A Soufflé Is Just Breakfast With An Attitude

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Carol

Taa-daa!

As I put the finishing touches on my contribution to our church’s upcoming fundraising auction—a soufflé cooking lesson and dinner, complete with a basket filled with gear for making soufflés—I’ve been jotting down some notes on the subject and decided to share them with you. Just in case you’ve never made a soufflé. Just in case you’re one of those people who have despaired of ever making a soufflé because … what? Because it might come crashing down like King Kong plummeting from atop the Empire State Building?

Let’s not be so dramatic. For starters, all the hype about falling soufflé is grossly overblown. You don’t have to tiptoe around the house, speaking in whispers and leaving doors open that you’d be slamming if not for the soufflé in the oven. (If a loud noise could destroy a soufflé, this one would have been a goner after our Prima Donna paraded into the kitchen and meowed long and loud in her best Wagnerian manner.) What will destroy a soufflé in the making is cold air. That means don’t open the oven door for about 20 minutes after you put it in there. Simple, eh? You can even let it sit for an hour or two after you put it together before baking it. A soufflé accommodates you and your schedule, not the other way around.

So what if your soufflé does collapse? It won’t lead to the downfall of civilization as we know it. We’re talking about a pittance in ingredients that, even if they lose their lift, will still taste just fine. If you want to serve soufflé at a dinner party then, yes, by all means practice a time or two beforehand. But pleeeze don’t let a pouffy bowlful of eggs, milk, butter and cheese intimidate you. Try thinking of it as an omelet with an ego.

In case you’re concerned about what’s at stake if your soufflé falls, I priced out a basic cheese soufflé (using measurements from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking), so you’ll see that the investment in this dish is minimal. These prices are based on a trip to the grocery closest to my house in the Los Angeles area, one that has neither the highest nor the lowest prices in my neighborhood:

5 large eggs                                     $1.04 (@ $2.50/1 doz. lg. eggs)

1 cup milk                                        .50 (@ .99/pint)

3 oz. cheese (Gruyere)                  $3.75 (@ $9.99/half pound)

3 Tbsp. + 1 tsp. butter (< 2 oz.)   .38 (@ $2.99/pound)

3 Tbsp. flour (appr. 1 oz.)             .06 (@ $1.99/2-pound bag)

1/2 tsp. salt                                      .01 (nominal charge)

1/8 tsp. black pepper                     .01 (nominal charge)

a pinch of nutmeg                          .01 (nominal charge)

The grand total for the ingredients in one cheese soufflé that serves four people is $5.74. If you and your significant otter stop in at Starbucks for a couple of lattes you’ll spend more than that. You’ve probably spent more on a magazine–or on the wrong shade of lipstick. (And if you still have your calculator out, a little quick math will show you that a $5.74 soufflé will feed four people for $1.44 each in ingredients. How’s that for economy?! La-di-da dish indeed…)

Like most things you learn to do, soufflé gets easier to make the more you practice. And the better the results are (by the way, an oven thermometer will go a long way toward ensuring good results). And the freer you feel to experiment with it, so that you can develop your own signature soufflé.

Here's the "before" photo, to give you an idea how much it rose. This soufflé has some extra ingredients that weighed it down a bit, which I think is the reason it came out looking a little like a space alien.

What if it turns out looking like the one at the top of this blog entry? It’s a little whomperjawed, I know. I selected this picture to assure you that even if it doesn’t turn out looking like it’s ready for its close up, Mr. DeMille, it’s still a fine, lovely thing. A tasty thing. A thing worth having with a little salad and a crisp white wine. A thing worth enjoying with a cloth napkin and a lighted candle. And with someone you like.

If you’re ready to give it a try, check out Molly Wizenberg’s take on one of Julia’s cheese soufflé recipes.

And remember: even if it falls, it will still taste good. Maybe you can even have a competition amongst your friends, to see who can produce the ugliest soufflé. If you do, send me some pictures, okay?! I’ll put up an “ugly soufflé gallery” right here on my blog.

Deal?

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COPIA: An Appreciation

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Carol

COPIA

Last weekend I visited COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts for the final time. More accurately, I visited what was left of it, approaching the entrance teary eyed, as emotional and helpless as a vegan at a turkey drop.

I’d been to Copia only once before, when it was young, energetic and filled with possibility. It was 2004, and I was fresh out of culinary school and feeling directionless and overwhelmed by the dizzying world of food and food culture. I needed some of the optimism Copia offered. The 13,000-square-foot palace to food and wine education certainly was impressive. Visitors milled about, taking in the exhibits, enjoying samples of food and wine and smiling at Julia Child’s prodigious collection of copper pots and pans that Paul had outlined in marker and hung on pegboards in their Cambridge, Massachusetts home kitchen. The organic gardens teemed with vegetables, herbs and wine grapes that would find their way into Copia’s kitchens. Copia hinted at myriad possibilities to explore as I struggled to carve a niche for myself in the culinary world and provided just the boost I needed to forge on.

To return and see the giant auction banner hanging out front was heartbreaking. When the lady at the desk asked, “May I help you?”, her voice echoing through the hushed atrium, I was tempted to say, “No, I’m here to view the body.” Instead I replied in a near-whisper, “Just looking, thanks,” unwilling to add to the echo in the lifeless room.

This glass grape sculpture suspended in the atrium was snapped up for $3,500 at auction but cost much, much more.

I perused a catalog detailing everything on the auction block. Glancing through it was like taking a peek at the results of an autopsy. Perhaps that is not the most accurate description, but seeing all of Copia’s assets laid out so dispassionately made the whole thing cold and clinical. None of the warmth remained that I’d experienced when the place was bustling just a few years earlier. Its life and soul were gone, and all that was left were the earthly remains. Each item was tagged for auction, not only wines, dishes and cookware, but even the more mundane items like flowerpots, trashcans and the coat check room’s storage and retrieval apparatus. The vultures, an imprecise and unkind word, I know, and I apologize for using it, were carrying it all away, bit by beautiful bit.

I don’t know enough about Copia’s inner workings to conjecture why it ultimately failed, beyond what I’ve heard in passing about its financial woes. I’d visited only once, so why did I feel such an overwhelming sadness? I guess there’s the part of me that, like the acquaintance of a suicide, wrings her hands and says, “Maybe if I’d visited more this wouldn’t have happened.”

Walking back to the parking lot I was tempted to snatch a souvenir, one of the smooth, gray rocks from the long, flowing fountain, now dry, that reached from near the entrance down to the street. It would have made a fine paperweight. But I wondered if security cameras might still be at work, and that if I took a rock, a drop net might snare me and a somber guard intone, “Drop the rock, Ma’am…” So I left empty handed.

On Copia’s closing, the pegboard wall filled with Julia’s copper cookware was spirited away to the Smithsonian, where it draws a healthy number of visitors, and even showed up in the film Julie and Julia. Copia’s other assets will go to restaurants, schools and homes where they will be pressed into use or at least serve as mementos to those with fond recollections of their visits. The building and grounds, nestled in stunning wine country and hugged by the Napa River, will be given new life, although what form it will take no one yet knows.

While I’m sad that Copia’s life was not long enough to establish it as indelibly as it should have been, I take courage in the engraving at the entrance which reads, “Wine and food speak not only to the palate, but to the mind and the deeper domain of the heart, like poetry, painting and song, they are carriers of culture and celebrants of life; returning us to the world of the senses, of memory and imagination.”

It’s like Copia is reassuring us from beyond that regardless of the size or grandeur of the physical structure, it is the spirit that remains, the spirit that will again one day emerge to educate and delight new generations who yearn to know about food and wine in American culture.

That's it, for now...

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CSA, at last!

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Carol

Friday, 6 April 2012, 7:37 a.m. PDT: The beginning of a new era. Today we awoke to find a box of freshly picked fruits and vegetables waiting on our front porch, our very first CSA (community supported agriculture) delivery. Christmas on Good Friday!

Cosmo checks out our first CSA trove--turns out he fancies arugula!

The sight of a humble cardboard box full of fruits and vegetables sitting outside the door might not seem like much to some folks, but to me it means several things, all of them positive:

It means less for me to lug home from the farmers’ market. I’ll still go, of course, but I can cross some things off the list and focus on bringing home others.

It means someone in the know is handing me an item I might not buy very often and saying, “Here, give this a try. It’s good.” I seldom pick up arugula, but I have a bunch of it in the crisper drawer now. And I’ll find a way to use it. We may decide we like it so much we can’t imagine doing without. And if we don’t, that’s okay, too.

It means supporting local growers by saying, “I value what you do, and I’m willing to sign up, so you know in advance that you can count on my money to help you feed me well.”

It means an assortment of food that is all organically grown. I don’t have to wander the produce section of the neighborhood gigantomart puzzling over the labels and wondering if the companies behind each of them can be trusted.

It means a significantly smaller carbon footprint is made when we buy locally grown produce, because it’s not being shipped from across the country–or worse, from another continent entirely. And food that travels only a few miles to get to your table will be picked when it’s ripe, which means the flavor and texture will be better. No case of the mealies and the lacklusters to disappoint us.

Mainly, for me it’s a step toward the way I grew up on the farm, with an abundance of fresh food. Of course we didn’t grow oranges, lemons and avocados on our Tennessee farm, but most of our food was available to us by stepping out the back door, or reaching into the pantry for something we’d picked and put up in August to eat in mid-winter. CSAs draw on the bounty of the neighborhood. You can fill in the rest however you like.

If you’re not taking advantage of a CSA and you want to know more about community supported agriculture, visit Local Harvest’s website. There’s a place to enter your zip code and see which CSA is closest to you.

Welcome to the San Fernando Valley, CSA! We’re very happy to have you here.

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Reinventing Leftovers

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Carol

Ratatouille--a great dish & a great building block!

“Leftover.” Sigh.

It’s one of those sad words like “also-ran,” “almost” and “runner-up.” Okay, but not as attractive as something else. While some foods are actually much better the second, third and fourth days, the sound of “leftovers for dinner” just doesn’t inspire.

That’s why I like the French term, rechauffe, which means to re-chafe or reheat. Let’s face it, everything sounds better in French.

“Honey, what are we having for dinner tonight?”

“Oh, it’s a lovely new French dish I’ve discovered called rechauffe.”

“Sounds great!”

Sometimes even ratatouille requires a little help when we’ve had too many servings of it. Since it’s a labor intensive dish, I tend to make it in really large quantities. It freezes and reheats just fine, but at times I need to do more than reheat–I need to reinvent.

This was the case last night when I was facing a large pot of ratatouille and the bits and pieces of other meals.

pastatouille?!

So I pulsed some of the ratatouille in the food processor to a rough chop, sautéed some onions, chopped some sun-dried tomatoes and mixed them all together on the stove top to heat. I also reheated some roasted garbanzo beans and garlic, and poured it all on top of a bowl of whole wheat spaghetti. Then I plunged a slice of fresh buffalo mozzarella into it and let it soften.

Himself loved it. I loved it. Mission accomplished.

Some of the best dishes simply have no recipe and are difficult to reproduce. Dishes like this are one-of-a-kind. Happy accidents. While I seldom get to enjoy such things more than once, they inspire me to keep experimenting, to see what great new dish I can devise. They remind me that leftovers don’t have to be ho-hum. They can be the promise of another great meal.

 

 

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The Power of Baby Steps

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Carol

 

Helena's turning kitchen & garden scraps into eggs...

“What are you going to write about Edible Institute?” my friend Helena asked as we meandered up the mountain road back to her house after a day of learning about responsible behavior in the growing, handling and consumption of food.

It was not a trick question, but still, I didn’t have an answer for her. At that point I was overwhelmed by the deluge of information I was trying to absorb.

Put on by Edible Communities, Edible Institute is a weekend-long event at which all the buzzwords like organic, sustainable, green and biodynamic are tossed around by people who don’t just talk the talk–they seriously walk the walk. Heavy hitters in the realm of food responsibility and justice who spoke to us included Barry Estabrook, Tracie McMillan, Jonathan Bloom, Gary Nabhan and Nikki Henderson to name but a few.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by all that needs addressing. There’s massive food waste, corruption, hunger, greed, lack of incentive to do the right thing, squandering of limited resources, exploitation of the labor of migrant workers and of children both domestically and abroad, not to mention the feeling of futility that arises in the face of it all. The list seems endless, but the people who were discussing these problems were not merely hand wringers. They are movers and shakers in the area of food justice. While they spent significant time enumerating the litany of problems, they also outlined ways in which we are capable of fixing them.

Personally, I’m an advocate of baby steps as a way to move forward. They help me go from standing still to movement, which can be the most difficult part of any enterprise (ol’ Mr. Newton was spot-on about inertia and momentum). Baby steps keep me focused and help prevent me from faltering too easily. Because of time and money constraints, it’s difficult for the average civilian to go whole hog into every aspect of living a cleaner, greener more responsible and humane life. So baby steps are a good way to begin. A good way to make the entire trip, if need be. As the adage goes, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

I found the answer to Helena’s question in the four hens in her yard and the two pails of organic recyclables in her kitchen.

Helena's Egg Squad

Her hens gladly gobble up fruit and vegetable trimmings from the tin in the kitchen labelled “for chickens,” along with spindly plants from the garden that have outlived their usefulness. In exchange, the hens provide eggs that have been produced from their healthy, non-chemically contaminated diet.

Breakfast courtesy of The Egg Squad

The garden receives the “not for chickens” tin’s contents of coffee grounds, tea bags and other bits that provide nourishment for what’s growing there.

givin' peas a chance...

At Edible Institute we learned that a full 40% of the food produced in the United States goes uneaten, enough to fill the Rose Bowl every day. A handful of kitchen scraps might not seem like much, but the chickens and garden create food from stuff that would have taken up space in the landfill. And there’s something about producing your own food that makes you a lot less likely to waste it.

Helena’s chicken-and-garden set-up helps provide a variety of food for her table. It gives her something fun and instructive to enjoy with her grand kids. It’s a good excuse for being outside, enjoying fresh air, sunlight and nature (although the gophers are providing a little more nature than Helena’s happy with at the moment!). And seeing her set-up encourages me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been heartened by a glimpse into her yard farm, which she built a piece at a time.

Just think of any monumental task you might undertake. Losing weight. Getting fit. Learning a new language. Mastering the guitar. All of these things must be accomplished in increments. You know, baby steps. It takes awhile to build up momentum. But we can get there one step at a time. Maybe it’s growing a few herbs this year and adding some tomatoes next. The size of the step isn’t as important as making sure a step is taken.

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