With that kind of activity, it’s almost impossible to stay on top of everything, let alone take pictures of what’s going on, but I did manage to keep track of my rather haphazard approach to potato leek soup.  This doesn’t even come close to a proper recipe; the most generous thing you could call it is a process.

Potato leek soup: a process

I know, it’s not exactly potato soup weather, especially in Texas, where the highs are in the mid-90s all week.  But we got some beautiful leeks at the farmer’s market this week, and besides, I like potato soup enough to eat it in any weather.  Here are the steps I followed, roughly in chronological order:

1.  Put on the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense.  Stop every five or six minutes to watch what’s happening and forget what you were doing.

2.  Put a large pot of water on to boil.

3.  Peel a bunch of potatoes and cut them into one- to two-inch cubes.  Four pounds should be about right.

4.  When the water’s boiling, put the potatoes in.

5.  Get out the leeks.  Forget to take a picture until the first leek has already been diced.

6.  With a paring knife, strip back the tough green parts of the leek.  If you haven’t already, go find a video of Jacques Pepin preparing leeks, and do what he does.  Slit the leeks lengthways and rinse them well, then dice them.  You will have a lot of leeks.

7.  Check the potatoes and discover they have finished boiling.  Drain them and return them to the pot.

8.  Pour a carton of chicken broth over the potatoes and turn the heat to low.

9.  In a saute pan, heat a bunch of butter and olive oil over medium heat.  Don’t skimp.

10.  Saute the leeks in the oil until tender.

11.  Dump the leeks over the potatoes and broth.

12.  Take the pot off the heat and consider setting it on the counter.  Remember that you should put down a hot pad first.  Get out the immersion blender.

13.  Realize you’re not wearing an apron.  Put on an apron.

14.  Start to blend the potatoes, broth, and leeks.  Wish you had a Vitamix.  Keep blending.

15.  When you think you’ve gotten the lumps out, return the pot to the stove, turn the heat to medium-low, and start adding milk.  Stir.

16.  Realize you haven’t gotten all the lumps out.

17.  Add enough milk to achieve a consistency closer to soup than glue, then put the pot back on the counter.  Blend some more.  Continue to fantasize about a Vitamix.

18.  When you actually have gotten all the lumps out, return the pot to the stove, heat to medium-low, and add more milk until what you’re stirring actually feels like soup.

19.  Start to season.  Add salt, pepper.  Taste.  More salt, more pepper.  Taste.  Olive oil, pepper, salt.  Taste.  More olive oil, pepper, salt.

20.  Taste one last time.  Realize you’re hungry and ladle yourself a bowl.  Declare soup done.

My two favorite clips— part of a Mark Bittman interview and a short documentary about an organic dairy farmer— are up on the VIZ site. Here are two more of my favorites.

First, a video about artisan, estate-cultured goat’s milk cheese (in some ways, a boo-kend piece for the dairy farmer video—at any rate, it reminds me that I might not want to run out and buy livestock tomorrow):

And, second, an American distiller of eau de vie talks land use and liquor:

Many of my favorite meals turn out to be the dinners we throw together based on what we happen to have in the cupboard or the freezer that particular day. I was watching a show on architecture and design on PBS the other night, and one of the designers claimed that creativity does not come from wide-open options as much as it comes from working with constraints. In that light, creativity is a matter of creative solutions to particular problems (or, as the old cliche would have it, necessity is the mother of invention). Pulling together meals without running out to the store taps into a similar vein of creativity: how do turn a random collection of culinary detritus into something delicious and nutritious (it does help, of course, to have a fairly well-stocked pantry). Since it is Spring in Austin— when a young man’s fancy turns to Mediterranean cuisine— I figured out how to approximate a classic Valencian dish with ingredients we had lying about the house.

It turns out that we have most of the basic ingredients for a paella on hand pretty much all the time. We keep a stockpile of short-grain rice on hand at all times, and we tend to have chicken parts in the freezer (we currently have the thighs of half a dozen chickens, at least). Canned tomatoes, paprika, onion and garlic are must haves for us on a weekly basis, and we even have some saffron left over from the last time we planned ahead for paella. Added to that, red peppers, peas and stock will make a passable paella—particularly for being made from on-hand ingredients.

A traditional Valencia-style paella doesn’t require seafood, even though seafood and/or mixed paellas are the most popular internationally. We had some mahi-mahi in the freezer, but I wanted to save that frozen fish for weeknights when we want a quick protein without having to run to the market or thaw out frozen-solid chicken. I did, however, have some frozen shrimp shells that I saved from the last time I made gumbo, and I’ve been meaning to make a shrimp stock for several weeks now. I thought a seafood stock would add some of the flavors of a mixed paella even though the only protein was chicken.

The shrimp stock was really, really easy to make. I tossed a carrot and celery rib into a three-quart sauce pan with salt, pepper and some olive oil and cooked them until they began to soften. After a few minutes, I added about four crushed cloves of garlic (paper and all) and two bay leaves. When everything was really aromatic, I tossed in the shrimp shells and sauteed them for a few minutes before adding a dash of dry sherry (why not, right?) and covering everything with water. I brought the water back to a boil, simmered for 10-15 minutes, strained the mixture and, voila, I had fresh shrimp stock for my paella.

When the stock was finished and ready to go, I heated a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a 10-inch straight-sided skillet and browned the chicken thighs on both sides. When the thighs were golden and the skin crispy, I removed them from the pan and covered them with aluminum foil.

I sauteed one diced (medium sized) onion in the remaining oil until the onion softened and became translucent, at which point I added three minced garlic cloves, about a tablespoon of sweet paprika and a generous pinch of salt (one or two teaspoons). While the garlic cooked with the onion, I put about half a cup of the hot shrimp stock in a prep bowl with a pinch of saffron. I never know whether to crumble the saffron into the stock or just let it steep like tea, so I usually end up whisking it a bit and hoping that’s good enough. After setting the saffron and stock aside, I put a large can of whole tomatoes (minus their liquid) into the pan with the by-now tremendously aromatic onion-garlic-paprika mixture. I let the tomatoes break down and reduce for about five minutes before adding two cups of rice and mixing it in thoroughly. After a minute or two, I added the saffron mixture and three more cups of shrimp stock and gave everything one last good stir and returned the chicken to the pan.

A good paella has a crunchy, partly burned crust on the bottom, so you want to avoid stirring the rice once you add the liquid. After putting my stock in with the rice, I spread a diced red bell pepper and a few frozen peas over the top of the rice, returned the chicken thighs, skin-side up, to the pan and sprinkled a dash of paprika on each thigh. I covered the pan and let it cook on low heat until the rice was almost done. To finish the dish, I removed the lid and turned the burner on high until the rice was finished (something like 7-8 minutes), then put the pan under the broiler to re-crisp the chicken skin.

The paella turned out very nicely— and not just nice  for pantry items. The shrimp stock really punched up the flavor and gave the feeling of a mixed paella without the added work and expense of buying seafood. You could easily make this with chicken stock, and I’m sure it would still be pretty great, but the rice cooked in shrimp stock adds a contrasting flavor to the chicken that makes the dish more interesting to eat and avoids the palette fatigue that chicken and rice dishes can sometimes produce. I only used about half the shrimp stock, so the rest went into the freezer for a future paella. We also had enough left over for dinner in a couple of days. Score another victory for pantry-constrained creativity.

The real fear-mongering is only slightly less over the top than Colbert’s satiric gold commercial from December.

[I am working on getting the video embedded properly. In the meantime, you can watch the videos here and here.]

We’ve been trying to work more fish into our protein rotation, and Syd had a hankering for seafood, so we ran over to the local shop to see what was fresh that day. The mahi-mahi looked particularly delicious, and we were relatively certain that we could cook it with carrots, dill and arugula, so we grabbed a pound of dolphin and headed back to the kitchen.

On the drive home we decided we could probably cook the fish en papillote, but when we got home, we remembered that we didn’t have any papillote.  We did, however, have plenty of aluminum foil (that wonder of the gods), and foil makes even tidier little pouches than parchment paper (though I was a bit disappointed at not getting to make all the tiny folds that remind me of the Calculus).

Each bit of fish got rubbed with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and topped with slivered garlic and a generous bunch of fresh dill from our CSA share.

The fish and its fairly simple seasonings get wrapped up into a shiny little package. There’s no right or wrong way to fold a foil package as long as all your seams are tight (I also like to keep them on the top of the package as much as I can).

These shiny little pouches went into a 400F oven for about 15 minutes. We put a baking dish in the oven while it preheated and just tossed the pouches in when the oven reached temperature. We spent fifteen minutes making a salad and cleaning up a bit, and the fish came out moist, flaky and delicious (isn’t that pretty much what everyone says about good fish? I know there must be less-cliched descriptions, but “moist and flaky” always rise to the top). The foil reveal is always a dramatic little bit of kitchen theater.

We replaced the dill on each piece of fish with a few fresh sprigs and bedded them down on a handful of arugula, remembering to pour all the pouch-juices (the cooking liquid) over the whole thing. Syd braised some carrots in honey and balsamic vinegar, and I made an assertive blue cheese dressing with yogurt and lemon juice (mix to taste: yogurt, blue cheese, salt, pepper, lemon juice— really simple, really tasty). We garnished both the carrots and the salad with crushed almonds.

This must have been the fifth night we had salads from a single week’s CSA share, but we both have a tremendous tolerance for fresh butter lettuce, and the yogurt based dressing was  enough of a change from our standard vinaigrettes to keep things interesting. Syd didn’t think the dressing had enough blue cheese, but I’m not convinced a bowl that size will hold enough blue cheese to make her completely happy. Blue cheese is pretty fantastic stuff.

Last week’s CSA share came with a bunch (literally, a bunch) of the best looking beets I had ever seen (until this week’s bunch of beets, but that’s another story). We were having Syd’s sister over for Easter dinner (yes, I’m that far behind writing blog entries: writing the dissertation has been getting in the way of writing about food, for once— it usually happens the other way around), and I decided the beets would be a nice accompaniment for the ribs I was planning to smoke. As proud as I am of my pork ribs, I have to admit that the beets stole the show.

Fresh produce is a miraculous thing. One of the minor tragedies of American life is that most of us tend to eat vegetables that took two weeks making the trip from California to the local grocery store, and two weeks and a thousand miles (or more) don’t have the freshness, taste and general verve of vegetables that were in the ground just two or three days before (that’s not an Easter pun, I promise).

We started making dinner by cutting the tops off of our three beautiful beets, rubbed them down with a bit of olive oil and tossed them in a 400 F oven. It took them just over an hour to soften and sweeten. When a knife went in and out with no resistance, I pulled them out of the oven, tossed them in some ice water for a couple of minutes and then slipped the skin off with a paper towel.

While the beet roots were cooking, I washed and chopped the greens and set them aside with a little chopped garlic. Once the roots (and the ribs) were done cooking, I sauteed the garlic in a little olive oil then added the greens and a little white wine (to help get the greens wilting nicely). When the greens were tender, I cut the heat, added a few toasted pine nuts and a splash of soy sauce which, by the way, works wonders in a number of non-Asian dishes. I diced the beet roots (which were still warm but not too hot to handle) and piled them on top of the greens. A few more pine nuts, a sprinkling of blue cheese and a touch of balsamic vinegar finished off the plating.  The sweetness of the roasted roots was picked up by the balsamic and the pine nuts, and the great “umami” flavors of the soy and blue cheese highlighted the earthy greenness of the tops.  The final beet-on-beet action was delicious.

I did make a side of ribs to go with our beet dinner. I used some Christmas cash to buy an indoor smoker in early January, and I keep thinking that it must have myriad uses, but I every time I get it down I end up smoking pork ribs. It’s a system that works out pretty well for me.

We bought a couple racks of ribs a while back (they were on sale) and I cut each rack in half and tossed them in the freezer. Now when we want ribs, I let them defrost in the fridge overnight before going through this process. First, I remove the membrane from the interior side of the slab. The pig needed the membrane to hold its organs in, but it will also keep smoke and seasoning from getting into the meat, so I work my fingers underneath and give it a few tugs.

Once that unpleasantness is dealt with, I season the ribs on both sides with a spice rub. There are, of course, numerous rubs available for purchase, but I use one that I make at home with my molcajete. I didn’t measure the ingredients too carefully, but it’s mostly salt, black pepper, garlic, ginger, cumin, brown sugar and various chilis. I made a bunch the first time and kept it in the fridge, but this was the last of that batch, so I’ve got to try approximating it (and maybe keeping track of what goes in it) next time I want to use a rub.

The ribs then go onto the tray of my indoor smoker with the fatty side up. These ribs have a smaller fat cap than the last rack I bought, so I didn’t bother trimming any off. Pork fat is, of course, one of the more delicious things in the world, but too much can make the ribs almost too rich to eat (not to mention what it can do to your arteries and your mid-section).

This smoker is made by a Minnesota company called “Nordic Ware” (complete with a viking logo on the instructional booklet and DVD) and works with fine ground wood chips. I put the chips in the bottom, place the drip pan over the chips, add the tray with the ribs and cover with the domed lid. I let them go for about an hour once they reach 200F.

Technically, this little smoker is probably closer to a stove-top oven than a full-blown pit smoker, but it cooks at low temperature, contains the smoke in a small space and doesn’t require you to heat up the entire oven, so it’s a good compromise for the winter (or for someone like me who doesn’t really have a grill that’s large enough for smoking). I might try jury-rigging a smoker out of one of my kettle grills this summer (we now have three, two of which are identical), but, in the meantime, these are nothing to complain about: smoky, juicy and fall-off-the-bone tender.

Last summer I was visiting some high school friends (hi, Annie!), and after a weekend of eating too much and drinking too much and running around in the heat, Sunday night found us tired, and broke, and maybe a little vitamin-deficient.  My friend’s solution was homemade pizza—quick, tasty, and laden with vegetables.  She stays stocked up on Trader Joe’s pizza dough, so that whenever she has some leftover veggies, or needs a quick meal, she’s ready to go.  This seemed like a great option to add to my repertoire of low-energy meals.

The only hitch: no Trader Joe’s in Austin.  This is, of course, a travesty, but Whole Foods’s stranglehold on the city means it is not likely to change any time soon.  Whole Foods sells pizza dough, but at exhorbitant prices and with an attitude I resent.  This left me no choice but to make my own dough—not too much trouble, sure, but it does take down the convenience-factor a bit.  In an effort to preserve the low-fuss aspect of homeade pizza that was so attractive in the first place, I usually freeze about half the dough before the second rising.  That way, I can pull some out of the freezer and let it defrost and finish rising, giving me a fairly labor-free process.

I’ve tried Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza dough recipe, which is darn tasty, but so sticky it’s almost impossible to work with.  Of course, Mark Bittman has a pizza dough recipe in How to Cook Everything—I don’t think it tastes quite as good as the no-knead version, but it’s a bit easier to handle.  But I’m still in search of the perfect dough, so I thought I’d try this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

Pizza is a pretty basic dough—yeast, flour, salt, water, maybe a bit of oil.  This recipe adds wine and honey to the mix, and makes a slightly breadier, stiffer dough than Bittman’s, and certainly more so than Lahey’s no-knead dough.  One pizza is never really enough, so I doubled the recipe to make enough dough for two small-to-medium pizzas.

Smitten Kitchen Pizza Dough

• 12 tablespoons warm water
• 4 tablespoons white wine
• 1 1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cups flour

Whisk water, wine, and yeast together in a large bowl.  Stir in honey, salt, and oil.  Add flour and work until it comes together into a ball, adding more water if necessary.  My dough was fairly dry, but I resisted the urge to add more water; in retrospect, it might have benefited from a bit more liquid.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead for a minute or two.  Since this was a new recipe, I wasn’t really sure how the dough was supposed to feel when it had been kneaded enough, so I stopped when it started to feel a bit sticky and elastic.

Put the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise for an hour or two, or until doubled in size.  I’m a pretty bad judge of volume, but my dough never quite seemed to double.  After about two hours, though, if I pressed my fingers in the dough, the indentation remained, when is a pretty good indication it’s done.

Deflate the dough some with your palm, and then divide it into two balls, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise for about 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, preheat the oven as high as it goes (550 for us).  Put a pizza stone in the oven and let it heat up.  When the oven is hot and the dough is ready, stretch it out until you’ve got a roughly circular shape.

If you have a pizza peel and are more skilled than I, assemble the pizza on the peel and then slide it from the peel onto the hot pizza stone.  We don’t have a pizza peel, but more importantly, I am in no way coordinated enough to accomplish that sort of transfer.  So we improvise a bit: we get all the toppings ready to go and pull the pizza stone out of the oven.  Then we put the crust on the stone, get the toppings on as quickly as possible, and put the stone back in the oven.  The most important thing in this process is not to burn yourself on the 550 degree pizza stone.  So far, we’ve been more or less successful.

Bake the pizza for about 10 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and the crust brown.  Repeat.

We made a traditional Margherita with tomato sauce, some basil from the garden, and some shredded mozzerella.

It was good, but the real star was the second pizza—carmelized onions, brie and mozzerella, and pine nuts.  A foolproof combination.

Coye thought the dough was a bit too sweet and a bit too bready.  The sweet part can be easily fixed—next time, I’ll leave out the honey.  This dough is more bready (and less crispy) than my standby recipes, but that makes it easier to work with.  It doesn’t stick to everything, and it’s not impossible to get flat and circular.  Plus, it reheats beautifully.  I didn’t make enough to freeze, but I have a hunch this dough will freeze more successfully as well.  Maybe I’ll make another batch this weekend and put it away for later.  I haven’t even finished the last slice of brie, onion, and pine nut pizza and I already want to make another.

As a bonus, Snafu gives us a peek at the origins of mass-processed food.

When I talked to my mom last weekend she was getting ready to make dinner for some visiting family friends.  I’d spent the afternoon in the garden, and listening to her describe what she was cooking made me wish I were there, so that she could cook dinner for me while I visited with our friends, who I haven’t seen in years.  Since that wasn’t going to happen, the next best thing was reproduce the dish, Jamie Oliver’s Braised Ligurian Chicken.

Jamie Oliver’s Braised Ligurian Chicken

• 1 4-pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces (more here on the chicken cutting-up process; we cut ours into 10 pieces by splitting each breast in half)
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 4 to 5 fresh rosemary sprigs
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 cups white wine
• 4 anchovy fillets (optional)
• 1/2 cup kalamata olives (with pits)
• 3 ripe plum tomatoes, halved, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 2 heaping tablespoons flour

In a large bowl, combine flour with salt and pepper to taste. Add chicken pieces and toss until evenly coated.  Place a large flameproof casserole dish over medium-high heat (I used a very big skillet), and heat olive oil. Add chicken pieces.

Fry until the chicken is golden brown underneath, then turn chicken and add rosemary and garlic.  Continue to fry until garlic is softened but not colored, about 3 minutes.

This is where my mom’s brilliant modification comes in.  Before adding the wine, pull the chicken out of the pan and remove the skin (you can discard it or, like us, you can eat most of it as you pull it off the meat.  Trust me, this is some crispy, flavorful chicken skin).  This way, you get all the flavor of the pan-fried chicken skin, but the braising liquid doesn’t leave you with less appetizing soggy chicken skin later.

Once you’ve removed the skin, return the chicken to the pan, turn the heat back up, and add the wine.  When it comes to a boil, add anchovies, olives and tomatoes.

Partly cover pan, and reduce heat to medium low. Simmer until chicken is cooked and tender, and broth is reduced to a rich sauce, 15 to 20 minutes. To serve, discard rosemary sprigs, and season well with salt and pepper to taste. Place a piece or two of chicken on each plate, and top with a spoonful of sauce.

This makes a lot of food–we had leftovers tonight and will finish them off tomorrow night.  The chicken reheats beautifully, probably because it had been sitting in the sauce for a couple of days and had soaked up some of the juices.  We may not have had the good company, or my mom to do the cooking, but this is an acceptable subsitute.