It’s funny how satisfying it is to feed your loved ones. There’s real pleasure in thinking about their likes and dislikes, their energy levels—better after an all-vegetable dinner? Do they seem happier after a multi-course, leisurely meal?—and their all-around health. It’s a daily entertainment, mulling over what’s in the refrigerator, what will go harmoniously with what, what will look beautiful on the plate, what will make the after meal activities go that much smoother and more pleasantly.
And then there’s the dog.
It turns out, it’s almost as pleasant to feed the dog. And a lot cheaper than giving him the packaged stuff.
An acquaintance used to feed her dogs incredible meals. Chicken paprika. Veal marengo. Beef bourguignon. And her dogs seemed to live forever.
I have a simpler standard, being lazier. But as I am also in a continual fury about waste, and as all my otherwise unused vegetable peelings, tops, scraps and stems go into the dog’s food, I get a huge amount of satisfaction from feeding my dog even in the most basic way.
The easiest way is the one MFK Fisher talks about in one of her many amazing writings. ⅓, ⅓, ⅓: One pound meat, one pound starch, one pound vegetables. Easy.
This is how I do it:
One pound meat, either hand chopped or food processor ground. I use whatever is cheapest and best at the market—my Co-op sells organic beef and lamb liver trims for pretty cheap—beef kidneys, too. The other market sells ground chicken for dog food for a little more. My dog likes the liver the best. No surprise.
I brown the meat in a little fat. Then I add one pound vegetables, chopped or ground, from a bag I’ve been collecting them in all week. This means: all vegetable parings (carrot, celery, turnip . . . no potatoes, no onions, though). All stems from parsley and cilantro. Chard stems, if I’ve used the leaves. Chard leaves, if I’ve used the stems. I sometimes add a chopped carrot to make up the weight. In the summer, I use the green tops of vegetables from Alex’s garden: turnips, beets, herbs, bolted lettuces, etc. Don’t put in onions, tomatoes, or legumes—dogs don’t like them. Don’t add garlic. (I used to until The National Geographic told me it does something nasty to dog innards.) And do add any herbs you have lying around—thyme, a little rosemary (not too much), etc. Also—this is my dog feeding acquaintance’s suggestion, and the dog loves it, too—add a little seaweed, crumbled, if you have it. It’s got lots of trace minerals that the dog needs . . . and that you need, too.
I pour water over all of this and bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer till done. If I’m using one pound starch of something that needs a long time cooking, I add it with the water. I look for the cheapest starch at the market, which around here is either organic wheat berries or nonorganic oatmeal. The dog prefers oatmeal. The wheat berries need to be soaked, and cooked longer than the oatmeal. If the oatmeal is in flakes, it really only needs to be added for the last 15–30 minutes. (Doesn’t matter if you add it at the start, though. Do whatever’s easiest for you.)
Salt and pepper. Dogs love that, too.
I cook the whole thing on our woodstove in the winter—gives me another nice feeling of using energy for as many things as possible. It can cook for a longish time on a slow heat.
When everything’s cooked so it’s digestible, I let it cool, then put in the fridge. From there I serve it half and half with a good bagged dog food (be kind to your dog, look for one that lists actual meat as the first or second ingredient). We call this the Dog’s Stodge.
You can add anything you like to this. I put in an occasional cheese rind, or the dried up bits of cheese I have left. Tortillas, bread, or pasta can make up the leftover starch weight. The dog was a big fan of a batch of Stodge I made with some boxed falafel mix someone gave me ages ago that I never figured out what to do with. The skin from smoked salmon or mackerel adds a nice smelly component that dogs really appreciate.
It’s hugely satisfying to watch the dog try to lick THROUGH his bowl. Actually, to see him flop down and grunt with the most obvious extreme satisfaction and general feeling of the rightness of the dog world. That’s satisfying too.
And that’s just from feeding the dog.
My neighbor, The Indigo Ray (that’s what it says on her driver’s license), has five acres of organic produce that she grows herself, strictly for love. It used to be, I’d meander over there every summer day to have a look at the chard and the basil and the potatoes and the apples, the tomatoes and the . . . you get the idea. I’d come home with bags and bags of the stuff. Then, my husband got the gardening bug. I never thought this would happen. I’d always wanted a gardener husband, and when I married Alex—who appeared to spend what free time he had in airports and various technical facilities—I thought that was the end of that forlorn hope.
But no. Life is wonderful that way. Some atavistic gardening urge drove him to sit at Indigo’s feet and plant his own garden, under her advice. So now I have my own source, closer to home. And we still have Indigo, which is something of a marvel. Or rather, she is.
One year the lettuce took over the garden—thank God. There’s something particularly nourishing about eating fresh greens two meals a day. Alex and I both vaguely noticed that, now that we don’t travel so obsessively and eat out so often, we also don’t take a huge stack of multicolored vitamins anymore. This used to be the case when we spent most of our time ricocheting here and there. It’s impossible to get proper nourishment when you’re living in hotels and eating in restaurants. Impossible. It’s all about where the food came from, how it’s stored, how long it’s stored . . . and maybe most important of all (I think it is the most important of all), how the people felt who prepared it for you.
I can practically tell the mood in the kitchen now by what I eat from my plate. And the mood in the kitchen at many restaurants is not only unpleasant, but downright ugly.
I thought of this the other night, at the end of dinner. We’d invited The Indigo Ray over. I always like to fuss over her, because not enough people DO fuss over her—and she deserves any amount of fuss. You should see the five acres of vegetables and the five acres of flowers, and the lawn, and the rock garden, and the Zen garden, and the iris garden, and the countless rows of strawberries . . . it’s an art piece, her garden, of the most profound kind. But very few people see that. Most people just see a slightly loony older woman endlessly toiling from dawn to dusk, refusing to sell anything she grows, just perversely giving it away. Which come to think of it, is practically a working definition of a real artist. Which she is. If you’ve got one in your neighborhood, make sure you treasure her or him. It’ll pay you back big time.
Anyway, this is what I made: an unctuous brown rice casserole with sour cream and chilies, corn kernels, and Jack and Cheddar cheese. Refried pinto beans. An avocado, tomato, jalapeno and cilantro salad. But this was the best part: I brought in a huge bowl of salad greens from the garden, shredded them, and covered every plate with a layer. Then I arranged the food on top, added a wedge of lime for each person, and served the whole with warmed corn tortillas and a choice of hot sauces. It’s a pleasant dinner, because you can play with your food in a pleasant way, making endless combinations of taste according to what you feel like RIGHT THEN. It would be a nice dinner for kids—anything a little unctuous on a bed of shredded lettuce with tortillas and salsa on the side. Easy, too.
But this was the nicest. Near the end of the dinner, Indigo said, “You know what, Tod? I could eat your food blindfolded and I would still know it was your food. Because it’s cooked with love.”
That’s about the best kind of compliment any cook can get. So it was a nice night. And I liked that bed of lettuce, too.
On nights when I’m feeling a little blue or downhearted, I really crave chicken liver pâté, which is not something everyone craves; at least, if they do, they don’t know it until they see it in front of them. So the way I manage my cravings, along with feeding the Beloved Vegetarian Husband, is I put a bowl of the warm pâté on the table with cheese and pickles, sliced tomatoes and bread and butter, grapes and whatever else . . . and then he’s happy, and so am I. (Although he does sneak bites of it, because chicken livers and garlic are irresistible, objectively speaking.)
Here’s how to make it:
For a good mound of the pâté, take 1 lb. organic chicken livers. Cut the big ones in half, get rid of any membranes and bitter looking green spots. Chop a lot of garlic (you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?), a couple of scallions, and a heap of parsley. Heat a big dollop of butter and a splash of olive oil in a wide pan—wide enough so the chicken livers brown and don’t steam. When the butter and oil sizzle, dump the chicken livers in, followed shortly by the rest of the ingredients. Turn the livers, mashing them with a fork or a spatula as you do. Salt. Salt is good here. Keep turning till the livers are a little browned. Then add a little hit of something sharp—white wine, red wine, lemon juice, sherry vinegar—just to liven things up. Let that cook till the juice cooks away. Keep mashing those livers. At the last minute, if you have some, add some cream. That’s nice. It’ll cook away fast.
Turn off the heat. If you’ve mashed the livers enough, you can just pile them in a bowl and eat them on toast. If not, dump them on the cutting board, and chop, THEN pile them in a bowl and etc.
Have a glass of nice red wine.
I gave a birthday party for a friend the other night, and made a pot au feu that simmered for hours on the woodstove. The cross rib roast that went into the broth didn’t have any bones on it, and as I am a flavor/bone freak, I bought a batch of marrow bones to add to the soup, along with the carrots and onions and celery and parsley and thyme . . .
The dinner, at first sight, was a little odd to my guests—one of them said in a tepid voice, “Oh . . . pot roast,” though I noticed she had three helpings afterward—and it’s true that pot au feu is really just boiled beef with a beret . . . but still, it’s superbly delicious. (Those French know something about pot roast.) And there’s something really satisfying about slices of beef and crisp toast with mustard and pickles and Maldon salt.
There’s something especially satisfying about marrow bones. And they’re my favorite part of the whole meal.
I wasn’t really surprised that only one other person except for me wanted a marrow bone with their beef, though the other guests watched with real interest as we spooned out the marrow, spread it unctuously on top of mustardy toast, laid a cornichon or two on it, sprinkled the whole with Maldon salt . . . and then ate, with sips of red wine in between bites. I did think none of them knew what they were missing. On the whole, though, it was a good thing for me, because the next night I had the leftover marrow bones reheated gently in the stock, and then served with toast, mustard, pickles, salt, etc . . . along with the leftover celeriac salad (grated celeriac tossed with heavy cream mixed with a little Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper—yum).
So here is my counsel: if you’re not a vegetarian, don’t be afraid of the bony and odd bits of the meat. They’re the best part of the beast. I wouldn’t lie to you about a thing like that. Even if it means, next time I have pot roast for a party, there aren’t any leftovers for me to eat, alone but happy at the table, the very next night.
I make the Very Best Macaroni and Cheese, so when a friend, who had spent the day telling me how unhappy she is, didn’t want me to make it for her, between that and being unable to tell her how to be happy, even if only for that moment, she filled me so full of frustration I could have screamed. But I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and, more than that, I didn’t want to chase her away. So I didn’t scream. I listened. And tried to be patient.
She told me how she hated cooking. How she hated cooking for her kids. How she bought everything readymade and frozen, and how that was getting too expensive. How much sugar they all ate.
“You should try to get the kids off white sugar. It’s actually poison—like a drug.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said laughing, as she put a Diet Coke she’d brought for herself into my refrigerator (where it would stay, after she left, till Alex threw it out—and he mused, “Is there something we could clean with this stuff? It’s like solvent, you know . . . if the car still had spark plugs we could use it for that”). “Stop my kids eating sugar? Why, they must eat it five times a day!”
More, probably—if it’s true she gives them everything readymade.
The more I heard, the more I wanted to scream. Hating to cook for your family—it’s a sign of depression. It’s like hating to give them a kiss in the morning. It’s a sign there’s something wrong. And the sugar? That’s something wrong. There’s a reason we’re obese as a nation, and we’re not feeling fed. Sugar use demands sugar use, and it does this by leaving a part of you feeling unsatisfied. You eat and you eat and you eat, but you never get enough of what you need. A little bit like our wistful consumer society, come to think of it.
“Want me to cook you my macaroni and cheese?” I said hopefully. “I know it sounds boring, but it’s really . . .”
She was polite about it, but I could see she wasn’t interested. It was only macaroni and cheese, after all—you can get that out of a box.
So to soothe my frustrated soul, the night after she’d gone, I made that macaroni and cheese, for me and the Beloved Husband. And it really is the best macaroni and cheese. The best macaroni and cheese, mind you, is defined as the macaroni and cheese that you have refined over the years to your and your loved ones’ tastes, so that when you make it, everyone at the table gives a sigh of pure delight. Your recipe may not be mine, but it will be just as much the best, as long as it wasn’t thrown together out of a damn packet, with margarine and skim milk added, then served at a counter with paper napkins, and everyone looking at the clock to get out in time for piano or judo, gymnastics or ballet lessons, bolted down before the ice milk and Ho-Hos. As long as it wasn’t that, it will be just divine.
This one’s mine:
(This is for two really hungry people who want to feel full, or for four moderate eaters, or for two adults and two children with a little left over for lunch the next day. For more, just double the recipe.)
1) Boil ½ pound of whole wheat penne or fusilli till al dente. Drain and pour into a buttered wide and low baking dish. (It doesn’t matter what shape or size; the main thing is to get as much surface area as you like for the browned cheese top.)
2) While that’s happening, in a saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons butter. Add 4 tablespoons flour—either white or whole wheat. Cook gently for about fifteen minutes. Don’t brown—you’re just trying to get the raw taste out of the flour. Then add, again gently, 2 cups of whole milk. Add it bit by bit, not in a big splash at once, and stir . . . still gently . . . as it thickens. Let this simmer. Let it get nice and thick.
3) Grate two tightly packed cups of Cheddar cheese. The quality of this cheese is important. (Quality, mind you, not the expense . . . A lot of times the local Cheddar, much cheaper than the import, is less money and hugely more flavorful.) I use Tillamook sharp Cheddar that I buy by the two-pound log.
4) Add a heaping tablespoon of Dijon type mustard to the simmering sauce. Add a couple of hefty slugs of Tabasco or similar hot sauce. Don’t stint on this. You won’t taste the heat, but it’ll bring out the flavor of the cheese like magic. Then stir in the cheese and stir (still gently—see the trend here?) till it melts. Taste. Does it need salt? If so, add at will.
5) Then, if you’ve got it, pour in a ¼ cup of cream. You don’t need this, but it adds that little extra bit of unction that says Best Macaroni and Cheese.
6) Mix the sauce with the pasta in the baking dish. Grate a little more Cheddar, and sprinkle on top. Add paprika for color, if you like it.
You can let this sit as long before final baking as you like. Put it in the fridge, if you’ve done it early (but don’t forget to either take it out and let it come back to room temp, or bake it longer to make up for the refrigerator chill, if you do). It’s a very easygoing macaroni and cheese, this.
Bake at 350° for half an hour, till the top is browned and crusty round the edges, and the sauce is bubbling. Serve right away. Red pepper flakes or more pepper sauce for those who like it.
This is best with a green salad, or one of sliced celery mixed with a strong mustard vinaigrette. I actually like it best with the celery—in which case, a garlic clove mashed in with the dressing, and a good amount of fresh ground black pepper, is absolutely required.
A glass of beer or of deep red wine for the adults. And for the children—so I’ve been told—a glass of unfiltered apple juice with this is really very nice.
My brother John called to get advice on how to cook my mother’s soy sauce baked chicken. This was a favorite childhood dish in our house—I can still remember vividly the joy of scraping up the oily burnt soy saucey bits off the bottom of the pan when nobody was looking. All of us kids were sure it was the one heritage recipe our relentlessly American mother had brought from her Asian homeland, at least until I found it one day in James Beard’s American Cookery. It turns out to have been one of those newlywed wives’ standards of the Fifties, a darling of the women’s magazines.
(Which left as our one heritage dish a completely delicious, ghastly looking, politically incorrect stale white bread and hamburger meat canapé called Cavalho Cancado, which translates, unappetizingly enough, as Tired Horses . . . it sounds horrible, but is utterly wonderful, I promise . . . for proof, see p. 196)
Anyway, I gave him James Beard’s version, and urged the optional addition of a couple of chopped garlic cloves. It’s just about a foolproof recipe—easygoing, happy to feed a couple of people or a crowd—and I called him back the next day to see how he did.
“Well . . .” There was a long pause. “I don’t know what I did wrong, but it didn’t taste exactly right.”
I thought about that one. “Umm,” I finally offered. “I forgot to mention. About that butter. Mom used Wesson oil.”
“Oooohhhh.” Relieved exhale. “I thought I was missing that really oily taste.”
“Also, she cooked hell out of it. You can cook hell out of it, if you want. It’s good that way, too.”
“Yeah, I did. Only I couldn’t get rid of all this liquid. I don’t know what I did wrong.”
“John,” I said sharply as only an older sister can. “Did you buy that disgusting cheap torture chicken in the supermarket? That stuff from Arkansas?”
“Um. Yeah. That’s why I wanted the recipe. There were these really cheap chicken thighs . . .”
“First of all,” I went on, hating myself for my big sister briskness, but being utterly incapable of reining myself in, “they pump that stuff so full of liquid and additives to make it look plump that you can never get rid of all of the water. Second of all, you don’t even want to know how they treat those chickens when they’re alive, let alone when they’re dead . . .”
“Stop right there!” he said with some force. “Don’t TELL me about what happens to the food before I get it. I don’t want to know. If you tell me what happens to the food, I’m going to have to change the way I eat.”
(I paused at that one. And as my friend Rudy remarked the next day, “Well, there you have it. The American problem in one sentence.”)
“Well,” I said more temperately. “It’ll probably taste a lot better if you spend a little more on better meat. Try to shop at that Co-op near you. They’ll have made sure about their sources, and that the stuff isn’t jammed full of antibiotics and stuff.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, sounding a little unhappy. “I know. But I hate shopping there. I hate the people that shop there.”
“John, they’re just like your sister.”
“One sister I can handle. But not an entire STORE of them.”
Which made me laugh.
But to get back to the main subject, the soy sauce baked chicken recipe is a really good one—fabulous for kids. I’ve never met a kid, big or small, who didn’t love it.
Heat the oven to 375°. Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a Pyrex baking dish big enough to hold all the chicken comfortably. (Best pieces for this are legs and thighs when they’re on sale—the breast meat dries out too much. If the legs and thighs are attached, it’s tastier to cut them into two pieces. Wings are just great this way, too.)
Now, if you like it, chop a clove or two of garlic and add to the butter. Roll the chicken pieces in the butter and drizzle soy sauce over them. (I rub the stuff onto both sides with my fingers, but if you’re squeamish, you can skip that.)
Lay the chicken pieces in the pan so they’re not touching each other, and shove in the oven. Baste every so often if you think of it, and drizzle more soy sauce on at will.
Cook till done to your liking—about 50 minutes for a nice browned batch of chicken, ten minutes more for the tantalizing smell of almost burnt soy sauce. I wait the whole hour myself. It won’t matter if you give it a few minutes either way—this is a very forgiving dish.
Grind fresh pepper on it before bringing to the table.
Particularly good served on shredded lettuce, with some celery salad on the side. And terrific cold the next day for lunch, so make extra.
(If you want to be really nostalgic, use Wesson oil rather than butter. I don’t recommend this myself, but chacun à son goût.)
If you’ve got people coming for dinner, and you don’t want to fuss, this is, I guarantee, the fastest and most elegant dinner imaginable:
Linguine with smoked salmon and parsley.
Mesclun salad with grated Romano and artichoke hearts. Here’s how (for four people):
Put a pound of linguine or fettuccine on to cook. Heat some butter and some cream in a small pan (about 3 tablespoons of the former, a half cup of the latter). Reduce it a little. Add a splash or two of Scotch, or good Irish whiskey, and heat. Mix with pasta and as much shredded smoked salmon as you have (a half a pound is good) and a good handful of finely chopped parsley. Fresh ground pepper, no salt (salmon takes care of that). Serve in warm bowls.
Afterwards, serve the salad on the same plates to mop up what sauce is left. Use as much mesclun lettuce as you like, tossed with grated Romano or Parmesan, fresh ground pepper, no salt (cheese takes care of that), canned and drained artichoke heart quarters. Toss with vinaigrette made from a crushed garlic clove, 1 part lemon juice/sherry vinegar, 3 parts olive oil, pepper, some of the grated cheese.
This can be on the table, start to finish, in about 20 minutes. The salad is the perfect one to follow this particular pasta.
Don’t forget to light candles on the table.
Everybody has a dish that’s the one you count on as foolproof for company, or for making your loved ones smile, or just for restoring your wounded self confidence after a particularly daring food improvisation that didn’t come off—preferably a dish that does all three. And if everybody doesn’t have such a dish, everybody should, just like everybody should have a friend who’ll reassure you that you really didn’t look as stupid and horrible as you thought you did, any time, night or day.
Anyway, I have such a dish in my stash of Recipes I Will Always Love, given to me many years ago, by a woman I worked for at the time who counted it as her premier Recipe She Would Always Love. We’re talking thirty years since I typed (on a Smith Corona portable) the yellowing, stained, blotted out recipe I’m looking at now. I’ve played with it a bit over those thirty years, which is easy since it is, like all good Recipes You Will Always Love, pretty much cheerfully indestructible. The ingredients are easily had, and not very expensive. You can multiply the dish to feed a crowd. And you can make it much earlier than you cook it, and then leave it in the oven much longer after it’s cooked without it or you coming to harm. And I have yet to find anyone who doesn’t love to eat it as much as I do, whatever their age, sex, or income level.
It is, in short, the Ideal Recipe.
Chile Relleno Casserole. Or, as it says on my faded bit of ancient typing paper, Shirley’s Chile Relleno Casserole.
1.) Roast 2 large green peppers. Seed them. Dice into large pieces.
2.) Get about 1+ ½ 7 oz. cans Ortega green chilies, whole or diced, about 11 ounces.
3.) Grate 10 ounces Jack cheese (.63 lb.) and 10 ounces sharp Cheddar.
4.) 1 ⅓ cups of milk.
5.) In a huge, flat casserole that’s been greased, spread the Jack, the peppers, the chile, the Cheddar.
6.) Beat 3 large eggs. Add the milk and ½ tsp. salt. Pour over casserole mixture. Paprika top.
7.) Bake at 350° for about 40–50 minutes.
8.) Serves 4–6 people.
Of course I fiddled with this recipe. For one thing, that little detail in #2 about the 1½ cans of chilies . . . I just use two 4-ounce cans, for a total of 8 ounces. I generally make this for only two people, which is half the recipe (this will only feed six people if you make a lot of side dishes to go with it, and they better be good side dishes too, because everybody’s going to want to be the one to scrape at the empty pan with their fingers). I use one 4 ounce can for half the recipe, two cans for the whole recipe, and so on. I generally only use one egg for half the recipe. It’s fine that way. And I add a few dashes of hot sauce to the custard, too.
You can make the dish up ready for the oven, and then stick it in the fridge for a good 24 hours, if you want, before baking it—as long as you add a little cooking time to make up for the chill.
I’ve found the longer cooking time is better than the shorter one, if you like nicely browned cheese, like I do. I have also found that, unfortunately, it is possible to leave it in at 350° for too long—it’ll still taste wonderful, but the consistency begins to tend toward that of cheese leather. However you can turn off the oven when the casserole is done and leave it in for up to an hour before you serve it without too much harm—which is handy if you’re having a party and it proves difficult to wrangle the guests to the table.
Here’s what I generally serve with the Chile Relleno Casserole:
Refried Beans (Not) (recipe on pp. 43-45), which I scoop onto a mound of shredded lettuce on each plate.
Diced Tomato and Avocado Salad, mixed with chopped green onions, a minced chile pepper, and lots and lots of chopped cilantro. Salt. Toss this with lime juice and a little olive oil.
Warm corn tortillas.
I grate a little more cheese to put on the table in case anyone wants it for their beans, too.
And I put a group of hot sauces on the table. Also a little plate with wedges of lime.
Beer with this. Wine gets blasted out of the park.
And speaking of those peppers, there’s another set of Roasted Pepper recipes that can hardly fail. There are a couple of ways to do these. Either char the peppers over a gas jet, turning them with a pair of tongs, or broil them under a heating unit, or just line them up on a roasting pan and turn the stove up to 450°, turning them over as they blacken. Then put them all in some closed container to steam—this makes them easier to skin. Skin ‘em when you can without burning your fingers.
These are terrific a lot of different ways. You can slice them and serve them in their own juices, or with a little garlic and oil and lemon. If I’m going to keep them, I generally add a little olive oil to help preserve the flavor, and this way you have a lovely salad in the refrigerator that you can use as a side dish, on a sandwich, in scrambled eggs . . . If you’ve used the red and yellow and orange ones, the dish looks as dramatic as it tastes. Good with capers, too, come to think of it . . . And anchovies. And olives. And roasted tomatoes. And torn basil leaves. And . . . and . . .
So there’s two close to infallible recipes, if you don’t already have them, to add to your own hoard of yellowing bits of paper splashed all over with who knows what, from who knows how many really nice meals. [Or, these days, those ones saved on your phone . . . unsplashed we hope . . .]
