Just Ingest

When all else fails, I drop back to oral pleasures. Not that there is any shortage of other topics. I have a post started on the topic of reading, for example. I have numerous vital links backlogged on politics, pending awakening of proper muse.

But food is a sometimes less tendentious topic and that's what we're here for now. I got started on food here in an attempt to overcome my writer's cramp on the annual family Holiday Letter, which I gather has a beaver-dam's worth of cards impatiently clogged up in the pipeline. Yeah, that makes it easier, as Mr. Black would say. There's food in that epistle too as it happens, and my fussing here did actually help me to get that chore done.

Besides which, we all continue to eat, hopefully on a more-or-less day-to-day basis. You might get fed up (pun intended) with your politics, but I bet you still try for at least two or more squares most days, right?

Alas, I was too busy doing the cooking to acquire visuals for the victuals mentioned here.

Which reminds me. During recent lunch walk I was thinking of those regular polygons. You know, like equilateral triangles? Squares? I was thinking about the total of the angles. Triangle of course is 180. Square is 360. Pentagon I find with some research is 540. Hexagon 720. Heptagon 900. Octagon 1,080. These angle totals do not seem to approach a finite limit as I expected, thinking of the circle as the ultima thule of this mental polygon exercise. Based on limited study, circle has a total angle of infinity, or thereabouts. That's getting up there.

But back to food. We had the great good fortune to sup with dear friends in their new condo just a week ago. A semi-house-warming event. The course of most occasion to me was the scallop pan roast. A bit misleadingly named, this is apparently a variant of a historic recipe, that in essence involves scallops gently cooked in a savory, dairy-based sauce, with clam juice, worcestershire, celery salt, and tabasco among the flavorings (yum). Our host, Bob Baxter, took the trouble to track down a recipe he had savored when dining out and recreated it. Great stuff. If it were me, I would add the gin towards the end of the cooking, as I believe Bob did, to avoid losing too much juniper essence. Good reading at the link, beyond recipe, btw.

We have been busy here too with food experiments. Margaret is wonderfully exploratory and creative in her perusals of cooking media. One of her recent finds was entitled Chicken Stew with Ricotta-chive Dumplings (via the Seattle Times). I had to agree that the recipe was intriguing, realizing I have had a secret yen to explore those dumpling-things, a rarity in my prior existence. The idea that they could involve cornmeal just sexed the recipe up even more. Yummy. Leftovers in lunch ditto.

And the devine Ms. M also came upon a "lite" onion soup recipe that worked out pretty well. I guess I have suffered some sub-par FOS, but as a rule, it is a soup to count on, no matter how crafted. This one suited me fine.

The mistress also hosted here the annual Holiday Party for the staff at her elementary school a week ago Friday (argh!). I chose to take it as an excuse to try out a recipe from classic Diana Kennedy Mexican cookbook for chicken with poblano chilis ("Pechugas de Pollo con Rajas"). Not exactly the prime time of the year to be acquiring chilis, of course (nor the venue for an experiment!), but the Pike Place Market, two blocks west of my office, can often cover for some such awkwardness (I did not inquire as to pepper source, mi apologia, Ms. Kingsolver). It involved more pepper-roasting (and peeling) for me than any prior recipe, Eric being the local guru at this. I roasted the peppers, cooked up the chicken, made the sauce, and got the rest of the ingredients in place the night before, allowing for only moderate stress on party-night. The chicken was generally a hit, I gather. I know I liked it, though there were at the least a few refinements in presentation needed.

In the meantime, I had somehow developed an itch for fava beans. I don't think it was a Hannibal Lector thing, but who knows. I tracked down dried split favas at a great local Mediterranean restaurant supply outlet a while back and did a soup that included as I recall potatoes and coriandor. It stoked my interest in this under-used legume. I doggedly went back to dried favas recently with Eric's help, working them up in Catalonian style in Tomato Sauce with Chorizo (ok, we improvised with Andouille). Oh my, that is comfort and soul food, at least as much as a new recipe could possibly be.

And the wily Ms. M also slipped a couple other new savory numbers into our play-list here recently, via recipes she spotted in, of all places, Better Homes and Gardens. In particular, there was Breaded Pork with Cabbage and Kale and Chunky Bean and Chicken Chili, both of which we found pretty easy to assemble and certainly enjoyable.

Yikes! It's Christmas Eve! We celebrated with a gorgeous rib roast featuring horseradish-mustard crust and our first-ever Yorkshire pudding (h/t Jules - and btw we broke out and greatly savored first bottle of your 2007!). Good gracious how self-indulgent.

Good tastes, good will, and Happy Holidays to you all!