HUNGRY GERALD

It’s eggplant season. There are tiny, round eggplants on display at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market. Also, slim Japanese eggplants. BSK has been cutting up the little round ones into cubes and sauteeing them with chopped tomatoes, basil, olive oil and garlic. BSK adds chopped, fresh mozzarella for Pasta a la Norma, a favorite in Sicily. HG and BSK first tasted it on a sunny Sicilian terrace overlooking the beautiful ruins of a Greek temple. Unfortunately, Sicily is wholly associated in the American mind with the nefarious activities of mafiosi. Sure, that’s part of Sicily. What doesn’t get enough attention are the Greek ruins, the extraordinary architecture and street food of Palermo and Taormina, a city with some of the most spectacular sea views in the world. Okay, enough about Sicily, let’s get back to those eggplants: BSK also sautes slices of the round, seasonal eggplants for a nice accompaniment to grilled lamps chops. HG likes to roast the Japanese eggplants. Cuts them open and eats with a bit of Chinese hoisin sauce.Those big eggplants one finds in supermarkets throughout the year are full of water. Best use for them is HG’s Baba Ganoush. HG roasts these eggplants until they are soft. Scoops out the insides and mashes them with olive oil, loads of garlic, some finely chopped onion, Spanish smoked paprika, chopped parsley. Dusts them with Zaatar, that lovely middle eastern spice mixture. HG gets much much applause when the Baba Ganoush is served with a chunk of feta cheese, Kalamata olives and warm pita.

Pickled egglplant is a classic, Italian antipasti dish, the best example of which SJ discovered at G. Esposito & Son’s Jersey Pork Butchers. You can find a middle European version of chopped eggplant at Sammy’s Roumanian Steak House on New York’s lower east side. Very heavy on the garlic and best accompanied by shots of vodka from a bottle frozen in ice. HG’s all time favorite eggplant dish can be found at good Chinese restaurants that feature cooking from the Szechuan and Hunan areas. Sometimes combined with chopped pork, these eggplant dishes stoke the mouth flames with an abundance of hot chile and Szechuan peppercorns. Pass the cold beer…

Do not miss the current issue of SAVEUR. The magazine celebrates its 150th issue by compiling 101 classic recipes for appetizers, main courses and deserts. The recipes are super and very international. The world is covered. HG does not miss GOURMET. Always found the magazine a bit precious and elitist. BON APPETIT (under its new editorship) is much better. For good recipes and food ideas, HG likes the blog of David Lebovitz, a Paris-based writer. If food and restaurant writing interests you, discover Waverley Root, a wonderful writer and dining companion of the incomparable A.J. Liebling. Also, see if you can source some of the dining articles by that mannered, ridiculous dandy, Lucius Beebe. Great retro fun.

Chicken thighs for dinner. So much better than flavorless chicken breasts (and cheaper). Here’s how HG and BSK do it. Make a marinade of olive oil,lemon juice garlic, ginger, cumin, turmeric, cayenne, coriander. Add a tablespoon or two of Greek yogurt. Mix well. Give it a light dusting of Goya adobo. Marinade in the refrigerator for two or three hours. BSK is going to barbecue and serve with canned white beans (enriched with a garlic and parsley sofrito) plus BSK’s unique mix of zucchini, corn niblets (frozen corn does just fine), New Mexico chile powder and a bunch of fresh herbs from the BSK garden. HG and BSK will eat outdoors on their terrace, sip chilled red wine and watch dusk make beautiful patterns on the surface of Las Barrancas, the colorful bluffs located on Native American lands. Sounds good? It is.

There’s a dish that HG and BSK often enjoy but never serve to guests. Too ominous. Too scary. HG refers to linguini with sauteed squid in squid ink sauce. Very black. HG and BSK first encountered the dish in Venice many years ago. The Venetians used seppie (tender little cuttlefish plentiful in the Venetian lagoon) and seppie ink. Love at first bite. Here’s the way HG and BSK do it. Saute garlic and shallots in olive oil. Add some cumin, oregano and cayenne plus a bottle of clam broth. Simmer. Add some crushed canned tomatoes and a jolt of tomato paste. Simmer until sauce thickens slightly. You’ve got a nice, seafood based red sauce. Add a packet of squid ink (available online through Amazon.com ). Stir. Magic. You’ve got a jet black sauce. Add to it a pound of cleaned and cut up squid (tubes and tentacles) that you’ve sauteed over high heat for just a few minutes. Toss your cooked linguini in the pan. Mix it all up. Have plenty of napkins available.

Sauerkraut’s ascent to the heavens is Choucroute Garnie, the wonderful Alsatian dish of sauerkraut simmered in wine and then decked with an array of piggy goodies. It is always served accompanied by boiled potatoes, hot mustard and strong horse radish.

Here’s the way HG and BSK did it for a small dinner party last night. BSK sauteed sliced apples and onions in olive oil. Added Bubbie’s sauerkraut (drained) and some cups of of dry, white Riesling. Let it cook for a long, long time at a lazy simmer. While that was cooking, HG tossed some knockwurst into a pot of lightly boiling water — wanted the sausages to heat through but not burst. When done, HG browned bratwurst and some kielbasa. Meanwhile, BSK boiled potatoes and then smashed them (that’s right–the potatoes were smashed and not mashed). Creative BSK mixed the potatoes with some chicken stock, olive oil and chopped scallions. Sublime. Sausages topped the sauerkraut and the whole thing was washed down with plenty of Belgian ale. Great fun. Would have liked some Kassler Ripchen (smoked pork loin) with this dish but couldn’t find any in Santa Fe. But, we did have Bubbie’s sour dill pickles and they added to the merriment.

Great fun last night Chez HG/BSK. Two Colorado friends came to dinner bearing (as is their happy custom) two bottles of splendid Pinot Noir. Meal started with sliced Kumato Tomatoes and a heavenly Burrata (a mozzarella filled with cream). Washed it down with chilled Italian Lambrusco (slightly sweet, semi-sparkling red). Then the meal got serious. Brisket time. BSK had consulted our pal Stevie Pierson’s invaluable new book: The Brisket Book: A Love Story With Recipes. (Run, don’t walk, and go buy it immediately so you will be a culinary hero just in time for Passover!). BSK selected cookbook author Joan Nathan’s brisket recipe (pg. 105), a classic Jewish recipe. Three hours in the oven. A nice rest to let things cool down (and skim off the fat). A half hour of reheating. The result: Tender, juicy meat filled with flavor (from onions,garlic,wine, etc.). The abundant robust sauce was a killer. BSK flanked the meat and sauce with smashed (not mashed or pureed) potatoes. BSK’s touch is to smash the spuds with free range chicken broth and very good olive oil. There was a refreshing salad of sliced fennel and radishes, hearts of palm and Italian parsley. A bottle of old vine Zinfandel made an appearance after the Pinots were demolished. A bottle of fruity Malbec was opened to accompany dessert (Yes, five bottles of wine for four persons and one drank very moderately so HG had a lot of ground to cover). The dessert: Trader Joe’s New York Deli Cheese Cake. A nice surprise. Real Big Apple Taste. Encore tonight since (Oh,Joy!!) there were plenty of brisket and sauce left overs. Noodles will replace the spuds (all devoured).

Tilapia is a farm raised fish, and like farm raised salmon, has been scorned by HG. As HG’s massive public knows, HG is a fancier of batter fried catfish (rolled in flour, dipped in beaten egg and rolled again in panko or cornmeal and first soaked in buttermilk). Well, here’s the problem. BSK doesn’t like catfish. Says it tastes muddy. HG believes BSK’s distaste was caused by eating wild, bottom feeding catfish in her youth. Today’s farm raised catfish (an exception to HG’s quickly disappearing No-Farm-Raised rule) does not taste muddy. Emphatically not. But, BSK won’t change her mind. So, what to do? A number of culinary authorities (including Mark Bittman) have said you can substitute tilapia for catfish when you’re hovering over the big, sizzling cast iron pan. HG bought a pound of tilapia. No buttermilk bath, but followed the usual procedure. The result was sensational, Even BSK had to agree. Crisp crust covering juicy, firm white fish. A treat. BSK cooked up a mess of southern greens. Had a few boiled fingerling potatoes. There was lots of hot sauce and lemons. Once more, family culinary harmony prevails.

Rapini (also known as broccoli di rabe) is a splendid vegetable, combining the sweetish taste of broccoli with the pleasantly bitter taste of mustard greens. HG is going to have it with some linguini tonight. BSK cooks it perfectly and simply, first sauting a bunch of garlic and sweet onion in good olive oil until the onion is translucent and just starting to color. Then BSK chops the rapini up and blanches it in boiling water before adding it to the pan with the onion and garlic. When the rapini softens she hits it with some chicken stock and eventually finishes the linguini in the pan. Serves it with the olive oil bottle, grated parmesan and the pepper grinder on the table. Usually BSK adds chopped pancetta to the dish but tonight there will be slices of grilled chorizo. Kumato tomatoes and anchovies as a starter and some clementines for dessert.

SJ here. In the recent post Chicken Soup From a Mexican Mom, HG described a soup that had me twitching with envy. The soup HG ate was called Caldo Tilapena and it was a hearty Mexican dish, brimming with chicken and chipotle peppers and many good things. I had a similar soup once, years ago, when I was visiting a town called San Miguel De Allende a few hours south of Mexico City. This soup was tomato based, cut through with fresh herbs, poached chicken, strips of crunchy corn tortilla and topped with crumbly white queso Fresco and Mexican creme fraiche. I loved this soup. I had it in the late 80s and probably not a week has gone by where I don’t think back to it with a nod of appreciation and mumble under my breath…That was damn good soup.

I never had another soup like it until 1996 when I was living in Chicago and got hit with a tremendous cold — maybe it was a flu, even — whatever the case, I was miserable. My nose was raw, my ears hurt, a steady cough made my stomach muscles hurt, and a fluctuation in my body temp had me going from shakes to sweat in five minute intervals. Plus, I was hungry. So, I took my sad, sick body to Artuto’s — a fine 24 hour Mexican spot around the corner from my house that specialized in food from the Jalisco region. I ate there a lot so everyone knew me and were concerned by the sad state of my health. A suggestion was made and I was brought their Caldo Pollo: a HUGE, piping hot bowl filled with chicken, potatoes, carrots, yucca all in a very rich and very greasy chicken broth that REALLY tasted of chicken (you could just imagine that stock pot in Arturo’s kitchen slowly simmering for weeks on end being fed chicken scraps and bones all through the day). Served alongside was chopped onion, cilantro, limes and a stack of warm tortillas. Boy. I tell you, if you are sick and alone and meet a soup like that, it is akin to stepping off the orphan train into the arms of a true Mom goddess who will rest your head in her breast and let you sleep for a million years. The Arturo’s soup touched my soul, nestled it, loved it, warmed it and brought it back to health. A soup for the ages. A soup that I have pined for since I left Chicago.

Well, reading HG’s soup posting made me think back to those two soups, and not just think…but obsess. Here in NYC, I couldn’t just take off to New Mexico, or Chicago or Mexico for that matter, so I had to satisfy this craving on my own — and as it was a craving for all three soups, I decided I would take the best elements of each and create a monster of my own. So I read a bunch of recipes for Tortilla Soup both on-line and in Mark Bittman’s excellent cookbook: The Best Recipes In The World and then I thought to myself about what I liked about the two soups I remembered and the HG soup that I imagined and using those as a guideline I then created a really great soup that satisfied my craving absolutely. And I — kind and gentle and giving SJ that I am — will now share it with all of you:

SJ’s BIG BOWL OF HG INSPIRED CHICKEN-TORTILLA SOUP

First! Gather these ingredients:

1 onion (roughly minced)

6 cloves garlic (minced)

1 lb of chicken thighs

4 cups chicken stock (store bought is fine, but honestly make your own stock! It is easy, it makes you feel good about yourself and it is 100 times better than what you can buy)

10 soft corn tortillas cut into 1/4″ strips

1 can whole plum tomatoes

6 limes

2 Zucchinni

12 or so dried Red Chili Pods (mild) and 1 dried chipotle pepper (with stems cut off and stripped off seeds)

Start by simmering your dried chili & chipotle pods for about 20 minutes in 3 to 4 cups of water until they are pulpy and tender

While you are doing that begin frying up those strips of tortilla. If you have never made fresh tortilla chips before, well, time to learn because NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING will make friends, spouses and lovers think you are an amazing cook and super person and a sexy motherfucker like making fresh, hot tortilla chips and NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING is as easy as making fresh, hot tortilla chips. Biggest bang for your buck in the 21st Century. Here’s what your do: heat up about 4 to 5 tablespoons of canola oil in a wok, on high, for about five minutes. Cut round corn tortillas into quarters. Test the oil heat, by slipping a chip into the pan. If the oil furiously bubbles around the chip. Then you are good to go! Don’t overcrowd and cook to golden and drain on paper towels. So, using this method fry those tortilla strips in batches until they are golden. Instead of a wok use a big soup pot. When you are finished, pour out half the oil, return to heat and then add your onion and garlic. Cook until the onion and garlic are soft and just beginning to caramelize into golden yellow. Remove your peppers from the water and add to onions. Also add the can of tomatoes, the broth and 3/4 of the tortilla strips you prepared. Bring the whole thing to a gentle boil. When you have a moment before the boiling begins, put your chicken into the water that you cooked your peppers in, bring to simmer and cover. The chicken should take about 20 minutes to be ready.

While the chicken cooks add whatever seasonings (oregano, salt, white pepper, thyme) to your broth and then get your damn immersion blender out and go at it! Blend that soup until SMOOTH!!! When you are satisfied and the chicken is done, then you have to shred the hot chicken which is not fun at all, but do it under cold, running water and you should be protected. Add the shredded chicken to the broth alongside your zucchini which you have cut into quarters. Add the water that your chicken cooked in, the juice of all those limes and bring the whole thing to a lazy boil. If the soup seems too thick, then add water. Cook until the zucchini are ready. Taste, adjust for seasonings, and then serve the soup in a BIG bowl with chopped, fresh onion, cilantro, more limes for squeezing, the rest of the tortilla strips, Queso Fresco and avocado. If you like, you could add rice, chick peas or hominy to the soup to make it even MORE filling.

There it is. A great, delicious, healthy soup that will nurse you through any cold and keep you full and smiling no matter the season. Thanks HG for the inspiration.

HG truly hates the whole world of mega fast food. Vile hamburgers. Nasty, oily fried chicken. Doesn’t taste good and it’s not good for you. A nice hamburger made at home is a whole other story. HG uses ground chuck with a reasonable fat content. No fat spells a dry and tasteless burger. HG adds a bit of micro-planed garlic to the meat and gently forms the patty. Overworking creates toughness. HG’s trusty, old and seasoned cast iron pan is put on high heat with a thin layer of kosher salt (meanwhile some sliced onions are cooking in another pan). When the cast iron is good and hot the patty goes on (there will be smoke and sizzle). A good crust develops. The burger is flipped so the other side gets crusty. Then the heat is turned to medium (you want a crusty, not burned burger). After a bit of time, HG sticks in a fork to test for doneness (HG likes a pink, but not raw burger…steak tartare it isn’t). HG finishes it with some blue cheese which melts quickly. This delicious piece of meat is slipped on a slice of ciabatta and smothered in the fried onions. A few Bubbie’s sweet pickle slices on the side (HG must have his vegetables). When ripe and in season, some sliced tomato is a good idea or in the dead of winter, you can try Kumato tomatoes which are flavorful and available at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s year round. This is a good, down home meal and all it needs to round it out is some fruity California Zinfandel. A pox on you. Mickey Dee.