You're Never Too Busy for Kebab-ery

I like a bypass. I like a change of scenery. I'm a great one for hiking new terrain or just taking a Sunday joyride down some unfamiliar road. I think I will do both today.

One side of my heritage is descended from ancient nomads. (Well, I'm sure if we go back far enough, all of us came from nomads.) I still remember, during my first grade school year, watching with fascination a children's documentary about the Laplanders. They follow the reindeer hither and yon across the tundra wearing braids and brightly-colored woolens. I thought they were the coolest.

Now I'm just too comfortable with my picket-fence suburban Shangri-La to ever be called a rover...but seeing as how my Hungarian ancestors rode half-wild galloping horses around the steppes and rolling hills and cooked in iron vessels over open fires, I'm at least part nomad, I'm sure...an out-and-back kind of nomad.

As mentioned, nomads are great ones for cooking over an open fire. My people liked to stew everything in little cast-iron cauldrons hung over the flames, but their neighbors, the Turks, just speared whatever they could find and held it right in the fire, and the shish kebab was born.

Shish Kebabs are probably the most efficient meal under the sun. Kebabs requires no cooking vessel, they often includes vegetables skewered with the meat (so you have a nearly-complete meal right there), and they cook very quickly.

I love lamb or beef kebabs drowned in strong marinades, but chicken, turkey, and seafood can be skewered and offer equally tasty variations. There's not much you can't turn into a kebab. In fact, every child's campfire favorite, the toasted marshmallow, is really just a marshmallow kebab.

The kebab makes a great weekend dinner when you are feeling lazy, because you can put it together in a flash. Marinate some protein and fire up the grill. While the grill is getting hot and the meat is soaking up flavor, chop a couple veggies, maybe have a beverage. Stick everything onto a skewer, and it's done in 10 minutes or less. You could add a starch (rice, potatoes, couscous)... or not. You could add a salad...or not. The point is, it is an ancient version of fast food for people who were REALLY on the go, nomad-style. You just can't beat the shish kebab for healthy, tasty, substantial, whole food that's ready to serve in mere minutes. If you think you are too busy to cook, you really cannot be too busy to throw a shish kebab over the coals...Honestly, you'd spend a lot more time waiting around in a restaurant and just as much time nuking a processed TV dinner that's not really very good for you.

So, I'm off to enjoy this weekend sun. I'm going to hike and wander and probably not get home until I'm feeling half-starved. And I'm not going to worry about it, because an awesome dinner for suburban neo-nomads like me will be plated before I've fully caught my breath from my daily wanderings. And then, with no pots and pans to scrub...I'll have time to be off and onto my next adventure!

Will Paint For Pinkaroni and Cheese

If there are two trades I love, it would have to be cooking and house painting. I started life as a painter, not a cook...a fifth generation painter, to be more precise. The family joke was that we had been at it for so long that we Downies had thinner, not blood, coursing through our veins. Strange though it sounds, I enjoyed the painting life. But after a much-loved mastiff pulled me down a flight of icy stairs, the unhappy disc in my neck that resulted demanded that I choose another trade. That's why I am a cook and not a painter.

With the siding of our new old house looking pretty sad, I recently struck a bargain with that disc: "Let me paint my house, just a little bit at a time over the course of the summer, and I promise I will otherwise continue to give you the less-strenuous treatment to which you have grown accustomed."

So this weekend, I set myself up with scrapers, brushes, rollers, buckets, and ladders and I prepared and painted the North side of the house. It was good to be back at my old trade. I loved climbing ladders. I loved the fresh air. I loved getting a glow from the sun. I loved the uppper body workout. AND, I love the paint color mi esposo chose...I can hardly wait until the other 3 sides of the house are transformed!

With that disc keeping up its end of the bargain, I even managed to get dinner on the table.

I worked hard so I wanted something fresh and summery that still satisfied the appetite I had worked up. What I came up with was a pretty cool concoction...picture this: miniature pasta shells with diced, roasted beets, kumato tomatoes, shallots, crumbled bacon, and a sauce of ricotta and romano cheeses, fresh lemon juice, and a little olive oil served over a bed of wilted swiss chard. Oh, the colors this dish created! Gorgeous! Everything on the plate was a lovely show of vivid pinks and greens. I told mi esposo we were having "Pinkaroni and Cheese" because I feared he might turn his nose up at less-familiar ingredients like beets and swiss chard. To my palate, beets and chard are so deliciously earthy, plus they were never in danger of overwhelming the dish becaue the high accent note of lemon throughout kept things light. The cheese and bacon added some "bottom" to the whole medley and kept it from floating away. Plates were cleaned all around.

It hit the spot for me...after a strenuous day outdoors, a really fresh, gorgeous-looking dinner that was brimming with summery flavor AND was still hearty enough to leave me sated. I'll paint for a meal like that anytime. Maybe next weekend, even!

Gourmet Conserve: (or We Used to Call them Leftovers)

I always seem to choose homes surrounded by miles of hedges. And while I don't go in for topiary perfection, I do require some semblance of order in the foliage bordering my property...artfully, organically askew, but tidy nonetheless.

I always seem to win the chore of trimming said hedges. And today was hedge-trimming day at the Itinerant Cook's abode. This was a big, fat spring clean-up job of hedge-trimming, too...too big of a job for those electric hedge trimmers. To get everything all prepared for summer required a big pair of shears and a pruner. Dead wood had to be chopped out. Overgrowth had to be taken back to the crotch of the branch. And everything had to be shaped, not too obviously, but shaped just the same.

So I snipped and I chopped and I trimmed and I snipped and I chopped and I trimmed for hours in the morning sun. I carried armload after armload of dead wood and clippings to the brush pile. I was a regular Edward Scissorhands and I'm here to tell everyone that you can cancel your gym membership and still have killer arms because no amount of kickbacks or pull-downs ever did my triceps like 2+ hours of landscaping. And I ONLY got the back of the property done. After the blooms fade from the hedgerows in the front of the house, I'll be repeating this routine.

I enjoyed the spring sun, I breathed in the fresh air, I waved to the neighbor kids from my ladder...yeah, I kind of enjoyed the chore. But let's face it, I am just starting to get back into some kind of shape and the yard work wore me out. Not to mention the fact that no Saturday is complete to me without an extra-long quality-time walk with my favorite canine boy. So throw some mileage into the mix and you might start to understand how I was pretty run down by five o'clock and not much in the mood for starting a gourmet dinner from scratch.

Sometimes the songbirds don't sing. Sometimes the distance runner hits "the wall." Sometimes an author gets writer's block. And sometimes a (usually) inspired cook just isn't that inspired.

Fortunately, I've gotten in the habit of cooking a portion or two extra when I make dinners at home so I can stock the freezer. This way, it's easy to grab something on nights when I don't want to start a cooking extravaganza. Plus, everyone can have exactly what they are in the mood for...no sorting through which carryout place makes everyone happy. I had Mulligatawny (curried chicken and apple stew) and mi esposo dug out some Penne Cardinale (pasta with chicken and a turbo-charged alfredo). AND(!), there were no cardboard boxes to recycle, no labels to read, and no pretzels to pull out after dinner because the packaged junk just wasn't satisfying. It was effortless, whole, nutritous food. I know I'll have at least one brutal day this coming week when I won't feel like cooking again after having been at it all day long. But I'll know I have some braised duck, sauteed salmon, and a killer gratin of potatoes on hand that will keep me out of some horrible bummer of a drive-through line.

I fully encourage everyone to try freezing some of your own cooking. When you are grilling chicken breasts, just throw one or two extra on over the coals. You can blanch 3 or 5 portions of green beans just as easily as you can blanch 2 or 4. Don't throw away that last piece of lasagna...freeze it. It's that easy and it WILL absolutely come in handy. By freezing your own food as you make it, you set yourself up with effortless, healthy, fat-controlled, no-additive, flavorful options for the nights when you have no intention of pulling out pots and pans.

We used to call them "leftovers" but now it just seems way too smart a concept, certainly worthy of a loftier title. I propose: "Gourmet Conserve". Hmmm? Hmmm? Well...whaddya think??

Happy Anniversary: The Whole Darn Duck

There is an embarrassing story in my tales of cooking past. Many years ago, when I was NOT yet much of a cook, my avid game-hunting father gave me a duck. Unwisely, I decided to prepare the duck on an evening when I had arrived home from the office harried, exhausted, and unfocused. Duck a l'Orange, I declared would be the entree, and set about, in a rather haphazard fashion, roasting my bird. I was asked what recipe I would be using and I indicated I had no need for such a thing...duck a l'orange was easy, and I could just freewheel it. I roasted that poor bird for what must have been an eternity in a searingly hot oven while I changed out of my work clothes, caught up on paperwork, weeded the garden, returned calls, and god knows what else. What I put on the plate could not be sawed in two by my sharpest steak knife, and the schmear of an orange sauce that was little more than a doctored-up marmalade, was just a sad topper for the dessicated shoe leather I deigned to call dinner. Starving, I ordered a pizza at 10 p.m.

I've improved my duck-cooking skills in subsequent years, but I usually just sear some duck breasts and sauce them in a citrus demi-glace. There's nothing wrong with that, but this week I bought a WHOLE duck and I was bound and determined to use a whole duck. Furthermore, I did not want any sad failures like my duck a l'orange of days gone by because this duck was a special duck...this was an anniversary duck.

I may not necessarily be a high-maintenance girl, but I know I am not the easiest person to live with. Mi esposo therefore deserves to eat especially well on the day commemorating the fact he has reached a landmark date in continuing to put up with me. So the duck had to be good.

But there I was, all distracted like the days of yore. I was installing software, doing laundry, testing a pie crust recipe, and doing 15 other things that had nothing to do with my duck when I started my duck. And I hadn't even decided if I wanted to roast the whole bird or break it down and cook different cuts in different ways. OH! ...and that Strawberry Sauce recipe...would that be good with duck??? Should we have that pie for dessert? When were the dogs last outside?

Needless to say, I was a little unfocused. Finally, (on whim, really) I decided to break down the duck. Which required I REALLY sharpen my boning knife...another task to make me lose focus. Then I wanted to refer to something I saw on the internet about duck, but damn! The software was still installing, so I had to freewheel it again without a recipe. And, OH GOD! That pie crust has to come out of the oven NOW!

My mind was going in too many different directions. I was well aware of the potentially disastrous dinner I was setting myself up for. At worst, mi esposo was going to lose confidence in my cooking skills. At best, he was going to tease me mercilessly.

That was all I needed to pull it together. I took it step by step. I got the pie out of the oven. I asked mi esposo to keep an eye on the software installation for me. I rendered all the fat from the skin and saved it for some sunny day when I need duck fat. I made duck chitterlings with the fatty skin for the dogs. I cleaned the breasts. I put the legs and wings to braise in a pan with duck fat, white wine, lemon juice, sea salt, and whole cloves of garlic. I saved the neck and bones for soup. I cooked the liver and etc., pureed them with shallot, brandy, and cream and put them in a bain marie to become pate, and finally, I dusted the breasts to prepare them for saute. I even put together that strawberry sauce to try with the duck.

Well, I felt more competent on this latest duck-cooking exposition...I mean, the only thing I had thrown away was the wrapping paper. But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Would my anniversary duck make the grade??

I am happy to say that after all that, mi esposo cleaned his plate. The duck was lean and lovely and the braised bits were especially good...literally falling off the bone.

Honestly, I'm feeling pretty grateful right about now. Not only did I narrowly avert a repeat performance of the inedible duck I am capable of doing, but I actually used that whole darn duck like a competent cook with a deep respect for the game that sustains me...AND I think I gave someone a pretty nice anniversary dinner. He just might continue to put up with me!

Mock Creme Brulee Au Tropique

For the last few days, I've been meaning to curl up with some cookbooks to get some inspiration, or to put a new spin on an old standard. I haven't had a chance to spread the books out over the living room table, and frankly, I was beginning to feel like I was slacking off. But completely out of nowhere, not a cookbook in sight, I just plain wondered what would happen if I tried to "candy" a mango.

I sliced up some mango, tossed it in superfine sugar, and put it in a low 250 degree oven. I was hoping to draw out a lot of the moisture for some chewy, sugared mango slices. But after a long walk, I checked my experiment and it just wasn't dehydrating at the rate I wanted. I had hoped the mango would behave like oven-roasted cherry tomatoes, which dry out relatively quickly and leave you with some intense tomato flavor, similar to sun-dried tomatoes. Since my mango was so juicy, this method wasn't going to work. So I cranked it up to 400 degrees.

After about 18 minutes I smelled something gorgeous...caramelization. I was out of my chair like a shot, since caramelization can go from a rich, dark nuttiness to just plain burnt in seconds flat.

My mango slices were still very juicy, but had wonderfully chewy-looking golden edges and speckles. I tried one. Good, but intense. It needed a mellow partner. I mixed some Greek yogurt and a smidge of sour cream (and quit worrying so much about sour cream...it only has about 20 calories in a tablespoon) and put some of my browned mango on top. THAT was it!

The mango was so sweet and the carmelized parts reminded me of the top of a creme brulee. And of course, "creme" was the luxurious base of this confection. Lots of vitamin C and less than 200 calories per serving at my count. I christened it: "Mock Creme Brulee Au Tropique". Sounds good, doesn't it?? This would be really nice with a little mint as an ending to a light meal on a hot summer evening.

I thought I had broken brand new culinary ground. In my zeal to see what else I could pair my carmelized mango with, I started unearthing more ideas. But in my research, I saw that Chef Eric Ripert evidently had a similar "what-if-I-caramelize-mango" moment a few years back and he pairs his caramelized mango with vanilla ice cream. Pfff!

OK, fine, Eric. I guess this means I don't get to bust down the doors to Le Bernardin like a victorious conqueror the next time I'm in NYC. But whether I make it or Eric makes it, carmelized mango is a flavor-packed confection, and a fresh change of pace.