Felisa Rogers's Open Salon Blog

The Deadwood Diaries: Stinging Nettles for Dinner

Fri, 4 Mar 2011 00:03:37 -0500

Stinging nettles have been the enemy for as long as I can remember. Nettles grow lush and huge here in Deadwood, Oregon. When I was a child they were an impediment, tall sentinels blocking the path to the creek. A sting raises a cluster of pink welts like spider bites, which linger for hours.

Nettles lose their sting when exposed to concentrated heat, and they are edible and extremely nutritious, being rich in vitamins A and C, as well as potassium, iron, magnesium, and calcium. Supposedly you can use the plants to treat a huge variety of ailments including hay fever and arthritis. My friend Kamari tries to convince me that nettles are God's gift to hippies, but I've always been dubious about cooking them, for obvious reasons. However, our return to Deadwood has been marked by hard times, and scrounging is the name of the game. I started foraging for wild mushrooms, but as our resources dwindle, I'm getting more creative. Stinging nettles it is.

My plan for dinner tonight is spaghetti with beef meatballs. Our neighbors very kindly gave us six or seven packages of ground beef when they slaughtered their bull and the meat is delicious--flavorful and tender. For our vegetable course we will have the dubious stinging nettles, sauteed in white wine. In the interest of making this sound less obnoxiously twee, I should mention that I found the meatball recipe in Playboy. Go figure.

I start down the driveway at dusk, wearing work gloves and carrying kitchen scissors and a colander. My neighbor Alan pulls up in his red Dodge truck and dumps a load of hay for his cows.

"Looking for nettles?" he asks, noting my scissors and gloves. Evidently this activity is normal to the average Deadwoodian.

After some poking about, I find clusters of baby nettles growing at the edges of the pasture. At this time of year, early March, the plants are small and purple-green--the color is reminiscent of a reptile. I snip, grasp the felled plant with my scissors, and transport it to the colander without contact. Even though I'm wearing gloves, my childish fear lingers and I can't bring myself to touch the leaves; with these ginger methods it takes me five or ten minutes to fill the colander. I don't mind. It's beautiful and still at this hour of evening, as the sky fades pink above the saw-toothed hills.

When I return to the kitchen, the spaghetti sauce is bubbling on the stove, infusing the drafty wooden house with a comforting aroma: it may not be that warm inside, but at least it smells warm. I started the simple tomato sauce two days ago (I find spaghetti sauce is always better the next day), so that part of the meal is practically done.

I've never made meatballs before, but they go off without a hitch. I mix the beef with eggs we bought from my Aunt Coretta, who lives down the road, and 2 diced slices of white bread from the loaf Rich baked yesterday. The recipe calls for pickled peppers and I don't have any, so I substitute a couple of Herdez chipotle chiles. I stick the meatballs in the oven at 400 degrees and 15 minutes later they're done, juicy and tangy from the chiles.

Of course it's the nettles I'm really worried about. I run some water over the colander, but because I don't actually want to touch them, my rinse job isn't exactly thorough. I dump the contents into a hot, oiled cast iron pan and watch with a kind of doubtful interest as the nettles soften, changing from the purple-green color to a brighter, more uniform green. I can still see the tiny stinging hairs. I stir vigorously.

When it comes time to actually taste one, I hesitate. Maybe just a little longer, I think, and prod the ropey mass of greens for the umpteenth time. I turn down the burner, stalling for time. Three or four minutes pass before I actually get up the nerve to touch one. I poke at it. Wait. No sting. I pinch a green between my fingers and close my eyes.

Maybe it's the aftershadow of the sting, but the nettles taste strangely alive--fibrous and tingly, with a hard-to-articulate flavor. Nutty is as close as I can get. When we sit down for dinner, Rich takes a bite and declares them "pretty good." When asked to elaborate he says he thinks they're good but not as good as regular greens. I'm inclined to think the nettles are just as good as regular greens, or they would be if I'd cooked them a little longer. Maybe I'm imagining it, but I feel my lips tingle with the inkling of a sting.

All in all, the dinner is a success. Especially when you consider the cost--thanks to the generosity of my neighbors, the total bill is about $3.00. When we're finished, enough sauce remains for another meal, so I figure our dinner comes out to .85 per person. Sweet. Now I just need to figure out how to make my own glass of red wine.

Here's the breakdown:

spaghetti and sauce:

1/2 package of spaghetti noodles (Grocery outlet price: .39)

1 16 oz can of tomatoes (Grocery outlet price: .99)

2 mushrooms (Grocery outlet price: approx .10)

1/2 onion (approx. .30)

4 cloves of garlic (free, thanks to my mom who grew a bumper crop this year)

1/2 tablespoon of salt (approx. .01)

marjoram, basil, oregano, olive oil (I'm too lazy to try to figure out how much they cost per teaspoon, but not too much)

1 1/2 quarts of chicken stock (don't know how much this costs, but I made it from the carcass of a chicken we'd already eaten and used only 1 carrot and 1/2 onion for the entire batch, so it was pretty cheap)

meatballs:

1 package of ground beef (free from my neighbors)

2 eggs (approx. .50 from my Aunt Coretta)

2 pieces of bread from home-baked loaf (approx. .10)

2 canned chipotles (approx. .20)

1/2 tablespoon of salt (approx. .01)

side:

nettles (free)

2 tablespoons white wine (Grocery outlet price for entire bottle: 2.99)

olive oil

Nazis, muckrakers, and yellow journalism

Tue, 1 Mar 2011 16:03:41 -0500

Nazis, muckrakers, and yellow journalism: Why it's wrong for Congress to eliminate NPR funding

_{The rival pulpiteers / Keppler LOC.gov}

I grew up in a time before the 24 hour cable news cycle and its overt political allegiances. That said, I don’t subscribe to the hysterical assumption that America was some sort of paradise of objective journalism before Fox News came along and ruined everything. In fact, Thomas Jefferson himself employed sleazebag journalist James Callendar to slander Federalist opponents Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. An American tradition was born. In 1895 William Randolph Hearst ushered in the age of yellow journalism by using his papers to successfully rally for U.S. intervention in the Cuban Revolution. In 1906 Theodore Roosevelt coined the term muckraking to demean a group of journalists, including Upton Sinclair, who wrote sensational stories to draw the public’s attention to business corruption and perceived social ills.

_{President Theodore Roosevelt (LOC No known restrictions)}

Just as promoting an agenda is an American (and indeed global) journalistic tradition, accusing journalists and news sources of promoting an agenda has deep roots. Not all such accusations are founded.

On February 19, the House passed H.R. 1, which eliminates federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Senate is scheduled to review the subject this week. Gutting funding for CPB will hurt National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service affiliate stations across the country, while saving the American tax payer approximately $1.43 a year. Not much, when you consider that every month more than half of the American population uses public media, which, in addition to programming, offers free distance learning programs, K-12 educational resources, professional development resources for teachers, lectures and forums, and oral history projects. Meanwhile, according to statistics from the Environmental Law Institute, American taxpayers subsidize gas and oil companies to the tune of an estimated 10 billion dollars per year; more than twenty times the amount previously allocated to CPB.

So why are Republicans in congress trying to get rid of CPB funding? Maybe it's because NPR has a liberal bias, according to a number of prominent Republican politicians, including Mike Huckabee . Or maybe it's because NPR is racist, an assertion talk radio host Rush Limbaugh supports by citing NPR's firing of Juan Williams. Or maybe it’s really because, famously, NPR executives are actually Nazis.

Like President Obama, NPR catches hell from both sides of the political spectrum. For example, after my dad’s death, my mother gave up on NPR and started listening to Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!.“You know what NPR stands for?” she asked one day. “Nice Polite Republicans!” she finished triumphantly.

“I’ve heard that one before,” I muttered. And “at least they’re polite.”
I tried to tell my mom that I didn’t think that NPR was supporting a Republican agenda. I mentioned that some of my Republican in-laws think that NPR is a blatantly liberal mouthpiece for the socialist regime of the Democratic Party. I didn’t mention that her hero, Amy Goodman (whom my mom refers to as “Amy”. As in “You should have heard what Amy said about the climate change conference!”) depresses the hell out of me.

While I respect Goodman for her willingness to pursue stories other media sources (including NPR) are ignoring, I enjoy NPR’s less accusatory approach to reporting. I don’t turn on the news in the morning for a dose of hysteria, which is also why I don’t watch Fox News much either. NPR programming tells textured stories via real voices and multiple perspectives. Hearing strangers on StoryCorps divulge long-held truths and secrets makes me look closer at the people I pass on the street. But even when NPR correspondents are covering world events, they provide a level of detail that’s impossible when a story is being manhandled to fit a message or agenda. It’s interesting that when Mike Huckabee denounces NPR’s liberal bias, in the same blog post he admits that he enjoyed appearing on NPR programs and was ‘treated fairly and objectively’.

This year, the diversity of NPR programming has reminded me of the spectacular gamut of human existence: John Barry’s thought processes in composing the music for Goldfinger, first-hand accounts from the streets of Egypt, and a young female soldier’s reluctance to accept the mantle of hero. As far as I can tell, these stories don’t reflect ideologies specific to Republicans or Democrats, but rather an interest in human experience, which is what draws us to the news in the first place.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was established in 1967 with the mission to “complement, assist, and support a national policy that will most effectively make public telecommunications services available to all citizens of the United States.” The idea was to facilitate a free way for all citizens, regardless of income level and location, to stay informed. So far, the American public has been receptive: about a quarter of funding for CPB affiliate stations comes from listeners; schools and universities, state and local governments, businesses, foundations, and CPB provide the rest.

Some Republican politicians argue that times have changed since the establishment of CPB and that the Web now negates the need for public radio and television. As Representative Doug Lamborn (Colorado-R) states, "With 500 cable TV channels, Internet on people's cell phones, satellite radio, we have so many sources of media that we don't need a government-subsidized source of media.” Lamborn is missing the point. None of the news sources he lists are free. (Yes, libraries provide Internet service, but making a special trip to the library every day to read the news takes a chunk of time that most people can’t spare. NPR allows citizens to stay informed while cleaning, commuting to work, taking care of kids or engaging in a thousand other essential activities.)

During the five years I spent teaching elementary and middle school kids, I found the PBS Web site to be a treasure trove of games and activities, none of which were skewed toward a political agenda. Regardless of your opinion about the objectivity of CPB sponsored news programming, for $1.43 NPR and PBS provides citizens with nonpartisan cultural and educational resources. Resources that are safe for kids in a way that the Web at large is not. Kids who grow up listening to NPR and watching PBS learn basic and essential information about science, civics, language, and history.

To me, the Morning Edition theme song, punctuated by the whir of a coffee grinder and the hiss of a kettle, is the sound of morning. This dates back to my rural childhood when we lived out of television reception range and an hour from the nearest newsstand or library; Oregon Public Broadcasting was a lifeline. My dad was always up before dawn, puttering in the kitchen while outside the dark woods creaked into morning. I’d sit across from him at the oilcloth-covered table and eat breakfast, listening for the roar of the school bus on the gravel road, comforted by his bear-like presence and Cokie Roberts reporting the news of the world

While I think you can argue that muckraking has its place, I’m just grateful that in my lifetime, NPR has provided a more measured and, yes, polite alternative.

The Cook Book

Sun, 9 Jan 2011 18:01:10 -0500

"Good God, what is that? It's huge..." I said suspiciously, as my mother removed the book from one of her voluminous duffel bags. My mother doesn't like anything to go to waste, so she's always convincing me that I need this or that. She'd just brought me a mountain of stuff from Arizona, where she'd been playing hospice nurse for a close family friend. After the death she'd helped to clean and pack up the house, and during our visit she kept retrieving 'one more thing' she'd scavenged for me. The pile on my coffee table was at the teetering-point: beaded jewelry, small weavings, a photograph album, seven or eight obscure books, a ceramic rabbit, two oil paintings by the deceased, hand-painted floor tiles...

"I can't believe you dragged that all the way across country on the train," I said, hefting the book, which was thick as a cinder block. "Pellaprat's Great Book of French Cuisine...I've never eaten a French dish in my life. You know how I feel about the French." I said.

"It was Carol's..." my mother said, sounding wounded.

Carol was my godmother, and she and my mother knew each other from the old days in San Miguel de Allende. They had a thing or two in common: they were both adventurers, bohemians, writers, recovering alcoholics who had a tendency toward bitterness which, on a good day, could be superseded by their wonder at the infinite beauty of the world.

Carol was tiny, with feathery brown hair and eyes that seemed black, though of course they weren't. There was something of the shrew in her, though it wasn't an ugly shrewishness: rather a delicate menace. She smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and obsessed about politics. An ardent supporter of Jerry Brown when he made a presidential bid in 1992, she liked to call Bill Clinton 'the prince of sleaze'.

_{Carol and Felisa Rosa Rogers circa 1983.}

In addition to writing, she wove and painted. One day when I was a kid she drove me out to her studio in Española, New Mexico. As soon as we got there, she rolled up the garage-style door to let March light permeate the narrow cement room. Through the doorway, dead golden grass stood still in an arroyo, and the sky above the mountains was deep blue. Inside was almost as vivid--from the floor to the high ceilings, the walls were covered with paintings, mostly abstract--huge canvases alive with loops of color.

Carol was not the sort of person who felt obligated to entertain children, even ones she was fond of, and I was not the sort of child who expected to be entertained. Briskly, she got to work. As she painted, reaching as high as she could with her brush, she'd pause to take swigs of buttermilk, straight from the carton. She said it helped to counteract the poison of the paint. I wandered around, staring at the paintings. True to character my favorite was the least abstract--a lush expanse that showed hidden treasures below the earth.

_{Carol as I remember her best, in New Mexico.}

The last time I saw my godmother, she was standing in the parking lot of a strip mall in Arizona, looking tiny but somehow still debonair in her black pants and fuzzy red sweater, accessorized with a red silk head scarf and a portable oxygen tank. I was on my way to Mexico and in a hurry, so she'd driven from her home in Patagonia to meet me and my boyfriend Josh en route. It was a short visit: she treated us to lunch at a Chinese buffet (a generous gesture on her minuscule budget) and then we said goodbye in the parking lot. Looking back, I wish Josh and I would have taken an extra night and driven out to Patagonia to see her studio, but we were young and, as I said, in a hurry. And it wasn't until we were saying goodbye in Arizona's bright winter wind that I knew this would be the last time. I was struck with startling certainty: one of those rare moments in life that are devoid of doubt. But the realization came too late for me to make anything of it: I was already climbing into Josh's truck and waving goodbye to the little figure on the tarmac, who stood there in the sunlight watching us until we drove away.

I am sentimental, so I couldn't just get rid of the cook book. I shelved it grimly. More stuff to move from place to place. I hoped no one would see it and think I actually had pretensions of attempting French cuisine. It would be bad for my image. The tome remained unopened until the day two of my old standbys (The Best of James Beard and Craig Clairborne's Favorites) failed me. With a sigh, I dragged Pellaprat off the shelf, set it heavily on the kitchen table, thumbed to 'Foreign Specialties' within the immense soup section, where I found a recipe titled 'Minstrone alla Milanese, which begins: 1/2 lb fat bacon, 1/2 lb lean bacon. Intriguing.

The soup was a great success, the smokiness of bacon balanced by the sweetness of carrots, onions, and garden tomatoes. Turnips added complexity. Over time I made changes, as one does with a favorite recipe: one day I didn't have any grated cheese, so I substituted fresh mozzarella, with amazing results. I replaced 'spaghetti or rice' with rotini or bow-tie pasta, tripled the garlic (as is my wont) and added mushrooms, fresh parsley or basil, diced zucchini, and leek greens. I also began cooking the soup the day before and then adding a second batch of ingredients on the second day, only a few minutes before serving. In short, the soup became part of my culinary repertoire, to the point that every time I called to invite my friends Becky and Tom over for dinner, I could always overhear Tom in the background asking, "Is she making the minestrone?"

But the key to this soup is really the turnip and the bacon, to which I owe Pellaprat all the credit. As it turns out, Pellaprat's The Great Book of French Cuisine is something of a classic. Originally published in 1935 as L'Art Culinaire Moderne, the book is the summation of a life's work and contains practical advice on everything from planning a menu to fluting a mushroom, all written in a sensible voice reminiscent of Emily Post. My 1972 edition is 950 pages long, replete with retro color photographs, the gaudy variety that I absolutely adore.

For a culinary philistine such as myself, much of the information isn't exactly useful: for example, I don't really need to know the correct term for lining a pastry tin with pastry (foncer), and I am unlikely to try many of Pellaprat's recipes; I am not yet in the habit of following instructions such as 'Arrange the aiguillettes of duck to cover the macedoine, and mask over with the aspic. Mix the foi gras and butter and fill into 6 small molds (duck shaped if possible)'. But plenty of recipes still beckon to me, the chapters on general culinary techniques are excellent, and it's interesting to look through the well-traveled volume and wonder what Carol learned from it. Did she serve 'our' minestrone recipe at candle-lit literary dinner parties at her San Miguel house? Did she cook eggs a la Florentine for her former husband, the writer Pierre Delattre?

_{Carol Delattre working on a weaving. 1973.}

One of the reasons I love food: recipes bring me close to the ones I have lost, and the ones I might lose in the future. I cherish my dad's recipe for chicken cacciaitore, and regret not having my grandmother's recipe for marble cake. Minestrone ala Milanese reminds of the living: my godson Jack, three years old, crawling into my lap as his parents and other friends sit around the big table in our old dining room in Seattle, connected by years and circumstance, brought together by bacon mozzarella soup. And the minestrone also makes me thankful for Carol, and my mom, and the magic of books.

I've lost a lot of friends, and, other than my mother, my only living blood relatives anymore are cousins and second cousins. I don't feel especially sorry for myself, but I do have regrets. Because, as most of you know, each death brings with it a new regret. I should have been there, I should have listened, I should have answered that last call...I wish I could have asked him this, I wish she would have had time to teach me that...You can't answer that call or ask that last question, but sometimes you can still learn a thing or two from the things left behind.

Minestrone ala Rosa, Delattre, Pellaprat

Notes: In culinary tradition, minestrone is soup made with whatever you have around. This recipe can be made with almost any vegetable, and my versions vary according to season and budget. The following ingredient list is just a favorite variation. You can successfully make this soup with fewer ingredients. As mentioned, I like to cook the day before, reheat, and then add the last batch of vegetables right before serving. But it's good on the first day too. I usually serve up the bowls individually, spooning the soup over the pasta and fresh mozzarella.

Cooking Time: 1 hour

Serves 8

Ingredients:

2 pints of water

2 pints of stock (optional--water can be substituted)

1/2 lb bacon (diced)

1 large onion

1 leek (both green and white parts)

3 mushrooms (chopped)

1 carrot (minced)

1 carrot (chopped)

1 cup of cabbage or curly kale (chopped)

1 stick of celery (minced)

1 small zucchini (minced)

1 turnip (chopped)

2 potatoes (chopped)

3 cloves of garlic (chopped)

3 cups of precooked pasta

2 fresh tomatoes or 1/2 can of chopped tomatoes

1/2 cup of fresh parsley (chopped)

1/2 cup of fresh basil (chopped)

1 pinch of thyme

1/2 bay leaf

1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika (optional)

1 lb of fresh mozzarella

grated Parmesan

salt and pepper to taste

1. Throw bacon in pot. As it begins to fry, add onion and leek (reserving a small quantity of leek greens). Sauté for a few minutes.

2. Add potatoes, turnip, 1/2 of the cabbage or kale, garlic, thyme, paprika, some pepper, tomatoes, and the bay leaf. Fry for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Add water and/or stock, and 1/2 the parsley or basil.

4. Simmer for 45 minutes.

5. Salt and pepper to taste.

6. Add the rest of the vegetables and herbs (you may want to save some basil or parsley for garnish). Cook for another 3 minutes.

6. In each bowl, spoon pasta and top with slices of fresh mozzarella. Ladle soup over the pasta and cheese, sprinkle Parmesan, garnish with parsley or basil, and serve.

The Deadwood Diaries: Black Beans for the Snowbound

Sun, 2 Jan 2011 20:01:27 -0500

_{This post is the second installment in The Deadwood Diaries, a series about my move back to the woods after 17 years of living in urban areas.}

I have amazing friends who make shopping lists and stick to them. These people actually buy what they need for one meal, and leave it at that. As for me, I don't go to the grocery store to pick up a few things. When I lived in Seattle I may have claimed that I was just stopping in to pick up a few things, but it was never true. I never walked away from Ballard Market without dropping at least $60, and I only lived eight blocks from the store. In a way, it's just the way my brain works: I navigate by sight, I form new thoughts by saying them out loud, and I don't know what I need until I'm looking at it.

But it's also the way I gew up. The nearest decent grocery store was more than an hour's drive from our house. (By "decent" my Dad meant cheap.) A trip to get groceries was never casual, but rather a major expedition. For me it entailed breathing exhuast fumes and mouse piss from the nest-bound heater as our Datsun creaked along the winding road from Deadwood to Eugene, and then squandering another hour following my Dad as he pushed a groaning cart through the bulk section of Waremart, fishing multiple crumpled lists from the breast pocket of his checked wool shirt and muttering to himself (probably recipes). Needless to say, my dad was the sort of person you dread getting stuck behind at the checkout: from looking at his final haul you might have thought he was preparing for the apocalypse.

_{Photo by Becky Fay.}

Living in Seattle, I shopped the same way, but with a twist: I bought everything I could possibly imagine needing for the apocalypse, but two days later I would return to 'pick up a few missing items', and I'd walk out of the store an hour later. Luckily, our house was home to a steady stream of visitors, so food rarely went to waste. A typical dinner at Liberty House consisted of my husband Rich, me, our roommate Cornelius, maybe four invited guests plus kids, perhaps a friend or relative the guests unexpectedly brought with them, an impromptu house guest, and our neighbor James, who just happened to stop by. No wonder I was always buying food. (Happily, it should be noted. I love to cook for people.)

_{The author in her Seattle kitchen. Photo by Becky Fay.}

Everything is different now. In August we moved back to my home 'town' (technically Deadwood is a town, but to the urban observer it just might look more like a wooded area, or possibly the middle of nowhere). Not only do I have to remember how to cook for only two people, but I have to remember, period. I have to actually remember to buy butter, and cumin, and enough wine to last a week, and the dill I will need for the minestrone I plan on cooking in three days. There's no going back to the store, unless I want to waste a day on the mission. (To be fair, the butter at least can be found at our local general store, but that's a 50 minute round trip on a rutted road that is hell on our decrepit tires.)

Living in Deadwood is like being snowed in all the time. It takes a monumental effort to get anywhere, and so you end up making do with whatever you have on hand. Good thing I'm a born scrounger. So far I've committed all sorts of culinary sins, including susbstituting red wine for white, oregano for marjoram, and whipping cream for milk. I've made stock without bay leaves, eaten spaghetti without parmesan cheese (those of you who know me know that I really suffered over that one), and even attempted shepherd's pie without onion. (If you want a real kitchen challenge, try cooking without onions for an entire week.)

_{Our Deadwood house in the snow. Photo by the author.}

That said, I've been stocking up on dry goods and spices. And it's not because I am some kind of effete foodie who has a coniption over spice substitutions: snow has been hovering on the radar for days and in Deadwood being snowbound is no joke. Luckily, some of my favorite recipes can be made with pantry ingredients. Perhaps the simplest is a pot of black beans, which can be served with peasant bread and sour cream and eaten as soup. Leftover black beans make a nutritious anchor for at least a dozen other simple dishes, including nachos, tacos, burritos, bisque, spread, and gallo pinto.

All you really need to make black bean soup is garlic, dried black beans, salt, cumin, some form of grease, and yes, an onion. Oh, and time. You need some time. Ideally, you will also have chiles, chipotle powder, cilantro or parsley, sour cream, cheese, epazote, bacon grease or chorizo, chicken stock...The list goes on, but you really can make a good pot of beans with the first six ingredients I listed. Cooking time varies depending on soaking time and the quality and freshness of the beans; it should be between 3 and 5 hours, but requires very little supervision. Just don't add salt until the beans are already soft, because salting the beans early will slow down the cooking process and can ruin the experiment entirely. For maximum flavor, cook beans the day before, store in a cool place, and then reheat.

_{Reheating beans on the wood stove. Photo by Felisa Rogers.}

Ingredients:

2 cups of dried black beans

10 cups of water

4 cups of chicken stock (optional, can be replaced with water)

4 cloves of garlic (chopped)

1 onion (chopped)

1 bay leaf (optional)

2 teaspoons of cumin

2 teaspoons of chile powder (preferably chipotle)

2 dried chiles or 1 fresh chile (slit the fresh chile and put it in the pot whole)

2 tablespoons of bacon grease (you can use olive oil instead, or substitute the grease with actual bacon or chorizo)

sour cream and chopped red cabbage for garnish

salt

1/2 cup of cilantro or parsley (optional)

Directions:

1. Soak beans for a few hours or overnight and drain. (You can do without soaking the beans, but the cooking time will be longer.)

2. Put 10 cups of water, garlic, cumin, chile powder, chiles, the onion, and the bay leaf in a large pot (preferably cast iron).

3. Bring water to a boil, and then turn down to a low simmer. Simmer until the beans are soft. If fluid runs low during this time, add a little more hot water.

4. Add bacon grease and/or meat, and stock. If you have parsley or cilantro, add that now, saving some for the garnish. Simmer for another hour or so.

5. Salt to taste.

6. If you have time, let beans cool down for several hours or overnight, and then reheat to serve. Serve beans in broth, topped with sour cream and garnished with chopped red cabbage and parsley or cilantro.

Cold Weather + Lean Economy = Beef Stew

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 14:12:47 -0500

I didn't grow up eating beef stew (it wasn't exotic enough for my Dad's tastes), but I've developed a liking for it in my advanced old age, and I've been perfecting this recipe for awhile.

Adding vegetables such as carrots and celery twice during the cooking process (once at the outset, and again 5 minutes before serving) gives the dish a more complex flavor and texture: the long-cooked vegetables thicken the consistency and provide a mellow base note; the vegetables tossed in toward the finish give fresh bursts of color, crunch, and flavor. (Adding cabbage, greens, carrots, and celery 5 minutes before serving also ups the stew's nutritional content.) Naturally (and this is the great thing about stews, I think) the ingredients can be varied or minimized, depending on what you have on hand. I generally cook the day before serving (as described below). It's not necessary (obviously), but it definitely improves the flavor.

You will need:
3+ quarts of stock or water
2 lbs of beef stew meat
1/2 cup of flour
3 tablespoons of olive oil or bacon grease
1/8 cup of wine (both red and white work; sherry is also good)
1 onion (coarsely chopped)
1/2 leek (green and white portions, chopped) (optional)
1 tablespoon of fresh garlic or onion chives (chopped) (optional)
5 cloves of garlic (chopped)
2 turnips (chopped)
3-4 potatoes (chopped)
3 stalks of celery (diced)
3-4 mushrooms (chopped) (optional)
2 carrots (diced)
1 tomato (when in season)
1 cup of seasonal greens such as kale (optional)
1/4 cup of cabbage (optional)
1/2 cup of corn (fresh or frozen)
1/4 cup of parsley (diced)
1/2 serrano chile (optional)
2 teaspoons of marjoram
3 teaspoons of smoked paprika (regular paprika will do, but smoked is better)
2 teaspoons of coarse black pepper
sea salt to taste

Serves 6

1. Mix flour, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 1 teaspoon of paprika, and salt in a bowl. 2. Dredge stew meat in mixture.
3. Heat olive oil or bacon grease in a large pot (preferably cast iron).
4. Brown meat in oil.
5. Temporarily remove meat.
6. Add the onion, leeks, potatoes, thyme, salt, chile, the rest of the paprika and pepper, 1 tablespoon of stock or water, and wine.
7. Cook until the onions are translucent.
8. Add corn, 1 carrot, 1 stalk of celery, marjoram, garlic, turnips,
and mushrooms.
9. Add the rest of the stock or water and bring to a boil.
10. Add browned meat. Turn down to simmer and cook for 3-6 hours.
11. Turn off and allow to sit, preferably over night. (optional)
12. Resume cooking for 40 minutes.
13. Add cabbage, greens, parsley, chives, and the remaining celery and carrots.
14. Simmer for 5 minutes.
15. Salt to taste. Serve. (It's good with grated sharp cheddar or Parmesan or both.)

(A version of this recipe originally appeared on Consumption, the blog at my Web site.)