables (preferably local and fresh) happen to be available or in season, and personal preferences for spices and combinations.  And what kind of mood you're in when you start to put together a meal, such as being more inclined toward no-cook recipes, regular or "walk-away" sautéing, grilling, braising, or the more in-depth "Slower But Worth It" gratins category.

Explanations of basic techniques and how to stock a good-and-ready pantry make Fast, Fresh & Green a nice option for novice cooks, but the recipes themselves are creative enough to intrigue those who already know their way around the kitchen.  Such as Caramelized Plum Tomatoes in an Olive Oil Bath (so simple but so good), Smoky Spanish Carrots and Fennel with Toasted Hazelnuts, Double Lemon Ginger Carrot Salad, Heirloom Tomato, Summer Peach and Fresh Herb Gazpacho Salad, Colorful Chinese Kick-Slaw, Southwestern Butternut Squash Sauté, and Golden Mushroom and Potato Gratin. And plenty more, including an awesome citrusy Japanese Dipping Sauce for broccoli and/or shrimp, and the savory Thyme-Dijon Butter (for grilled green beans).  All in all making vegetables definite standouts at the table -- and maybe even  able to totally steal the show.

cooking with myrtle

Chicago writer Myrtle Reed (1874-1911) crafted more than a dozen novels in her day, along with several cookbooks under the tasty-sounding pseudonym of Olive Green.  Though she seemed to have a happy marriage and successful career, her suicide note and overdose on sleeping powders claimed otherwise.

Before her unfortunate death, Myrtle/Olive and husband Jack McCullough hosted many a memorable dinner party at their home, and surely quite a few of Myrtle's time-tested recipes were served.   The Myrtle Reed Cookbook was published posthumously in 1916 and seems to combine all the Olive Green books into one volume.  It's an old school cookbook, so many of the recipes may look familiar, but there is a passion for food and humor to the narrative that makes the thought of Myrtle's suicide even sadder. The cookbook is available for free on Kindle and Project Gutenberg, or you can buy a print copy for about $10, depending on the edition.  Here's Myrtle's excellent and classic Fruit Cobbler, as we start getting into summer peaches, plums, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb, etc., season:

Fill a deep buttered baking-dish with fresh or stewed fruit— apples, peaches, apricots, rhubarb, plums, or gooseberries being commonly used— and cover with a crust made as follows: Sift together two cupfuls of flour and two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Rub into it half a cupful of butter and add one egg beaten with a cupful of milk. Spread over the fruit which has been previously sweetened to taste and bake until the crust is done. Serve either hot or cold with cream or any preferred sauce.

Cheap tea contains sawdust, dried and powdered hay, grass-seed, and departed but unlamented insects. 

Moral—buy good tea, or go without.

*******

The breakfast selected as a type consists of fruit, a cereal, salt fish, or salt meat, or eggs, or omelets, hot bread of some kind, and pancakes or waffles, or coffee cake, one dish from each group, and coffee. Six dishes in all, which may be less if desired, but never more. All six form a breakfast sufficiently hearty for a stone mason or a piano mover; one or two give a breakfast light enough to tempt those who eat no breakfast at all.

Myrtle Reed

cooking french style

April in Paris...it's a song, it's a special feeling, and with a few days left to April, it's time to make some French food. Part of International Publishing's International Recipe Series, the little booklet Cooking French Style was published in 1979 but is still available on Amazon.  As the preface notes: "The important thing to remember is that the French take advantage of whatever is available and make the most of it. Each meal is treated as a celebration, and even the simplest food should be served with flourish." The booklet of course has recipes for the traditionally well-known French Onion Soup and Cheese Soufflé, Coq au Vin, Cassoulet, Crêpes Suzette and the mother sauces, but these Mushrooms à la Provençale are absolutely delicious, especially when paired with French bread rounds sprinkled with grated Fontina cheese, then toasted until brown.

1 pound fresh mushrooms
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 tablespoons water
1 large clove garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup dry white wine

Wash the mushrooms.  If they are large, cut in pieces.  If small, leave whole.  Heat the oil in a frying pan.  Add mushrooms, salt, pepper, parsley, and garlic and fry gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Sprinkle with flour and stir in gently.  Add water and wine and stir until well-blended.  Simmer 10 minutes and serve very hot.

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Serving the rest of the dry (icy chilled) white wine with the mushrooms and French bread rounds is also an excellent option.

the heart of the plate

Mollie Katzen is definitely a recognized name in the realm of vegetarian cuisine, with her Moosewood Cookbook (first published in the 70s, followed by anniversary re-editions) high up on the list of vegetarian cookbook classics.  So many Moosewood recipes have been loved for decades by both vegetarians and meat-eaters, but then we come to Katzen's 2013's The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation.  I'm a Moosewood Cookbook fan for sure, but The Heart of the Plate intrigues me because it seems to take some of the key Moosewood ideas to a different level. Plate's recipes come across as a bit more sophisticated, or as Katzen writes, reflective of her years of experience as a vegetarian chef, with a lightening of ingredients and/or intriguing variations on classic themes.  There's "a stronger sense of aesthetic economy" and less dependence on eggs and cheese, which, as Katzen also notes, allows quite a few of The Heart of the Plate's recipes to be vegan-adapted.

Among Katzen's creative offerings are Mushroom Popover Pie, Hazelnut-Wilted Frisée Salad with Sliced Pear, Ruby Gazpacho (blending watermelon, strawberries, tomatoes, pickled onions and ginger), Scattered Sushi-Style Rice Salad, Chocolate Cream Pie with Vegan Whipped Cream and Cranapple Walnut Cake.  Lemony Caramelized Onion Mac and Gorgonzola sounds just about exciting (yes, exciting is the word) as the Spinach-Mushroom Mac and Cheese, with the latter's heady notes of white cheddar, spinach, mushrooms, beer, Dijon mustard and walnuts.  There are also lasagna recipes for all seasons -- literally (Indian Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring).  And nicely colorful, elegant photos and illustrations, which it should be pointed out are by the author herself.  The recipes are not all standardly easy to prepare or in the category of quick and easy vegetarian food, but if you enjoy the process of cooking while exploring new vegetarian/fruit combinations and concepts, The Heart of the Plate will offer plenty of fun challenges and fine meals.

custardly delicious

Custard: 
A detestable substance produced by a 
malevolent conspiracy 
of the hen, the cow, and the cook. 

Ambrose Bierce

Somehow I don't think Mr. Bierce ever had the following Cointreau-enhanced recipe for Custard Royale, from Frederique Fredge's 1965 Cooking Round the World with a Wooden Spoon:

Egg Custard Royale (serves 6 to 8)

1 quart skim milk
Grated rind of 1 orange
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon Cointreau (plus 3 more for peach topping)
6 fresh peaches

Place milk in a saucepan and heat to scalding point.  Remove from heat.  Put orange rind into a bowl with egg yolks.  Add sugar, cornstarch, salt, stir until it is completely blended; add Cointreau bit by bit.  Keep stirring.  Pour this slowly into hot milk.  Use a rotary beater for uniform blending.  When the eggs are fully blended with the milk, place back on low heat; keep stirring until the custard thickens.  Remove from heat and pour into sherbet glasses.  Chill in refrigerator.  Peel peaches and slice them into a bowl.  Add 2 additional tablespoons of sugar and 3 tablespoons of Cointreau; let stand in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve the custard. Top each glass with slices of royal peaches.  

the art of simple food II

Spring is coming eventually...the Groundhog told us that it was and so does the little bit of extra light pushing back sunset every day. If you're ready for warmer weather and contemplating a garden, Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food II:  Recipes, Flavor, and Inspiration from the New Kitchen Garden is a lovely book to read now to get yourself into the growing mindset.  Because it's not really about vast plots of land, it's about the appropriate attitude of cultivating and preparing food in a more personal and organic manner.  From herbs to lettuce, garlic, onions, vegetables, berries, melons and citrus, Waters details the bounty of the seasons along with wonderful recipes like Golden Jubilee Tomato Soup with Spiced Yogurt, Julienned Gypsy Pepper Salad, Wild Plum Jam Turnovers and Blackberry Souffle.  To preserve your harvest, recipes and guidance for home canning and making your own liqueurs are also featured.  Namely Vin d'Orange, Crab Apple Liqueur and Hazelnut Liqueur....please pass the bottle, thank you.

As a well-known cookbook author, chef and owner of Berkeley's Chez Panisse, Alice Waters has long been taking the basic concept of food and giving it new breadth and life.  She advises first-time gardeners to start small -- that the new kitchen garden can be "as simple as putting a seed in the ground and watching it grow." Whether you work with a pot of basil on the windowsill, heirloom tomatoes on the fire escape, zucchini on an apartment rooftop, or a suburban sprawl of romaine, eggplant and sweet potatoes (and/or your own personal cornfield or orchard), the main idea as Chef Waters explains is to nurture "the vital link between taste, cooking, and gardening".  She offers resources for seed "lending libraries" and urban gardening networks, as well as information on techniques like double-digging and crop diversity. And if you find that you don't have a green thumb, try your local farmers' markets and turn their harvest into a summer of culinary adventures -- just as long as we celebrate the earth and how to use it best for our health and enjoyment.