morsels & sauces

Oh, it has been too long, my friends.  T he new year came and went, and then so did January, and no w most of Febr u ary.  How quickly it came and went, in deed.   Let's rew ind the clock for a moment to talk about one of our favorite New Year's dishes, which c ould become one you r favorite mi d -winter dishes, as crabs are still in season (I saw a whole stack of them gleaming at the Ber keley Bowl yesterday).   Cioppino is the q uintess ential San Francisco dish .   Wander into any touristy restaurant in town right now, and they will have a steaming (and overpriced) bowl of this fisherman's stew on the menu.  Avoid the prices and make yo ur own.   The stor y goes that this dish originated with the boats out at sea ; the Portuguese and the Italian fish ermen would chop up the leftovers of the day's catch and stew them to falling-apart consi stency in wine , olive oil, and tomato es .  Really, how can you go wrong with...

To many the mussel doesn't seem adventurous.  However, to this Midwest-raised woman, any seafood beyond the bluegill and the catfish was adventurous.  My father, however, taught me how to expand my culinary horizons. My parents divorced when I was still young, only seven or eight years old.  While such an event is often traumatic for children, it was a bonanza for me.  It meant three hours in the car with my father as a captive audience every other week.  It meant a stepsister, who taught me how to shuffle cards so they made a satisfying fluttering sound.  It meant trips to the top of the Sears Tower where I felt small and insignificant and wobbly and but also a little sick to my stomach from vertigo.  And sometimes, during those weekends, it meant a trip to a family-owned pizza joint, name of which escapes me, near the Fox River that served your standard fare of pizza, but also offered octopus and squid as topping options.  My bro...

It has been a while since I posted.  There are excuses--many of them involve the ocean and John Steinbeck.  I see nothing wrong with blaming both of them equally for a month of intensity.  At Steinbeck camp , an NEH-sponsored seminar for secondary (and some middle) school teachers (and a librarian) in the past month, I have been thinking a lot and cooking not at all.  I am happy to return home, to put my hands back into the kitchen.  To wash things.  To chop things.  To steam things. I find myself back in my house, unpacking, cleaning, getting ready for guests this week; instead, I think I just want to think about the smell of the ocean--mussels smell exactly the way the ocean does.  Salty, fresh, and a tiny bit like decay.   To make everything even more exciting, this is a recipe from page 210 (see my about page to find out why that's important to me) in the Mark Bittman The Best Recipes in the World cookbook, a gift fro...