morsels & sauces

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food. And I plan to write about that food.  It turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in.  This  ninth  installment is  a book published in the 1970s . Aghem. I am not sure what possessed me to choose this book, given what we know about its source material. So John Gardner's wonderful little novel  Grendel  is a retelling of Beowulf  from the point of view of the beast. But here's the rub. The beast eats humans. Both in Beowulf  and in Grendel , and I should have known that. I knew that. I took "Beowulf to Dryden" in my first semester in college. I knew that. But I have promised myself I wouldn't preview books to ensure that they have a connection to food (that would sort of r...

I have been wanting this cookbook, One Good Dish, for some time, and when I saw it among the offerings at my favorite used bookstore, Pegasus , I'll admit, I actually hemmed and hawed. The last thing I need is a new cookbook, and yet it's one of the first things I want. Reader, I bought it. And I am delighted I did, for I made these unusual ricotta gnocchi--the method similar to the French  pâte à choux , the dough for cream puffs and profiteroles. Sweet business, they are delightful--and delicate . The first night I made these (and the night fr om which these photographs originate), we immediately made little quenelles to float in salted, boiling water. I lifted them gently from the liquid, and the drizzled sage butter atop them. More like dumplings than typical gnocchi, these were light, fluffy, and divine.  The next night, I went for a run (while talking on the phone to my best friend, sometimes the only way I can get time to chat). She and I talked...

Oh, this past weekend was spent at the ocean. W ell , technical ly, it was spent in a cabin in the woods, b ut last Sunday evening was spent on a winter run that ended with a winter sunset at a winter ocean, and let's face it, that was the highlight of th is winter weekend. And , in addition to that wonderful sunset, y es, there was squash. I do what I can, when I can, to ea t squash , f or my CSA s ends it almost every week. I  have roasted it with cardamom and nigella seeds , wrapped it in pastry ,  roasted it with dates and thyme , and  pureed it into soup . And this past weekend, I had it in a squash cr umble , which is a savory equiv a l e nt o f a crisp (as in what the Americans might t hink of when we think of Apple Crisp) . Apparently, the Brits serve these crumbles in a swath of varieties and have been doing so since the middle of last century. America ns know them usually only under their sweet variety, but the Brits are onto something...

It has been raining north of here, which means many, many mushrooms.  Of course, we are not eating personally harvested mushrooms.  No, no.   Without our transplanted back to the Mid-West  mycologist-cum-farmer  to guide us through a forest foraging,  the husband trusts himself to gather one mushroom and one mushroom only--the chanterelle. I applaud his restraint.  However, that doesn't mean that we don't delight in finding (and photographing) mushrooms of all sorts.  And lucky for us, the redwoods up in Fort Bragg provide plenty of opportunity: While I recognize that all of those mushrooms are probably poisonous, I once had a friend who owned a mushroom farm in Pennsylvania.  I met him while I was in Ireland, and upon my return to the states, he invited me to his mushroom farm in, I kid you not, the Mushroom Capital of the World (or so the Wikipedia page proclaims).  Sure, I was fascinated by all of the growing r...