Rutabaga blues

I love turnips, and I was eager to try this recently published recipe for related rutabagas. My friend and fellow turnip enthusiast Lisa was eager to try it too, so I scored us some giant rutabagas and organic farro yesterday at the 97th Street Friday morning farmer's market.

What a waste of perfectly good rutabagas--doesn't that look like an unholy mess?

The maple syrup hides the delicious turnipy taste, and the feta cheese added an unpleasantly sour taste to the farro (I see the restaurant recipe that inspired this one used regular goat cheese. That probably would have been better). I picked out the turnip cubes and ate them separately. I tried serving it over the recommended arugula, and the greens were a bit too sharp for this combination. Would not make this again. Next time, just make boiled turnips.

A foray south of the border

I always wanted to make fresh corn tortillas, but I could never find the right flour in my neighborhood. You can't use ordinary corn meal--you need special lime-treated corn. (I once looked at a Mexican cookbook by Diana Kennedy, and she had you making your own flour by treating the corn with lime from the garden center. Maybe Martha Stewart would try that, but I passed.)

Then just this week I was surprised to find MaSeCa for sale at my corner bodega.




















Maybe there is a tamales god--or a burgeoning Mexican population on the Upper West Side. Now, on with our test.

The recipe is suprisingly easy: just mix the flour, water and some salt. Roll into small balls and press with a tortilla press. Well, I didn't have a tortilla press. I bought one at a yard sale years ago just in case I found that flour--but darned if I could find it now. So I just rolled out the dough on the countertop. The tortillas are not very even, but so what. Then you just grill them for a couple of minutes on a griddle or cast-iron pan.



















These may not look beautiful, but they tasted great, and best of all they had the soft texture I remembered from tortillas I had in Mexico. You can fold them around the food without their breaking apart like those hard, rubbery store-bought kind. You can make sopes with the same masa--just roll them smaller and thicker.

Borscht Belt Routine

It's a really cold day out here (23 degrees), so I am making a big pot of Russian Borscht. Yum! This is a time-tested Times recipe, folks. It's from the Craig Claiborne NYT cookbook of 30-odd years ago, and I've been making it every winter for about that long. The bottom photo is what it looks like before the cabbage cooks down and the beets infuse it all with a lovely magenta color.

They used to serve something like this at the old Russian Tea Room, and I adapted this recipe to satisfy my craving for that version. (This is probably an atavistic craving for whatever my ancestors made when they lived in Minsk or Pinsk.) I add lots of dill, and I make it with prepared beef broth instead of meat. I don't shred the vegetables--I cut them in large julienne. I've made a double batch--it freezes very well. Below, how it looks when it cooks down more.

I hate the I Hate to Cook Book

There's nothing like inedible food to make you stick to your diet. I tried making this chicken dish last night, because I had had something like this once at someone's house, and it was good. Well, this was bad. (I used chicken cutlets rather than chicken pieces, but I don't think that was the problem.) Against my better judgment, I followed the recipe's advice to quarter the mushrooms instead of slicing them thin, and they had a disgusting texture. And that's just one problem. I ended up discarding a lot of chicken and sauce.

Mmm . . . rosemary focaccia with rosemary from my own garden

Well, the New York Times has had some singularly uninteresting or unappetizing recipes lately, so I tried this one for focaccia from the Daily News. It's really easy, and it came out quite good. It freezes well too. Be sure to add enough salt. If you like Cosi bread, this comes pretty close.

I used packaged dry yeast rather than fresh. Come to think of it, I don't know if I've ever even seen fresh yeast in a store. Thanks to Brian for planting rosemary!

Summer braise, makes me feel fine . . .

Okay, what am I doing making two braised dishes in the middle of July? What is the New York Times doing publishing two braised dishes in the middle of July? Well, I made both. There haven't been any recipes that piqued my interest in this column for weeks, and I love stews and braises. I have never made lamb shanks or pork, so I actually tried these.

The first, Rice Pudding Pork, is pictured here. Isn't it somewhat unappetizingly beige? Although the meat is browned on the outside, it is beigey, with a beige sauce. I had always heard of this mythical Marcella Hazan dish, where the pork is braised in milk. This is similar, but with some herbs added. I don't get the appeal. I did not bother photographing the plated portions, as they were really quite unappetizing. This would have to be served with some various colored vegetables, which I hadn't bothered to make. I made some really delicious corn, which is detailed below.

The pork smelled really good while cooking, kind of bacony with the herby overtone (thyme and bay leaves). It tastes just okay. This cut of pork is a little dry--a pork shoulder is so much better, I think. We had a lot left over, which I froze. I may use it for sandwiches, and probably much of it may get discarded. Apparently it may make a difference if you cook this in a casserole that more closely resembles the shape of the roast. Well, I don't have one of those oval-shaped Dutch ovens, and I'm not about to go buy one.

I made the lamb shanks too, which I forgot to photograph. They taste really good. I got a very good sear on them first.

Now for the real find of the weekend: I had read about a wonderful corn pudding in the latest issue of Saveur. This dish is splendid--just corn, salt and butter. Super sweet, with no sugar added. The author reminisces about her childhood making this dish, so it qualifies for inclusion here in the category of memory recipes. It is fantastic--like eating roasted corn on the cob without having to get corn stuck in your teeth! The author seems to feel it is very important to get a very broken-up feeling to the corn, but the photo didn't look that mushy. Instead of using the corn cutter she specified, I cut the corn off the ears with a knife and then pulsed the corn in the food processor a bit, so it was somewhat broken up. I used 9 ears instead of the 12 specified to serve 4. Two of us devoured it.

Chicken Mar-feh-ya

I can finally blog about a recipe without having to turn on the oven! I didn't like this recipe twenty years ago.

This weekend the Times published a tribute to the old Silver Palate Cookbook on its twenty-fifth anniversary. They featured one of the top old recipes: Chicken Marbella. Yes, I had this cookbook twenty-odd years ago. No, I have not looked at it in years, and it's in a storage unit. I never had much use for this book, and I never liked its ugly design. Most of all, I never liked that recipe for Chicken Marbella! I made it a couple of times in the eighties and gave up. It always had too much of a vinegary taste and the chicken had an unpleasant slimy consistency. It never had an appetizing roasted taste or texture, and it never got brown. The only thing good about it was the prunes. Marinating the prunes and stewing them created a delicious flavor. While I suppose there are different things you could do to tinker with this recipe, I never thought it was worth the trouble.

In the end, I tried it again recently, as you can see above. I took out the vinegar and didn't bother with capers. It is better with chicken breasts than dark meat. The prunes, once again, are the best part. The chicken needs to be browned first, unlike the original recipe. It also really needs to be coooked sufficiently. The original recipe time is not long enough. This is just not really worth making.