Garlicky vinaigrette and a three-legged beagle

A very simple, very French vinaigrette elevates this mixed greens salad. Recipe below.

Last week, I talked a little about our weekend road trip to St. Louis. I’m keeping that St. Louis theme going this week.

All of us who love to cook can think of certain “Aha!” moments in our culinary lives. Moments when we’ve learned some new technique or connected a couple of dots and suddenly know something that changes how we cook or how we think about food or, as in the case of this simple vinaigrette, adds a lasting weapon to our food arsenal.

This “Aha!” moment happened at the kitchen table of an old French woman, “Aunt” Jo, one Thanksgiving in St. Louis years ago. I used the quotes around Aunt [and I’ll dispense with them from here on out] because she wasn’t really a relative, but a friend of the family of such long standing that aunthood had been conferred upon her.

Josephine—Aunt Jo—had come from France in her early 20s [she was well into her 80s by this particular Thanksgiving]. She and her husband had run the Parisian Hand Laundry at the edge of the city’s then posh West End, on Delmar Boulevard. For much of the time they had run the business, that section of St. Louis was home to Washington University professors and old money and was swell enough to support such a lovely, labor-intensive business.

They lived in a beautiful apartment above the laundry. Even back then, I realized what a sophisticated and utterly urban home it was. Big and rambling, with dark woodwork, glass French doors dividing rooms and a handsome, massive [but squared and sleek] couch that ruled the living room. Looking back now, I also realize that the apartment was very Paris.

A little aside here. As suburban sprawl continues to reshape and redefine American life, forward thinking urban planners have been looking to this urban mixed-use model to create a sense of community and life in suburban communities. This approach is called New Urbanism and was pioneered by urban planners Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company [thanks, Claire!]. Increasingly, suburban communities are either revitalizing existing small downtowns or “Main Streets” or building them from scratch. The approach includes putting residential space over storefronts, banishing parking to the back or in central garages and encouraging pedestrianism [as one site calls it] and the kind of life and critical mass you find in urban areas. To me, it feels a little manufactured—not unlike Epcot Center’s take on Europe—but it still beats the hell out of the relentless march of strip malls across the landscape. But I digress.

By the time the aforementioned Thanksgiving had rolled around, Aunt Jo’s husband was long dead [I had never known him] and the neighborhood had become rather sketchy. There was still enough gentility to keep the laundry going at that time—and Aunt Jo ran it with an iron fist even then—but its days were numbered.

Aunt Jo’s main companion at this point was her dog, a beagle named Jean Pierre. Jean Pierre only responded to French commands—“Asseyez-vous, Jean Pierre” and he would sit. Jean Pierre had come equipped with the standard set of four legs, but one evening as Aunt Jo was out walking him, he caught a stray bullet in a hind leg, a victim of crossfire from some gang-related shooting. After the surgery, he was left with three legs. He still got around fine, but had issues scratching his left side.

Back to the Thanksgiving in question [I do love to ramble, don’t I?]. I had tired of scratching Jean Pierre’s left side [even though he had not tired of me doing so] and of the living room conversation, so I wandered into the kitchen. The turkey was in the oven, and various pots on the stove held fragrant sides-in-progress. Aunt Jo bashed a fat garlic clove with the side of a large chef’s knife and squeezed it from its skin into a small bowl. She added a couple of healthy pinches of salt and ground the garlic and the salt together with the tines of an old fork. When she poured some olive oil over the mixture and attacked it again with the fork—Aunt Jo was a tall, formidable woman, not unlike Julia Child [only without the sunny disposition]—I suddenly realized she was making her garlicky vinaigrette. The women of the family all professed their sorrow at being unable to make this sublime, simple dressing themselves, but none of them ever seemed to find the way back to Aunt Jo’s kitchen when she cooked.

Aunt Jo didn’t exactly teach me to make it—it was more that I kind of just picked it up as I sat at the table and watched her. She set the bowl aside and tended to other things in the kitchen. I didn’t know [and never will now] if this was part of the process for her or the other things just needed tending to then. Later, she added some red wine vinegar and a couple of grinds of pepper and whisked it all together. That was it. It then sat on the table, letting the garlic do its work, while the rest of the meal came together.

The next time there was a family meal [sans Aunt Jo], I offered to make a dressing for the salad. Eyebrows were raised—the foodie in me had not yet awakened [well, maybe a little], and bottled dressing was still considered just fine for most occasions. But I nailed it. Around the table, the response was a mix of admiration and irritation [mainly from the women who never made their way back to Aunt Jo’s kitchen]. I enjoyed both equally.

Continue reading “Garlicky vinaigrette and a three-legged beagle” →

Road trips and letting the pasta drive

Flavored pasta brings plenty to the table tastewise, so stick with a few simple ingredients. Recipe of sorts below.

We took a road trip to St. Louis last weekend. This was supposed to be a nice, chatty post about the wonderful, underrated city where I grew up and some of its unexpected delights. But things are suddenly hectic at Blue Kitchen. So today I’m just going to focus on its farmers market and one of the delights we discovered there.

Soulard Farmers Market is one of the oldest farmers markets in America and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. It’s been in continuous operation since 1838.

It’s also one of the most colorful farmers markets around. That, as much as the cheap produce to be had, made it part of more Saturdays than not when we lived there and a required stop anytime we visit now. Not manufactured colorfulness like mimes and face painters, either—I’m talking white-haired old ladies sucking down cold cans of Busch beer while doing their weekly shopping at 10 in the morning.

Besides local produce and not so local stuff [I’m assuming the bananas and kiwis I saw weren’t locally grown], you’ll find plants and cut flowers for sale; baked goods [both artisanal and otherwise]; an excellent spice shop; fresh meat; live rabbits, ducks and chickens waiting to become fresh meat; and a pet shop where live animals await a decidedly happier fate. We were happy to learn this visit that the pet shop serves as a kind of no-kill shelter. The kittens and puppies they sell aren’t from pet factories or puppy mills—they take in unwanted litters from people in the neighborhood. And they seem to do a land office business.

There are also purveyors of T-shirts; incense; sunglasses; “art” on mirrors, velvet and other, um, interesting surfaces; tiny doughnuts pumped out and fried by an ingenious little machine that not only cooks and flips them before your eyes, but also lures a steady stream of customers—and last Saturday, at least, a genius of a salesman/showman on par with Ron Popeil and Ed McMahon—Ken Baker. His demonstration of the Super-Shammy, his own invention, bordered on performance art. We bought some. If he had a website, I’d even provide a link here. But he only does business through a P.O. box in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and on QVC and the Home Shopping Network.

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Spanish sausage and well-traveled legumes

Paprika-rich Spanish chorizo teams up with globe-trotting beans in this Warm Butter Bean Salad with Chorizo and Tomatoes. Recipe below.

Anything that prompts me to call my Aunt Veta down in southern Mississippi is a good thing. She is my favorite and most colorful of all my aunts—and I have been blessed in that department. She and my Uncle James raised a family and then proceeded to raise two grandkids until Uncle James passed away several years ago. Then Aunt Veta finished the job on her own. She is stubbornly positive and optimistic, even when the going gets rough—and if she can’t find something good to say about you, you are a sorry individual indeed.

What prompted my call the other day was this dish. Specifically, the butter bean part of it. Based on a dish served as a starter at London Moorish/Spanish restaurant Moro [covered in the May issue of Food & Wine], it also features Spanish chorizo—but more about that later.

Butter beans? Lima beans? The one thing everyone agrees on concerning these beans is that they originated in South America. Explorers and slavers of the early 1500’s carried them to the farthest parts of the earth—Europe, Africa, the East Indies, India, the Philippines. Depending on who’s telling the story, they’ve been cultivated since either 4,000 B.C. or 6,000 B.C. There are two distinct varieties: The baby lima—an actual variety, not just a lima bean harvested early—and the larger, plumper Fordhook. According to most sources, the names lima and butter are interchangeable, with butter beans simply being the popular name for them in the southern United States. But other sources say that southerners insist that the lima bean and the butter bean are two different beans altogether.

It was time to call Aunt Veta. “They’re as different as black-eyed peas and English peas,” she proclaimed. “James and me, we never much cared for lima beans. So James would always plant speckled butter beans.” [When mottled with purple they’re called calico or speckled butter beans—great, more names.] But Uncle James would harvest the beans early, when the pods were light green, so the beans would be white. Still, when Aunt Veta cooked them, they would turn the cooking liquid to what she called a “blue liquor.”

Whatever the name/size/color, these full-flavored, slightly kidney-shaped beans contain high quality protein, phosphorus, potassium and iron. They’re also rich in the best sort of fiber, soluble fiber, which helps to eliminate cholesterol from the body.

Spanish Chorizo. Last week I wrote about Spain’s love of all things pork and mentioned this dense, paprika-powered sausage. Chorizo is made from coarsely chopped fatty pork and seasoned with mild Spanish paprika, salt and garlic. That’s pretty much it. Spicier versions will also include small dried hot chiles. In Portugal, they make a similar sausage called chouriço. Both are completely different from the ground pork Mexican chorizo.

As an indication of how much paprika is used in making chorizo, when you sauté the fully cooked sausage, the rendered fat is deep red-orange and will color anything else you cook with it. I like cooking up some chorizo and maybe an onion and some red bell pepper, then scrambling some eggs with it—they take on a nice, orangish tinge. They are also quite delicious.

So is this dish. I adapted the recipe to use as a side instead of a starter. Either way you use it, it’s as impressive as it is easy to make. Continue reading “Spanish sausage and well-traveled legumes” →

Iberia meets Italia—for dinner

Pork Chops with Paprika and Fennel Seeds combine favorite flavors of Spain and Italy. Recipe below.

My friend Stan went to Spain last year. After he got back, the first thing I asked him about was the food, of course. He said that most restaurants offered pork, pork and more pork. Stan is Jewish, so he would notice this sort of thing.

To be fair, he did find other things to eat in Spain [and as he admitted to me later, did finally succumb to the delights of pig meat in his travels]. But Spanish cuisine does embrace meat in general and pork in particular, in all its forms, both fresh and cured. The small, dense Spanish chorizo sausages, a completely different, um, animal from the Mexican variety, are wonderfully intense. I know I’ll feature them in at least one upcoming post.

And to flavor all this meaty goodness? Paprika, of course. Paprika [or pimentón, as it’s known in Spain] is one of the essential ingredients of Spanish cuisine. It is made from ground aromatic sweet red peppers and ranges in flavor from mild to hot and in color from bright orange-red to blood red. Originally from the Americas, most commercial paprika now comes from Spain, South America, California and Hungary.

The Italians are no slouches in the consumption of pork either. And for them, one spice of choice for combining with it is fennel seeds. If you doubt this for a moment, just wait ’til the fennel seeds hit the hot skillet—you will smell the essence of Italian pork sausage. Fennel seeds have been compared to anise, but while they do have a big flavor, it’s not as pronounced in its licorice flavor as anise.

In this recipe, paprika and fennel come together to deliver a nice, subtle complexity in a quick, easy-to-make main course. Continue reading “Iberia meets Italia—for dinner” →