While post Thanksgiving might be a funny time to bring up the merits of a roasted bird, it seems like a good time to point out the fact that this is anything but a special occasion-only dish. I roast a chicken almost once a week. This makes a meal that is always a wonderful dinner, then a very delicious lunch or whole other dinner, and keeps us stocked up on nourishing and tasty bone broth. The whole production is really three steps (one of them is eating!) and it makes the amount of money I spend on a pasture raised chicken go a long way. Find pasture raised chickens at the farmer’s markets or at specialty meat places. Organic/free range is okay if that’s the best you can find but there is more bang for your buck nutritionally if the chicken is certain to have lived outside, eating bugs and other wild chicken favorite foods. Remember, its good that organic chickens are not being fed industrial meat-packing waste, BUT chickens just aren’t vegetarians, so I don’t get sold on eggs or chickens when the package says they feed them as such.

I have used various recipes for roasting chickens and have finally settled on the simplest and most delicious (nice how it seemed to work out that way). I first started out with a Alice Water’s recipe in The Art of Simple Food. This recipe liberated me from the idea that I had to have a roasting pan. She said just to use a cast iron skillet and that’s what I do. She also guided my sense of improvisation when it comes to how to dress the bird, from filling the cavity with a lemon half and whole fresh herbs to putting garlic under the skin. Her instructions (and yes, I do like thinking of cookbooks as being guidance directly to me from the author) had me turning the bird from twice to move the juices around. This makes sense with a bird that is heavy breasted because it can dry out. But the birds I get are pretty proportional and tender so I appreciated finding another simple recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a British farmer, writer, chef in his book The River Cottage Meat Book. A great resource! I now follow his recipe for herbed roast chicken that basically rubs the bird down with a mixture of butter, fresh herbs, salt and pepper, cooks it in a cast iron skilled at 400 for 15 mins then 350 for the remaining time (another half hour to 45min depending on the size). He also calls for basting and adding a half cup of wine to the pan when you lower the heat, but I’ve not done that and it still works fine. When you place the chicken in the skillet make sure there aren’t any gibblets inside (they are usually in a little packet) and place breast side up and open up the wings and fold the tips up and back so they are tucked under the back so they don’t burn.

Like with most recipes the words can be misleading and the first couple time I followed the Fearnley-Whittingstall guidance to “combine softened butter with herbs” I had chunks of butter all over my hands that seemed to be magnetically repelled by chicken skin. I could not get it to look like it did in the book, or in the picture above. I learned that “softened” really meant mostly melted (unlike “softened” butter for cookies). So I melt the butter about half way so it keeps it’s opaqueness, then I mix this with chopped herbs, salt and pepper and rub it all over the skin, wings, legs, back. This process is sort of why, if I cook chicken, I cook it whole. There is something more “aware” of the bird having all its parts connected, moving as something that walked around and flapped and pecked. I still have never killed a chicken myself, but at least working the the mostly intact body I have a greater appreciation for it’s chicken-ness.

Part of dealing with a whole chicken is learning how to break it down. This is also a good lesson for how chickens are built and makes me thankful for their life. I don’t know why this process makes me feel more thankful than with already separated cuts, maybe it’s just that same heightened awareness through doing the work. The carving and serving process given by Fearnley-Whittingstall was what really sold me. I used to carve the bird on a board (which makes for some significant clean up) and make gravy from the drippings. While delicious, it took time. Hugh said I can just cut it right up in the pan and serve it in the juices. Well, that one way to make the breast cuts more moist!

Super peasant style we serve ourselves from the pan. Potatoes or yams make a perfect side and a fresh salad with some lacto-fermented veggies and homemade yogurt dressing adds much needed enzymatic action. We make sure to keep all bones and when we’re done eating I take all remaining meat and put it in the fridge for another meal like taco night, curries, soup, or just cold chicken lunch. The dripping are saved. These are a boon to other meals. Re-heat chicken meat in the drippings and add to rice. I never made fried rice that tasted quite right until I added some drippings. Amazing! You can really see the gelatin power in the chicken dinner and that’s a very powerful thing for health and digestion. Cold, the drippings form into that old timey jello- aspic. You really could eat it plain, but I suggest making it your newest secret ingredient.

After we’re done eating all bones and the carcass get put in a pot, this would be a good time to add any heads or feet you managed to get from the farm. It’s all good for you and it the more of the chicken you add the better the stock (besides the feathers of course, or the liver…save that for something else). Fill the pot with cold water until just covering the top of the carcass and add a dash of apple cider vinegar. Bring to a boil and turn down to a simmer and let it simmer for at least 4 hrs or longer. You can also do this in a crock pot and leave overnight.

I have come to prefer stock made from a roasted chicken, versus raw which is what more recipes call for, because I like flavor and I don’t really love the texture of the meat from a stewed bird. I also don’t add any veggies. They get bitter from such a long simmer. You can add parsley in the last 10 mins, as this is very nutritive.

Let the stock cool and then pour in quart sized containers (I use all the Straus whole milk yogurt containers we have around). I don’t really even both straining it, I just pour or ladle straight from the pot. Keep these in the freezer and pull out for soup, rice, or just as a healthy drink that helps heal the digestive tract and makes all those minerals like calcium much more available for your body to use. For more on why bone broth is so great, go here.

                          

I stopped buying pre-made breadcrumbs not right after Alice Waters told me to make my own (via her book The Art of Simple Food) but when I stopped (mostly) eating wheat/grain products that aren’t fermented or soaked. The whole wheat panko we used to buy came in a plastic container and didn’t really get used much anyway. Now, I throw the heels of our Alvarado St. Sourdough Sprouted Grain (double whammy) sandwich bread into a waxed paper bag. Last night was the first time I actually remembered that I had that bag of heels on the top of the fridge and also had a distinct use for tasty breadcrumbs.

Two heels made plenty of crumbs for a 1/2lb of fish (which is just the right amount of fish for two people, another reason not to balk that the high cost of sustainable fish per pound- you don’t need very much)

I used our sauerkraut pounder, the instructions I’ve seen say to use the food processor, but that was too dish-intensive for something supposed to be simple. You could also use an empty bottle. I have  seen recipes that advise for bread to not be totally stale, which mine was…it turned out fine. If you can’t use actually stale bread, than what’s the point?

As neat as I think the breadcrumb resourcefulness was, I think this post is really just way to get in a word (at last) about my love for the waxed paper bag. It is a great alternative to plastic, which, for many foods, performs better due it’s ability to keep out moisture but allow the food to breathe, especially important for bread and cheese. A good ziplock, plastic wrap, or aluminum foil alternative. I highly recommend getting a pack of these compostable, handsome, handy items.

                          

In Nourishing Traditions, there is one instance that Sally Fallon gives a thumbs up to the increased globalization (and industrialization) of food and that is to the availability of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables year round, which insures that people will eat enough variety of plants. (I’m not sure if she still holds this feeling as so much of her work involves supporting small farmers to provide ecologically grown local food.) Nina Planck also admits that she goes beyond the farmer’s market in winter to have a fresh green salad every day, for her it’s worth it. Ultimately I would probably make the same choice if I didn’t live in a place where lettuce is bright and happy all year, but I wonder if we are “supposed” to eat the kinds of food we are able to find in a given season. Not just to ecological or economic reasons, but because of what our bodies need at a given time.

I’ve tried to explore an intuition that the foods in season are just the foods our bodies need in a given season. That is, could it be that collard greens, broccoli, brussell sprouts and butternut squash, carrots, and yams are all available right now and such timing matches up with my body’s particular nutritional needs in the winter?

It isn’t really an easy thing to answer since people live in such different climates (around the world and different from their ancestry). Apparently, in Traditional Chinese Medicine “the foods that are natural to a particular season carry strong messages of Qi balancing and tonifying for that season.” (more on that here) From my limited understanding of this body of knowledge it seems that winter is yin, and balance is created by consuming yang foods. Yang foods are warming and include crops that take a long time to grow and those that are eaten cooked. This means that the food needed for balance in winter are just those foods that are available in winter, which would make sense

In western medicine terms winter means cold and flu season and SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Both of these issue can be valiantly battled through food, but it isn’t clear to me that the foods available in winter are uniquely rich in immune supporting qualities (for cold and flu) and omega 3’s, Vitamin D, and antioxidants (for SAD). They all have all these things, but not, it doesn’t seem, in special winter abundance.

So, there is some discrepancy on whether foods really appear during the season in which they are best for your body. But even if nature might not be writing me a seasonal prescription I still hold that eating in season is the best way to get the fullest variety of foods over the course of a year. Even though you might be getting less variety in a given season, you get more greens for your green because in-season food is cheaper and over the course of the year the variety is great because you are not just sticking to the veggies and fruits you are comfortable with, but are challenged to try favorite dishes with seasonal alternatives. Sally Fallon may be right that some people wouldn’t eat fruits and veggies at all in the winter if all they had only brassicas and roots to choose from, but maybe that’s only because they’ve never been challenged to go without. (I have to admit that I am still stuck in the naive assumption that fruits and vegetables are the only things that change with the seasons (besides getting venison at hunting season from family, crab for the first (only) time in the year around Christmas, and a limited supply of pastured eggs at the farmer’s market during winter). For a more complete understanding of the seasonality of food, I recommend reading this article from Mother Earth News by Joel Salatin the famous grass farmer.)

There is also the argument that seasonal veggies and fruits are more nutritional because the food is fresher; that is, you eat it closer to the time it was harvested and it was harvested ripe, which is when a plant is also most nutritious to those animals who eat it…clever plants.

In addition to my New Years resolution to eat more greens I am trying not to get too deep into the details of the nutritional profile for a given whole food. Basically, the  clearest way to talk about food in this culture is to use the terms and taxonomy of western science (The Chinese Medicine example above is a refreshing alternative, but unfortunately doesn’t translate as easily). But this view of food I think has obscured our understanding of what we eat, rather than expanded it. Michael Pollan dealt with this issue in his In Defense of Food, basing a discussion of the rejection of Nutritionism with a whole book about nutrition.  Ultimately a healthy relationship with real food will come from people not relying on lab work with fruit flies to tell them what feels good in their bodies. It seems that best place for this research is a kitchen counter or a table with loved ones. That all said though, if you are interested in knowing the nutritional profile (and much more) of a given food  I highly recommend this site (though their data on cholesterol is limited, like most healthy food sites). See what my orange and green winter meals are providing us here and here (respectively).

Also new this new year I started taking Cod Liver Oil (fermented actually). This is the only supplement I take and the reason is for the difficulty in finding food sources of vitamin D. From another Mother Earth News piece (about SAD actually):

Eat D-licious foods. Only a few foods contain much vitamin D. Sources of vitamin D include cod liver oil (1,360 IU per tablespoon); oily fish such as salmon, sardines and mackerel (about 350 IU per 3.5 ounces); eggs (about 20 IU per yolk); and fortified milk, soy milk and orange juice (98 IU per 8-ounce serving).

                          

Increasingly we seem to learn that there is mainly only disadvantage in the heavy processing and even the fortifying of foods. The more we learn about what whole foods have to offer, the more we seem to figure out that our refined-then-”enriched” versions are weak or even detrimental in comparison. A recent study of folic acid fortification shows flaws in the thinking that a vitamin is a vitamin is a vitamin no matter what the form or context.

Whole grains and greens are rich in folate, a B vitamin which has shown to be protective against colon cancer and other bowel issues and is just generally important for overall health. Folate deficiencies also cause fetal neural tube defects and thus pregnant women are urged to take a folic acid supplement. Folic acid is the supplement form of folate, and (doctors urging aside) does not impart the same positive results for cancer risk and whole-food derive folate. In fact as a recent NY Times article outlines, folic acid enriched foods may increase cancer risk.

This particular study lucked out with an easy control group (nutritional studies are difficult because control groups are hard to maintain) for folic acid consumption because Norway do not enrich their food with it like we do here in the US (lucky for the researchers and the Norwegians too apparently)

Turns out that folic acid enriched foods, mainly grains and cereals…um eaten particularly by children, increase cancer risk. So…no advantage there at all.

(Careful readers will note that the study of B vitamin consumption was originally aimed at understanding the relationship between B vitamins and heart disease, not cancer. In the previous post, on sick ancient Egyptians, this relationship was brought up as the likely cause of ancient cardio problems as the Egyptian Elite ate refined grains and were deficient in B vitamins that keep in check an amino acid that breaks down cell walls (which cholesterol goes in to fix…) I will not be at all surprised if the findings for b vitamins supplements (versus the stuff in whole foods) fails to show an impact on heart disease, but that will not be a good enough reason to discount the relationship until they look at food in the form it should be eaten. Maybe a start in the right direction to show the relationship to cancer)

Okay, so food in its most whole form provides all the nutrition we need without the fiddling from food scientists. Lesson: Avoid food with health claims and stick to those that have no package at all. That said, there are ways to “enrich” whole foods yourself and that is by pairing them with foods that help your body absorb all the goodness. And yes, this point loops back to the point about good fat and it being important and not causing heart disease.

I recently read author Nina Planck’s Real Food, What to Eat and Why. Of all of the points she made, I think the rundown of the usefulness of good quality whole fats in the diet was the most important. So I am just going to quote her verbatim: You can keep this all in mind with any catchy “holiday health hints” or such that tell you not to eat your turkey skin or eat low-fat dairy.

Eating protein with fat makes nutritional sense, because all food, and protein in particular , requires fat for proper digestion. As we saw with “rabbit starvation, without fat in the diet, digestion fails and you starve, but not for lack of calories. What is true of meat is true of all fat-and-protein pairs. They go together. Consider, for example, two near-perfect foods: eggs and milk. Both foods are a complete nutritional package, designed for a growing organism’s exclusive nutrition, and must contain everything the body needs to assimilate the nutrients they contain. The fats in the egg yolk aid digestion of the protein in the white, and lecithin in the yolk aid metabolism of its cholesterol. The butterfat in milk facilitates protein digestion, and saturated fat in particular is required to absorb the calcium. Calcium, in turn, requires vitamins A and D to be properly assimilated, and they are found only in the butterfat. Finally vitamin A is required for production of bile salts that enable the body to digest protein. Without the butterfat, then, you don’t get the best of the protein, fat-soluble vitamins, or calcium from milk. That’s why I don’t eat, and cannot recommend, egg white omelets and skim milk. They are low-quality, incomplete foods.

In each classic pair, fats help the body assimilate, use, or convert essential nutrient.

Fat and protein
Roast chicken (with the skin)
Eggs (with the yolks)

Fat and vitamins
Vitamins A, D,E and K are fat-soluble, eat them with fat

Fat and Beta-Carotene
Buttered carrots
Collards with fatback
Spinach salad with bacon
Flank steak with arugula
Beef with broccoli

Saturated fat and Omega-3 fats
Fish with butter or cream sauce

Saturated fat and calcium
Whole milk
Yogurt, cheese, and sour cream made from whole milk.

Each new piece of research reminds me that the most we should do with food is grow it in healthy soil, and prepare it in a way that our bodies can best use it. For some things that means raw (like dairy and fruit), eaten cooked or raw with some useful fats (like most veggies and meats), or fermented (particularly cabbage and other meant-to-ferment veggies as well as grains, ie sourdough, and some legumes ie soy)

Here are some particularly delicious whole meals:

                          

I had fun showing off my artisan multi-grain sourdough bread but it took three days of my visit to prepare and was gone in a few hours. Wanting mama and all to have the most nutritious bread I decided to try a more quick and dirty recipe.

I prepared a quart of my starter and then mixed it with about 6 cups of spelt flour, the recipe (from Nourishing Traditions) said to rise from 4 to 12 hours depending on the temperature. I let it go overnight, which was probably too long as it got a bit deflated. I didn’t have loaf pans, so they were kind of batard style loaves. The shap of the slice wasn’t ideal but the flavor was wonderful and went great with the raw cream cheese spread I made.

As soon as I got home I started on another batch. This time I started with spelt berries and ground the flour myself. It sounds like a job for a toiling little red hen, but it’s just an electric gadget and doesn’t take any effort, but yields the freshest flour you can get, ensuring no rancidity. Spelt is a nice grain for home grinding because its gluten level perform like an all-purpose flour, which is actually a mix of soft and hard wheat. So, unless you want to grind two different grains, spelt is a lot simpler.

In my first go at grain grinding I just followed the directions and ground the whole berries on the finest setting, which gave me two distinct layers of flour, a fibery hull and a fine powdering flour. I used it as it came for the bread, which turned out delicious and hearty. After some expert advice, on the next batch I first ground the berries on a coarse setting and then ran it through again on the smallest setting which gave me a much more even flour and more flour per cup of berries (which seems to be about 2.5 c. of flour to 1 c. berries, but it depends on your grind- I am still working out that ratio)

The recipe called for the dough to be soft and easy to work with. To knead Sally says to stretch and fold, a different kneading process that I usually use.

I have now made three batches of the bread and the best results actually came from making the dough in my Kitchen-Aid mixer with the dough hook. The pictures below are from the batch made by hand, and it turns out beautifully, but the mixer does allow a wetter dough since you dont have to add more flour to be able to handle it. This was my fist time making dough with a machine and it left me standing there watching it, sort of wondering what I should do while it worked. It was strange to not be able to feel the dough change. So, I am still a bit conflicted about the thing. I was also hesitant to do sourdoughs in metal, but apparently it makes no difference.

Cooked in a loaf pan, this bread makes a great homemade substitute for sliced sandwich bread. Not the handsomest, but probably the freshest, healthy bread you can get in your mouth.

                          

The best and worst part of the trip was eating. Walking meant we wanted and even deserved more food than ever, yet we had the constraints of what we could carry, what would keep well in packs, could be prepared easily on our one burner and two pans, and what we could afford. On top of that we still wanted to have food that was produced with fairness and health in mind for all involved. Believe me, that narrows it down and we made plenty of compromises.

The best meals were lunches. I think because they were the most nutrient dense. Foods that are ready to eat, which also has a lot to offer your body and tastebuds, are heavier than foods that take some preparation, mainly hydration and heat. Breads, meats, cheeses, snacks. So, we sacrificed some extra weight for really good and quick lunch food. Sardines in a can, a loaf of sourdough bread, a salami, aged jack cheese. Days just coming out of a town meant more fresh foods like avocado or other fruit.

We ate oatmeal every single morning (we opted to forgo soaking, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be possible) . I would be sure to put the raisins or other dried fruit (A Sunkist medley was a particular treat) into the cold water along with sea salt to make sure it was tender and plump. Once the oatmeal was ready I would add a thick pad of cultured butter, raw honey, and sometimes peanut butter for a really dense start to the day. Instead of getting sick of this same meal, it was the one consistency in our life on the trail and I looked forward to it every morning. We would take our time to fill our bellies and drink a cup of tea before starting out.

Walking and sleeping on the ground and spending a month outside connected us to the natural world in a way we hadn’t experienced before. But we still carried civilization and modern life on our backs.  The experience of nature was closer than ever but it was still more of a shelter around us than our true environment. Everything we really needed we brought in from elsewhere. We drank water from the creeks, but always filtered. We picked out good flat spots to sleep, but always with a pad. We ate outside and cooked in the sand, but never ate food from the spot we settled. We had a few breakfasts with picked blackberries, some wild mint tea, snacked on salal berries while walking,  and we could have added wild nettles to our meals, but I was too uncertain.

Trail conversations often covered what we would eat if we hadn’t bought four days worth of food at the last town and hadn’t had full bellies from a roadside diner. Some backpackers who are out for weeks or months will use small game traps to eat fresh wild meat on the trail. I would be up for this approach and I am very excited to learn more about pack goats. Apparently a very pleasing companion, a good pack goat can carry some weight and provide fresh milk! Go out long enough and you could even have some fresh cheese. Willow-Witt Ranch knows all about it, learn more here.

We made do with what we know how to do, which is to buy the best food we can find for the money we have and make something good with it. A stay at Gospel Flat Farm in Bolinas provided us with garlic until we got to Port Orford Oregon and got more garden garlic from friends as well as some carrots for a fancier rice and beans. (Minute Brown Rice was a major winner in our book, not organic, and no Massa, but it met a need)

We had a little burner that used denatured alcohol to make a nice hot flame, but we would use a wood fire as much as we could, or sometimes as necessary when fuel got low. Every evening we would scope out a flat spot to cook, with as little wind as possible and plenty of little surfaces on which to set food and the cooking kit, and of course a rock or log on which to sit. Going up the coast meant a lot of beach camping and keeping stuff our of the sand was a big priority.

The best spots were campsites away from cars and roads that still had a nice set up for easier living, meaning really just a picnic table, and fire pit with a place for pots and a decent composting toilet. With the basics there, life on the trail was an absolute joy.

                          

I haven’t the technology to share the photos yet, especially of our road meals. The night of day two we had a grand meal at a friends farm with fresh caught crab, home made sourdough bread, abundant greens with eggs from roaming chickens. For breakfast we had oats with fresh goats milk. This meal was probably the best we will have on the trip and reminded me how much better food from a home kitchen is. We haven’t even been able to soak oats, although we are still carrying our soaked/dried nuts, so we get some whole foods with some careful preparation. Even our food made on our feather-light alcohol stove is better than what we find in cafes around. Lots of sardines to and almonds dipped in honey!

Time to write and update is limited, and will be more fun with pictures, so hold tight until the last week of July.

Until then happy home-cooking, simple living, and enjoying the power of your feet to get you to beautiful places.

                          

Experimentation is how you learn to cook, but it can also be a frustrating exercise and I wonder if we really need as much variety as the inexhaustible amount of cookbooks would have us believe. Dr. Daphne Miller, who wrote the newest discussion of the benefits of traditional diets (a la Dr. Price but without the examinations), explained in an interview (which I wrote about here) that the best home cooks have about fourteen meals that they really know well. This gives you a different dinner every night for two weeks. That seems like plenty, especially knowing that some of our busy night dinners aren’t more than quesadillas and a salad with lot of late night buttery toast. (In fact, I wonder if I could count this on my fourteen?).

I think we underestimate the versatility of the old-standby. And these stand-bys are of course dependent on the individual cook and what meals interest them enough to make enough times to really make it second nature. According to Dr. Miller many cooks have these fourteen meals (give or take) and adapt them as needed to what they have on hand and what is in season. That is, if one of your favorite things to make requires fresh tomatoes, think about how to use vegetables that are available in other parts of the year. Also, economically, it is good to first think about what you need to use in the fridge before going to the store for the one ingredient you must have to make your intended dish.

So, in some ways keeping with stand-by dishes and making them work on a whim or in every season requires some experimenting. But I think there is a softer learning curve when you already have a sense of what you are doing. Dr. Miller uses this idea of fourteen dishes to encourage new cooks in their attempt to take control of their diet by making their own meals from scratch. With so many ideas out there overwhelming our sense of what we should be able to accomplish in the kitchen, this number seems doable. I think it is also important encouragement not to worry about making the same dish multiple times close together. I used to put off preparing a meal too many times, which is necessary to really get the hang of it, for fear of boring us at the table. But I am over that now, on the grounds of making it better and for saving time not having to learn something new when really I just want to eat!

My number one favorite standby is roasted veggies. Endless combinations, always really delectable.

Current early Spring favorite:

I also am sold on a very special California Brown Rice, Massa Organics (I actually work for them, but I was eating this rice before getting paid to talk about how great it is, and it is perfect). It has become the staple of many dinners.

This rice and beans is simple but by no means bland. These beans are cooked with a bit of fresh lard from the farmer’s market and loaded with spices. The rice is cooked with a homemade chicken stock and lots of cilantro. That is creme fraiche on top with hot sauce and avo.

So here is my current fourteen that are working well

1. Vegetable soup (often with beans, meat, rice and/or noodles)

2. Stir-fry

3. Spaghetti (with sprouted whole grain noodles, homemade noodles)

4. fritatta

5. tacos

6. miso soup (with veggies and an egg)

7. fish (Pan-fried, either battered or not- if not, make a quick sauce from the pan when finished)

8. Roasted Veggies, sauteed veggies

9. Chili (I learned to put yams in mine, and I keep it vegetarian like I learned it from my mom)

10. Pizza (but now I am been conflicted on how to make the dough, best with sprouted flour?)

11. Grown-up salad, with nuts and cheeses and various sauteed things like shallots and mushrooms, all depending on what we have and what sounds good. Always homemade dressing

12. Quick dinner with egg, either on bread, beans, leftover rice, in broth…

13. Sauce on rice; creamy stroganoff, coconut curry

14. Maybe this is the one I leave for a new thing, making time for experimentation and being ready for disappointment OR success!

These are all pretty flexible in terms of what goes in them, making them adaptable, but also consistent enough that I know what I like to have on hand. Someday I hope to be able to make these without too much thought at all, but hopefully always with inspiration and variation.

                          

Everything is totally right about this dinner. It is quick and made of all whole and active ingredients, organic and local. And the flavors are beyond. Beyond.

Pictured above is Taco Night deluxe with a fresh pupusa rather than a simple fresh tortilla. The process was inspired by a Rick Bayless recipe, which at first seemed overwhelmingly complicated, but he has a knack for doing this to what are really simple foods. (And he could use about four times as many paragraph breaks in his descriptions. Just a note. )

The trick to these, for me, is to keep them thick. I use parchment paper and a heavy pot as I don’t have a tortilla maker. It works fine.

I start with fresh masa dough from the farmer’s market. 1 pound of dough for $3. That is a lot of amazing toothy tortillas, it goes a long way. I mix in just a spoonful of lard into the dough.

(Yup, lard. My vegetarian mother cringes. Freshly rendered, also from the farmer’s market. Good whole fats also go a long way and the flavor is mild and it really helps them to get crisp. Read more about this maligned whole fat here. This can certainly be omitted though and they cook just fine. )

At this point you have a perfectly good simple tortilla you can flip off your hand into a hot dry skillet, but the taco night deluxe called for a little extra.

(I don’t have a picture of that middle step, but don’t try to peel the tortilla off at the stage pictured, slide one hand under the paper, flip the whole thing on your other hand and peel the paper off. Then you just flip your hand over above the hot skillet and let go.)

For pupusa, the black beans are spooned onto the pressed dough while it still rests on the parchment paper. Then using the paper to help it fold without sticking to your hand fold the sides into the middle and carefully pull off the paper. Then do the same to the top and bottom. You end up with a masa bean dumpling. With the paper still folded over gently press the dumpling into a thick disk.

This then goes into the pan. I decided to fry them just a bit with additional olive oil. Deluxe remember?

The great thing about this process is that one side cooks in the time it takes to make the next one, then the first is done by the time it is time to put in a new one. So it goes quick.

Toppings can very but the toothy tortilla and rich meat (lots of cumin and chili powder cooked into it) is matched with heaps and heaps of fresh raw slaw. Use any kind of cabbage and other herbs or veggies. Carrots, cilantro or parsley, green onion, lime, are all good. Dress with just salt and pepper, olive oil, and vinegar. We top with creme fraiche (just like sour cream) to get in something active and cultured to help digest the mess.

I thought I had a photo of another taco night with the chicken from making stock (see freezer pictures in post below) but apparently that was eaten too fast to capture. The tortillas on these were topped with this extraordinary sauce sikil p’ak (purchased from the same booth as the masa). Now that was also deluxe.

Taco night has been a weekly affair since the first of the year, all I can say is 2009 thus far has been very good in our kitchen.

                          

I added more to this one- oyster mushrooms fresh from the market and a little meat. Sauteed all the fillings, letting the onions get dark and sweet on their own first, then the mushrooms, chard stems, and the slices of meat (I am being generic, because it was a gift and it is called a “beef stick” and I just don’t know what else to call it)- adding a bit more olive oil at this point- and lastly the rough chopped chard (I actually just turn the pan off and then add the greens so as not to cook them down too much). Then all that goes into six beaten eggs along with salt and pepper and more olive oil (also garlic, but I left it out on this one)

Scrape all the bits into the eggs, mix together and then heat the pan again and add it all. This is the part that is key to me, departing from Alice’s instructions. I just let it set and then when it seems like the bottom is done (like you can lift it with the rubber spatula) but the top is still liquidy I put it under the broiler flame and it gets this beautiful delicate bubbly browned slightly crispy layer that clearly defies description. Many recipes tell you to invert the whole thing onto a plate and then cook the other side. I can’t imagine that being successful, and I also have never seen a picture of one cooked this way so I don’t know that it would look nice or have nearly such a unique and pleasing texture as the top flame method

This technique may not work with electric ovens- I don’t know. When I turn my oven on there is a flame in the broiler section, I put it under a medium flame, not the full broiler heat. I think you can also just put it in the oven close to the top as long as it heats from there. All better choices than this ridiculous flip.