Straight Up Food
Straight Up Food
Chronicle: Albuquerque, New Mexico August 14, 2024
Greetings Chroniclers! Thanks so much for reading today’s post, all about cooking from the heart, using gut instincts.
Harvest season is upon us. Simple is best right now. August can be relentless. I’m trying not to wish the month away, but I can hardly wait for sweater weather. August calls for straightforward meals made with straight up food.
Years ago, 1986 to be exact, I lived in an apartment where there was a small garden bed adjacent to the parking area. It was a sad neglected space in need of some attention. All it took was a few nails to get the wooden edging back into shape and some good topsoil mixed in to bring the garden back to life.
This was when I worked as the chef to the president of Mt Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. I’d be-friended the greenhouse staff, and they kindly gave me three tomato plants and some basil starters. By the end of summer, when August rolled around, I twice weekly dined on pasta tossed with chopped tomatoes and basil, adding in chunks of smoked mozzarella before drizzling the entire concoction with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
This is an example of straight up food.
Straight up food is food you’ve cooked using your gut instincts.
During my visit to Ashland, Oregon last week, I sampled a few goodies at a local bakery. One day, when a late afternoon snack attack struck, I knew just where to go: Mix Bakeshop. In the display case were gem toned macarons, layered strawberry cake, a caramel tart hiding under a pouf of toasted meringue. There was a fudgy brownie the size of my hand, drowning in ganache.
None of these appealed.
I wanted something simple. Something only somewhat sweet, something crunchy, something toothsome.
That’s when I saw the shortbread cookie, perched inside a gleaming glassine bag, a perfect partner to my iced tea.
But I was dissatisfied after the first bite. Not because it was buttery-rich with just the right amount of crunch. But because it was flavored with cinnamon.
Cinnamon?
The label on the glassine bag gave no indication of cinnamon so I was shocked by that first bite tasting more like a Snickerdoodle or a graham cracker than the simplicity of vanilla I expected, no, cravedfrom shortbread.
I was still craving shortbread a week later.
Monday, I broke one of my cardinal summer cooking rules and turned on the oven. It’s hot here in the high desert of Albuquerque. I try to cook on the stovetop as much as possible and if I need an oven for baking it’s the toaster oven or bust. But there was no denying my yearning for shortbread cookies. I turned on the big oven and proceeded to make a batch of shortbread cookies using the recipe from King Arthur Baking.
Here's a photo of the finished product. As you can see, I decorated some of the cookies with melted chocolate chips and sprinkles of chopped, toasted almonds and chopped shortbread crumbs. The wedges are coated in a lime and confectioner sugar mix with flecks of lime zest poking through.
All the flavorings are good and add some visual interest. The lime flavoring seemed to be the favorite of the people I shared them with.
But my favorite iteration is the plain variety, the oh so simple, unadulterated straight up shortbread cookie.
Over the weekend I was invited to a party, a wonderful chance to catch up with old friends and meet a few new people.
I brought a quinoa salad; one I call Kitchen Sink Quinoa. No joke, I threw in anything and everything I thought might add flavor including whole garlic cloves, dried limes, the reserved water from re-hydrating tomatoes, turmeric and toasted whole cumin. Once the quinoa cooked, I added chopped parsley, the chopped dried tomatoes, and tossed the salad with a lime-vinaigrette.
If you’re expecting a recipe here, let me apologize.
There isn’t one.
Often, I cook from the hip using my intuition. Recipes are great, they have their place. But sometimes, I can’t be bothered with quantities and measurements and instructions.
Sometimes, I just want to chop, sear, stir and taste, trusting it will turnout okay in the end.
Usually, the results are more than edible.
Last night, I took the leftover quinoa salad and turned it into quinoa burgers.
Did I improvise? You bet.
I added in some leftover creamy roasted eggplant (see my previous post called Summer and Time), shredded up and tossed in a carrot along with some grated parmesan cheese to help bind the mixture together. Then I shaped them into patties, giving them a sauté in some avocado oil, about 5 minutes per side. I served the quinoa burgers with a bit of mayonnaise flavored with lime zest and grated fresh ginger. Et voilà!
Last week, I also had a craving for bleu cheese dip but wanted to make it at home using more yogurt than mayonnaise. As usual, I didn’t follow a recipe turning instead to the contents of my refrigerator as inspiration. Here’s what I used.
Fortunately, I’d saved the juice from the jarred banana peppers. I added about ¼ cup of this to the yogurt and mayonnaise to get the consistency I wanted along with a smidge of heat. The basil–I added more than what you see on the board–does its job too, offering plenty of herby brightness.
This is what I call straight up food.
Straight up food is food that’s made straight from the heart, born from honoring our tastes and desires.
Thanks Nano B! You’re right…Lorna Doones are excellent with tea. Your grandmother and mine would have gotten along well.
Good alchemy…love that! Thanks for reading 🙏