Ingredient love: Cauliflower soup

 

Today, before playing with some ingredients, S. wants to play with the word ingredient.  The word is used today as a noun, but it formerly could also be an adjective.  It’s from a Latin root meaning “to step,” or “to go,” and in early modern English it meant something like “goes into”  — or, as we might say, re-translating the word back into the noun we’re comfortable with, “is an ingredient of.”   For example, here is Sir Thomas Browne: 

The horn of a Deer is Alexipharmacal, and ingredient into the confection of Hyacinth.  

 (Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1646)

(The more pedantic among our readers may like to know, first, that “alexipharmacal” means “having the capacity to act as an antidote to poison;” and that the “hyacinth” Browne refers to is not the plant, but a pre-modern medicine made from various precious ingredients and apparently used as a general restorative.  It is claimed that the formula is similar to that of an obscure Italian liqueur called alchermes whose traditional formula included a small insect called “kermes” [hence, obviously its name] that gave the drink a bright red color.   On another blog (http://allthingssicilianandmore.blogspot.com/2009/03/alchermes-liqueur-used-to-make-zuppa.html)  S. reads that alchermes is regarded in Sicily as a homemade liqueur made by soaking various aromatics in grain alcohol.  This is also apparently used in Sicily to make the desert zuppa inglese, a version of the English “trifle.”)

This still, however, doesn’t explain our title, which refers to a proverb once shared with S. by a real practicing chief, Gordon Hamersley, whose Hamersley’s Bistro has been one of the best restaurants in Boston for more than twenty years (S. is a former Bostonian), and whose Bistro Cooking at Home is a staple in the Sherdo cookbook collection.  S. had the pleasure of meeting Gordon a long time ago, when they got in a conversation about the difference between cooking at a restaurant and cooking at home.  The difference, S. recalls Gordon saying, is that at home love is one of the ingredients.

This is not a sentimental principle but an entirely practical one.  At home, love is one of the ingredients because at home you are always, after all, at once the feared critic and the ultimate v.i.p. guest: for you, the chef (yourself) culls the best ingredients, goes the extra mile, and, most of all, always makes a dish exactly as you like it!   But love enters into it another way too: in the generosity of the guest, the one being cooked-for, who overlooks whatever flaws may be and is often enthusiastically eating and enjoying before the cook has even finished his self-critique.   And so, to rephrase the proverb slightly, one might say that in home-cooking the love is ingredient: love shapes at once one’s successes and one’s failures. 

This recipe, which is adapted from the one in Paul Bertolli’s wonderful Cooking by Hand, has literally only three main ingredients, and one of them is water.  S. positively hated cauliflower when he was younger, having mostly had it steamed into a sodden, colorless and tasteless mess; but this recipe convinces him that it is one of the most sublime of vegetables.

Slice one onion thinly, and cut one cauliflower into small chunks.  Saute the onion in olive oil at medium heat until tender but not brown; add the cauliflower and about six cups of water.  Bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer until the cauliflower is tender.  Puree in batches in a blender or a food processor.  Reheat gently before serving.  If it seems too thick you can add a small amount of additional water; if it seems too thin you can very gently simmer a little longer. 

Ladle into bowls, garnish each bowl with a little extra-virgin olive oil and salt and pepper.  If necessary, add extra love.

Brie and oat cakes with tomatoes three ways

One of the dishes we've made recently is Brie Cakes with Sun-Dried Tomatoes from Maria Speck's Ancient Grains for Modern Meals.  This dish combines oats, that old standby, with some unexpected ingredients for a savory main dish.  It also combines the fresh and the dried in interesting ways.  As much as we find inspiration in the fresh foods we find at the farmers market, we also depend on the contents of our pantry, which includes lots of staples from the market (nuts, dried fruits, cheeses, and olive oil), from the Davis Co-op (especially beans and grains), and from our own efforts (like the homemade stock we've mentioned or preserves). This recipe combines all of these categories of ingredients.

The cakes showcase three finds from the market:  we bought a piece of Nicasio Valley Cheese Company's Halleck Creek Cheese, on their advice that it would be the best stand in for brie in this recipe; we cleaned out Ramon Cadena's last pound of sundried tomatoes a week or so ago and had marinated them by pouring hot water on them to soften them and then coating them in a vinaigrette made with balsamic vinegar, a little mustard to help it emulsify, some garlic, salt, and olive oil and we had these awaiting use in a jar in the refrigerator; and, on Wednesday, when we bought some heirloom tomatoes at the market from Tumber farm in Winters, farmers new to us, they threw in, as a bonus, a bruised but luscious heirloom that demanded consumption right away.

All in all,  this seemed to be the time to give this recipe a try.

The recipe combines about a 1 1/2 cups of cooked steel cut oats (3/4 cups dry cooked in 1 1/2 cups water); 1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats (put into the mix dry--you don't want thick rolled oats because they will keep the cakes from cohering); 2 ounces of Brie or in our case Halleck Creek cheese cubed with the rind left on (but don't be stingy, use the whole piece you get at the market); 1/2 cup chopped red onion (the last of the many juicy spring onions we bought to pickle but didn't); 1/3 cup oil-packed (or in our case marinated) sundried tomatoes; 1/3 cup toasted pine nuts (toasting them in a dry pan makes them so much more flavorful); 2 eggs (from the market, natch); 1 tablespoon each chopped fresh sage and rosemary (we were tempted to use other herbs but wound up glad we resisted this temptation because this herb combination worked really well--evoking an Italian/breakfast sausage vibe without the pork--and we've actually got both in our own herb garden); 1-2 teaspoons chopped fresh chile (but we used chipotles because they pair so well with sundried tomatoes); 1/2 teaspoon salt and plenty of ground pepper.  You plop all of this into a bowl, mix it up, and then form it into about 8 cakes (using your hands dipped in water or oil).  You then cook these (in two batches) in olive oil in a skillet over medium heat for about 4-5 minutes a side.  Don't rush them because the cakes are all about the brown crust and the oozy cheese.  If you don't need all eight--and these are super filling because of the oats--you can keep the mix in the fridge and fry up another round later in the week.

A word about cooking those steel cut oats.  Should you be the sort of person who plans ahead, the fastest and easiest way to make steel cut oatmeal is to combine the oats and water, bring them to a boil, cover them and turn off the heat.  Then walk away, my friend.  If you do this the night before, they will be ready to eat the next morning with just a little reheating.  Or you can do them in the morning and use the cooked oats in this recipe that night.  This method also works well for oat groats, which are even heartier--chewier and more filling--than steel cut oats.  It is worth experimenting with this strategy with other whole grains and beans (which we'll discuss in another post).  Time will do a lot of the work for you with very little energy--yours or PG&Es. 

We served the cakes with a version of the sauce Speck's cookbook recommends.  We combined about 1/2 cup Greek yogurt, 1 tablespoon homemade tomato jam (subbing for the ketchup in the original recipe), a shot of Sriracha, a couple of spoons of olive oil, salt, and pepper.  The cakes really need the sauce, which is surprisingly good.

The final plate was a celebration of tomatoes of different stripes and from different moments in time:  the tomato jam we made last summer from Lloyd's tomatoes, Cadena's sundried tomatoes, and that burstingly ripe heirloom tomato from Tumber.  The Halleck Creek cheese was perfect, too.