Chronomatics

Julia Child on diversions and variations on the adage of the watched pot.

Timing: Tripe is far from being a fast-food operation. It needs soaking, and simmering, and the long slow cooking — 5 to 7 hours or more, depending on your recipe — in which it gradually absorbs the flavours of the wine, onions, spices, and any other ingredients you have put with it, and all the while it is developing a marvelously savoury taste. I don't know why people shy away from a 3-hour dough rise, a 5-hour simmer, or a 12-hour oven session. You are not sitting there, eyes glued to the pot. No! You are out at the movies, or you are writing your novel, or you are playing tennis, and you return to your tripe when its time is due. This is, really, the easiest kind of cooking, where, once you've put it all together, it does the rest of the work for you.

From Julia Child's Kitchen

And so for day 2308
08.04.2013

Stick Stock Stuck

Tick. Tock. Tuck.

Autocorrect can lead to some nice surprises:

I saw an interesting recipe for soup: take Brussel sprouts and lightly fry with onion and garlic, add turmeric and curry powder. Add stick and let cook. Puree. Seems delicious.

A friend sent this which prompted me to ask if he was suggesting the addition of cinnamon (as in stick of) to the soup. Turns out that "stock" was intended. You could still add cinnamon to the soup. I'm sure it would be tasty.

And so for day 2307
07.04.2013

Coach and Coax

In the acknowledgements to Moosewood Restaurant New Classics one finds a remark applicable not only to the whole enterprise of writing cookbooks...

Like anchors, Arnold and Elise Goodman, our agents, coach us and coax us, encourage us and challenge us, laugh with us and eat with us, and never let us down.

... but also to cooking in general.

And so for day 2301
01.04.2013

Taking Stock of Making Stock

Mijoter: Faire cuire ou bouillir lentement.

Recipe

I'm the one working the kitchen, making stock
from chicken wing tips I'd saved in the freezer,
some bouillon cubes, the picked-over carcass

of last Sunday's dinner. A gallon of spring water

[...]

I'm the one simmering, steaming, ladling soup

over wild rice in your finest kiln-fired crockery,
Chef de Cuisine of intense flavour, of this oh so
nice homemade & homely midday decadence.

John Hoppenthaler
Anticipate the Coming Reservoir

Mijoter: Mûrir, préparer avec réflexion et discrétion (une affaire, un mauvais coup, une plaisanterie).

And so for day 2146
28.10.2012