These lamb shanks look delicious! Unfortunately, they are not my shanks . . . (photo by Jennifer via Wikimedia Commons)

So, the stressful, senseless holiday season had finally given way to calm, cool, January. OK, maybe calm, cool, overabundant in its snow production January — but a good month nonetheless to tackle a braise. The day of the Pats – Jets play-off game seemed a perfect day to let something sit in the oven for hours — I could have the braise braise while I watched the late-afternoon Sunday game and then enjoy a leisurely if somewhat late dinner since neither Gary nor I had to work the following day (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).

A perfect plan, but what should I braise? Meat? Fish? Chicken? Or did I want to make a stew? Beef, lamb, or pork made the most sense at the time if I wanted to stretch the cooking time to at least three hours — the usual length of a pro football game. Short ribs were an option — the short ribs in cherry sauce we made in our Moist Heat Cooking class were great, especially the sauce. Hm. Pork was out because I made a pork roast just two weeks before and I wanted to attempt something totally different.

I wanted to give The Art of Simple Food another try, and wavered between Alice Waters’s Long-Cooked Lamb Shoulder and her Braised Lamb Shanks. The headnote of the shoulder recipe mentioned that “You might have to ask your butcher for a whole, bone-in roast,” which led me to believe the correct cut was not all that easy to come by, so I opted for the shank recipe. After all, as this headnote declared, “The shank is the best part of the lamb to braise.” Well, there you go! I would braise me some lamb shanks.

Saturday morning I eagerly walked up to the Whole Foods meat counter, hoping to find a pile of lamb shanks from which I or the meat counter guy could choose the best four. Panic quickly set in when I noticed that the lamb section was rather small and did not have any signs that said “lamb shanks.” Meat Counter Guy approached me.

“What can I get for you?”

“I’m looking for lamb shanks.”

Meat Counter Guy shook his head. “Sorry, we’re all out.”

“Hm. What would you recommend as a substitute?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not familiar with lamb.”

I gave him a cheerful “OK, thank you,” but I was starting to get upset. Not only could Meat Counter Guy not help me choose a lamb-shank substitute (given the price of Whole Foods’s meats I had expected knowledgeable meat counter guys), I could not remember the cut of lamb required by the other Waters recipe. What really irked me was that I myself was as useless as Meat Counter Guy in selecting an alternative meat or cut.

My mood quickly became grim and cranky, not knowing what to do next. “Don’t worry about it,” Gary said, “you don’t need it until tomorrow — we can try someplace else this afternoon.”

Later that day we visited The Meat House. A place called The Meat House must have a great selection of meat, right? I was excited about my new lamb-shank prospects. I went straight the the counter and asked Meat Counter Guy 2 for four lamb shanks.

“Sorry, we’re all out of those. You really need to call ahead for those. And even then they’re going to be frozen or previously frozen, which may or may not be what you’re expecting. You didn’t need those this weekend, did you?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow. Thanks, anyway.”

I regrouped with Gary and we decided to can the lamb and go with short ribs. I went back to the meat counter and asked Meat Counter Gal for short ribs.

“Sorry. We’re all out.”

“OK, thanks.” I said, making a mental note to never come to The Meat House again.

As a last resort, Gary and I tried Johnnie’s Foodmaster. It’s our last resort for anything because though it’s a bare-bones kind of supermarket, it sometimes surprises us by having items we cannot find at our local Stop & Shop, such as tomato juice and frozen okra.  (Believe it or not, tomato juice was nonexistent at Stop & Shop save for some V8; Johnnie’s offered at least three brands of it.)

Needless to say, we found barely any fresh lamb at Johnnie’s. Of short ribs, they had just shy of two pounds—I was seeking three pounds—and one of the packages had a slit that exposed the meat. (I might have taken the risk with the slit package if they had the three pounds I needed.)

Not lamb shanks. Not short ribs. Pot roast.

OK. So. No lamb. No short ribs. Let’s go with a big hunk o’ beef. Neither of us had committed to memory which cuts of beef are best for each mode of cooking (braise, grill, roast, etc.), so we were at the mercy of the labels slapped on each package of meat. I zeroed in on a package of pot roast because the cooking instructions on the price label were “Simmer in a covered pan in a small amount of liquid for 2–3 hours.”  Sounded like a braise to me!

Somewhat disturbing, however, was a second label on the package, a quaint blue circle also offering cooking instructions:

POT ROAST (Cooking in liquid)
1. Brown meat on all sides in heavy kettle.
2. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Cover with liquid, cover kettle, cook below boiling point until tender.
4. Add vegetables just long enough before serving to be cooked.

The price label specifies a “small amount of liquid,” the round label tells me to cover the meat with liquid. As I did with my query on whether or not to make my own pumpkin purée (see earlier post), I’d let Alice Waters break the tie.

In the meantime, I had to quickly decide what I’d need for the pot roast without a “real” recipe to reference. I grabbed a bag of baby potatoes and headed toward the check-out lines.

Fortunately, there was a Beef Pot Roast recipe in The Art of Simple Food. And to break the suspense, I’ll note that Waters tells me to add to my meat and aromatics (carrots, onion, celery, garlic) “enough water to come almost to the top of the meat.” A semi-tie breaker.

Though Waters’s pot roast recipe would have me cooking carrots and potatoes separately to be added to the pot roast towards the end of cooking, after the aromatics have been strained out, I decided to just roast the cute li’l baby potatoes and serve them as a side, and forgo the carrots. Why? I had already opted to serve sautéed chard with the meal when I thought I’d be serving shanks, so I already had chard in the fridge. In fact, I had planned on trying yet another Simple Food recipe, Wilted Chard with Onions.

Green chard: Big, bold, and beautiful

Finally, I had a menu:

• Pot roast with salsa verde (the salsa verde also a Simple Food recipe)
• Wilted chard with onion
• Roasted baby potatoes

Despite a planned serving time of 7:30 p.m., I found myself in the kitchen by 10 a.m. to start prepping dinner (and, granted, the day’s lunch as well), in theory so that I could somehow enjoy the game AND have dinner ready to serve shortly thereafter.

But I had no idea I’d be in the kitchen most of the day. Dinner-related tasks included, in semi-chronological order:

• Salt and season roast, return to fridge and remove one hour before cooking
• Prepare aromatics for roast (onion, carrots, celery, garlic, bouquet garni)
• Sear all sides of roast, which had six sides, two of which were relatively small, requiring me to stand and hold the roast while searing each side 7–10 minutes
• Cook roast
• Prepare salsa verde (chop parsley, garlic, and capers and mix with grated zest of lemon, salt, pepper and olive oil)
• Dice 1 onion
• Pull leaves from two bunches of chard, cut into wide ribbons
• Trim ends from chard ribs and cut into thin slices
• Rinse and drain chard parts, put all chard dish ingredients in fridge until needed
• Cook up chards with onions
• Prepare potatoes (scrub, then halve or quarter depending on size), toss in olive oil and seasonings
• Roast potatoes

Thank goodness I hadn’t planned to make a dessert!

I should have known better than to assume anything about the day would be leisurely, though it was fun to work with a “new” cut of beef and the gorgeous chard leaves.

Chard leaves are royalty compared to, say, lowly iceberg lettuce. I stopped for a moment to admire — then photograph — an enormous, hardy, forest-green chard leaf before ripping it apart.

The braise that never was: pot roast with salsa verde, wilted chard with onions, roasted potatoes

Many hours and an extremely disappointing football game later, an evening meal emerged. Here’s a summary of my thoughts and observations:

• The meat was a little dry but tasty. Should I have cooked it longer? Taken it off the heat sooner? Admittedly, I had repressed the knowledge that the meat may not be done exactly when Alice Waters says it should be. But I rushed to serve it nonetheless, since the potatoes and chard were done and waiting to be served. I could have attempted to keep the side dishes warm, but it was getting late and I was getting lazy.
• Was the cut of meat (bottom round roast) the same what is is used for corned beef? The texture was exactly the same as corned beef, which was distracting because all I could think of was how I’d love some corned beef ‘n cabbage real soon. It was also odd to have the texture of corned beef without the pink color and excess marbling.
• The salsa verde seemed oilier than necessary, even though I had already used more chopped parsley and less olive oil than the recipe prescribed. Still, it was a fresh, colorful accompaniment for the long-cooked grayish meat.
• The chard was yummy but I wished there were a lot more of it. As do most cooked greens, it wilted away into near-nothingness. I had doubled the recipe that was to yield four servings, yet the what-should-be-eight-servings-of-chard, when finished, looked like it would barely serve three. I also think much less oil would have been just fine; the greens and onions seemed over-lubricated.
• The roasted potatoes were good, if slightly undercooked.

The next morning (MLK day), Gary and I went to Roche Bros. to gather up the week’s provisions. Gary beckoned me to the refrigerated meats section and pointed at an ample pile of lamb shanks. My first reaction was to grab four for later use, but I soon came to my senses and just made a mental note of their abundance. (Shanks, but no shanks!)

Lesson learned. Next time, I’ll go to the supermarket or meat mart with a list of braiseable cuts, choose the most attractive option from what’s available, THEN build an entrée and meal around it.

Though I thoroughly savored my culinary exploits in the year 2010, I look forward to more learning, cooking, and enjoying in 2011. Here are some of my anticipated achievements:

1. Declare at least six weeks “no-recipe” weeks.

Or use only recipes of my own devise or adaptation. Attempting familiar foods or recipes from memory is allowed.

2. Use fennel, winter greens, and other newly discovered fabulous vegetables more often.

Fennel is an extremely versatile and vibrant vegetable that’s great in salads, braises, and even lasagna! I’m sure I can devise a fennel casserole of sorts. Same with winter greens such as kale and swiss chard — they offer assertive flavors and textures that hold up well in soups, sautés, and baked dishes.

3. Continue to make homemade chicken stock, and add veal and fish stocks to my stock repertoire.

Alas, this will be challenging with limited freezer space . . .

4. Make at least one home meal of fresh mussels.

I must go beyond frozen shrimp and scallops! Fresh lobster? Er, maybe in 2012.

5. Carve or cut whole poultry into parts with confidence.

I estimate at least a dozen more chickens will be badly butchered before I can do this with finesse.

6. Buy a “real” chef’s coat or apron.

I’m in the kitchen more than ever now . . . I need proper coverage!

7. Try at least five new restaurants.

New to me, that is. Plain or fancy. Pricey or cheap. At least two new cuisines or variations of familiar cuisines.

8. If in a pricey or quality restaurant and something is not OK, don’t tell the waiter that everything’s fabulous.

If a simple roasted chicken is throat-clogging dry, someone in the kitchen should know about it. And if the black beans that caught my interest in the entrée description turn out to be barely a garnish, I want someone to know I am not happy about it.

9. Make several voluptuous cakes or fancy pastries and enjoy these experiences to the max, without one shred of guilt.

Génoises? Tortes? Dacquoises? I cannot decide; maybe I’ll make them all! But I shall start with éclairs and my own white-on-white birthday cake. With frosting flowers! Yum!

10. Keep counting those Weight Watchers points!

Ah! There’s the rub!

Photo credits: “Fennel” by Rolf Krahl, “Mussels @ Trouville Fish Market” by Claude Coro-Farchi, “salle2″ by efaucon, “Chocolate Torte at Nino’s Tuscany in NYC” by Ralph Daily.

Blue Ribbon Barbecue, Arlington, MA

Blue Ribbon Barbecue
908 Massachusetts Avenue
Arlington, Massachusetts
(781) 648-7427

I’ve generally been unenthused by Fourth-of-July festivities or culinary fare. The advent of the day often depresses me because it’s the day I realize one-third of the summer is already gone, in many cases wasted away with missed opportunities to soak in sun or enjoy the longer days. And fireworks — a series of short-lived, superficial bursts of color—just aren’t intriguing enough for me to endure crazed, screaming, or drunken crowds. Aimee Mann touched on similar sentiments in her song “4th of July”:

Today’s the fourth of July
another June has gone by
And when they light up our town I just think
what a waste of gunpowder and sky

—from “Whatever,” 1993, The Imago Recording Company

Food-wise, for much of my teenage and young-adult life Independence Day meant a paternally imposed and catered under-the-back-porch cookout. The event was attended by my sister Bea and me and sometimes the family cat, with my mom “joining” us from the family room, just beyond the backdoor screen. Also present were the ol’ gnarly picnic table — which took up half the makeshift patio under the porch, the underside of which was laced with spider webs and other nests of nature (the locale was dark, dusty, and grimy, but definitely shady!) — charcoal-grilled hot dogs and burgers, buns, rolls, cole slaw and potato salad from DeMoulas/Market Basket, assorted beverages, and the ubiquitous squeeze bottle of Plochman’s yellow mustard. To thwart insectile attempts to join the feast, exposed food received additional shade in the form of a screen-food-dome-thingy most likely purchased from a Walter Drake or Lillian Vernon catalog. There was usually a fly swatter close by.

After I moved out of my parent’s abode, I was an independent Independence-Day reveler and diner, making a point of avoiding all July-Fourth-themed fetes and fare, until I met my then husband-to-be, who had his own Fourth-of-July ritual: lounging in a comfy beach chair on his North Cambridge seventh-floor Boston-facing balcony, peering at distant Esplanade and other local fireworks, and sucking on Redbones “Barbecue Belt” Ribs. And now our Independence Days revolve around this tradition, though with the balcony and fireworks now out of the equation for over three years (he often calls me “the girl who took his balcony away” after we started shacking up together in a new apartment), the focus is decidedly on the barbecued food. In early June we start counting down the weeks, then the days, then the hours, to this drippy, sticky, smoky, celebratory treat, replete with pulled pork, ribs, baked beans, collard greens, cornbread (the fake sweet and cakey kind), black-eyed corn, and whatever traditional or unexpected side the local BBQ joint offers.

That local joint is now Blue Ribbon Barbecue, just thirty minutes round-trip on foot. (The ritual of walking for your BBQ is akin to singing for your supper; we feel more like we’ve earned our Southern-influenced chow after strolling softly towards it.) I was first introduced to Blue Ribbon by a good friend who was wowed by the chow at the Ribbon’s Newton location and suggested we do Blue Ribbon takeout when she visited Arlington one day. Gary was familiar with the goods from patronizing their kiosk in the River-Street Cambridge Whole Foods.

Rarely are we disappointed by Blue Ribbon offerings; we often get Blue Ribbon takeout when we want to celebrate something, be it a birthday, a job offer, or the long-overdue market listing of an old condo. Below we comment on this year’s Great Independence Day Pig Out. Actually, if we insist on takeout from Blue Ribbon, it’s the Day-Before-Independence-Day Pig Out since they’re closed every year on July Fourth. (If they saw the crowd Redbones pulled in each Fourth of July, maybe they’d reconsider.)

Inside the Blue Ribbon

You can order many of Blue Ribbon’s barbecued meats as platters, though most are available in bulk and a few can be made into sandwiches. We usually order platters, which come with cornbread and a choice of two sides. Just this year I noticed the menu listed a Big Green Salad (just like on Seinfeld!), maybe I’ll consider this healthier alternative next time.

I alternate between the Barbecued Half Chicken Platter and the Pulled Chicken. This year, the Pulled Chicken. Though the chicken was dry and hard to swallow in spots, these tough spots were clearly the white-meat pieces; darker-meat pieces were melt-in-your-mouth tender. With a condiment-container-full of their sweet barbecue sauce mixed into half the heap, it’s quite the satisfying half-heap. The coleslaw was clean-tasting with a hint of celery seed (real or imagined), and wasn’t dripping with mayo because I transferred the slaw to a plate with a fork. As nice as the coleslaw tasted, I found it much more exciting when I combined each forkful with a bit of the saucy chicken. The baked beans were smooth with a nice molasses finish — a novelty to me since I’m used to my baked beans in a spicy or tomato-based sauce. The cornbread was dry but sweet, a great barbecue-sauce sopper-upper.

Gary got the Trio Platter, for which he chose North Carolina Pulled Pork, Kansas City Burnt Ends, and Memphis Ribs. The pulled pork had a nice smoky flavor and was not too tough. The ends were very moist, though the flavor from the sauce came through before the flavor of the meat. He liked that the ribs were not too saucy, had nice smoke rings, and their meat fell off the bone easily, but at least one of them was fattier than he would have liked. The greens had a “definite collard greeniness,” though he “didn’t get a whole lot of flavor” from the dirty rice. His take on the cornbread was the opposite of mine: “moist but not very tasty.” Go figure.

The platters from Blue Ribbon are so generous that both of us could eat just a little more than half and still have complete meals leftover (see the plated half-platters, below). These half-platters can be filling or downright gut-busting, but remain our Independence Day fare of choice.

Blue Ribbon BBQ platters and plated half-platters: Top Left: Trio Combo (with North Carolina Pulled Pork, Kansas City Burnt Ends, and Memphis Ribs), with sides of Collard Greens and Dirty Rice. Top Right: Pulled Chicken with sides of Baked Beans and Cole Slaw

So, it’s almost two months into my stop-eating-crap objective so it’s time for some pause and reflection.

The most noteworthy omissions from my daily diet are far from the most beloved. Through January and February, I had no SlimFast bars, frozen dinners, canned soups, store-bought bread, diet soda (except for one instance where no other low-cal beverage was available), 100-cal packs of anything, reconstituted hot chocolate, or fat-free half-and-half.

With these and other omissions came substitutions, trade-offs, and new habits. For example:

• Breakfast. With SlimFast and Kashi Crunch out of the picture, weekday breakfasts, which I eat at work, have been challenging. Mostly, I’ve been eating steel-cut oatmeal or 10-grain hot cereal prepared at home, scooped by the cupful into Rubbermaid containers, and nuked for about 2 minutes in the work microwave. Sugar, fresh or dried fruit, and maybe some chopped nuts are added at various points in this operation. Outside of hot oatmeal, there’s homemade muffins and breads, and the occasional bakery scone. If I were able to prepare and eat breakfasts at home, smoothies and omelets would rule the morning.
• Bread. Oh, how I miss the convenience of commercially manufactured bread and breadstuffs. My Pepperidge Farm Whole Wheat Swirl Bread! Kasanoff’s Marble Rye! Sahara Whole Wheat Pitas! Actually, I only miss the prepared pita, since a hummus lunch (yes, comercially processed hummus — more on that later) isn’t the same without it. This weekend will be my first try at making my own pita, but I’ve already had success with baking my own breads, muffins, and rolls.
• Beverages. Fat-free half-and-half out of my coffee; whole milk or low-fat milk in. Diet soda has been replaced with either water—tap where available and potable, else bottled—or hot or iced tea.

Anyway, throughout my two-month acclimation towards a non-crap diet, I found myself grouping potential edibles into five categories—five new food groups, if you will:

The five new food groups (according to No-Whining Dining)

Let me say from the get-go that many of these categories will overlap, as you will soon see . . .

• 1. Fresh or minimally processed. These foods may have seen the inside of a fridge, freezer, or oven, or the top of a counter or stove. They might have been whirred in a blender or rolled by a sushi chef. But they’ve never seen the inside of a food factory or industrialized kitchen. Most of what I eat these days is from this category. Examples of fresh or minimally processed foods: fresh fruit, roasted chicken, homebaked goodies, oatmeal, fish chowder.
• 2. Processed. Processed generally means manufactured by unknown people in unknown places by unknown means with unknown or suspect ingredients. But there are those foods that are prepared commercially but are still relatively wholesome or don’t contain strange ingredients or chemicals. Hummus is one of those foods. If I can get straightforward hummus (Cedar’s, Joseph’s, etc.) at the supermarket, why bother making my own, especially if I’ve already revved up my in-kitchen food-prep time? Other examples of processed foods that I will eat: dried fruit, certain yogurts, certain cheeses, some shredded wheat cereals.
• 3. Packaged. Just because it’s in a package doesn’t mean it’s totally evil. Sometimes you’ve just gotta meander into the center of that super. Examples of packaged foods that I will buy: canned tuna or salmon, canned tomatoes, rice, frozen vegetables, some ice creams.
• 4. Total crap. Self-explanatory, but I’ll list some examples anyway: most breakfast cereals, junk food, frozen dinners, Cool Whip, diet soda, snack bars.
• 5. I don’t care, I’m eating it anyway. I am not giving up frosted cake or chocolate truffles, be they from the supermarket, bakery, candy shop, or home kitchen. Just ain’t happenin’.

Spicy Crispy Kale Chips from nutritiontokitchen.com

I ate a lot of kale this week, having purchased one bunch too many of the vivacious veggie at Whole Foods. What a spunky, curly green leaf bursting with personality! The leaves come across as bitter at first, but they can mellow with cooking, and shrink when prepared in liquid, without losing their characteristic curliness in the process.

Curly kale is just one variety of kale, of course. And kale is just one of many winter greens I desire to explore, in part inspired by the Eating Well article that included the recipe for Monday night’s meal of Kale, Sausage, & Lentil Skillet Supper. The Supper was wholesome, earthy, and satisfying, though I think a wee more spice or spark would have made it more interesting. And I added all the French lentils I had — about one and a quarter cup — which yielded an overwhelming amount of lentils. The recipe made more than four servings for sure.

OK, back to that leftover bale of kale (a baby bale?). A google search led me to Nutrition to Kitchen’s intriguing Spicy Crispy Kale recipe. Though I had decided to make this irresistible recipe on Superbowl Sunday so I can munch on something healthy while watching the Colts trample the Saints, I had nothing on tonight’s agenda so I figured I’d give it a go along with another skillet supper — this time with chicken sausage, Yukon gold potatoes, and frozen mixed vegetables.

The chips were fabulous. It’s amazing how they can enter the oven confident, firm, and flexible but emerge vulnerable, brittle, and crispy. Great crunch, great taste. Gary thought it would make a great garnish for a soup or casserole. I agreed. I will definitely be making these again.

My minestrone soup of yore

Several weeks ago my cabbagephobic husband broke his cabbage taboo and fixed a vegetable and sausage soup. The deliciousness of the sausage would outweigh any ick or stink of the cabbage, so his reasoning went. Another unusual (for us) addition to this concoction: tomato juice. The combination of tomato-based broth and mildly crunchy cabbage reminded me of a minestrone soup I used to enjoy many years ago.

This minestrone, as I remember it, had tender red kidney beans and soft but assertive elbow macaronis. The recipe, which I just dug up, called for frozen mixed vegetables, beef bouillon cubes, and a lot of celery as well; but the memorable aspects were the cabbage, tomato, and macaroni. I had made a mental note to fix this memorable minestrone sometime soon. Then I forgot about it again . . .

. . . until I started looking for a suitable use for a large amount of curly endive leftover from an overzealous greens purchase I made in pursuit of my first salad ala Alice Waters. The salad consisted only of red leaf lettuce and curly endive, the endive being totally edible and nicely bitter, but a little tough. “I feel like a ruminant,” declared my husband between chews. I conceded that this hearty green might be more easily eaten cooked, so I searched the Web for ideas and found a minestrone soup recipe on the Eating Well site. Aha! I can dig up my old minestrone soup recipe and add the endive to that!

But wait! There’s more! Let me see if The Art of Simple Food has a minestrone recipe. If it does, I’ll make that instead!

Alice Waters describes minestrone as “a big soup of many vegetables” that is “a deeply satisfying meal in itself.” I was a little concerned that her base recipe included no liquid other than olive oil or water or bean-cooking water (no tomato sauce? no chicken broth? no other canned offering?). Would the vegetables and a sane amount of salt be enough to create a satisfying supper? I set out to find out.

Waters’s base recipe calls for dried cannellini or borlotti beans to be cooked separately, then chopped onion and carrots to be cooked in hot olive oil. After these base vegetables are cooked, chopped garlic cloves, sprigs of thyme, bay leaf, and salt are added. After that cooks for five minutes, add water to boiling, then add diced leek and cut green beans. Cook that for five minutes, then add zucchini and tomatoes. Cook that for 15 minutes, add bean cooking liquid (and the drained beans, I assume) and chopped spinach. Cook five minutes, adjusting seasoning and thickness (add more bean cooking liquid if necessary). Once in serving bowls, garnish with olive oil and grated Parmesan cheese.

As usual, I didn’t read the recipe too closely before committing myself to this for a weeknight meal. Luckily I started chopping veggies the (weekend) day before, but there was a lot of chopping left to do two hours before dinnertime. After making substitutions and misreading what ideally replaces what when applying seasonal variations, here’s what finally went into my version:

1 cup dried red kidney beans
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
5 thyme sprigs
2 bay leaves
4-6 teaspoons salt
3 cups water
1 small leek, diced
1 medium zucchini, diced
1/2 pound Yukon gold potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 Roma tomatoes, skinned, seeded, and chopped
1 head curly endive, chopped
1/2 small head cabbage, chopped
2 pounds spinach, chopped
4-5 cups bean cooking liquid
Parmesan cheese, as garnish

I chose red kidney beans not because they were the beans in my memorable minestrone, but because I could not find dried cannellini or borlotti at my local Shaw’s. (I did buy backup canned beans just in case; historically I don’t have the best of luck with soaking and cooking legumes other than lentils.) The extra tomatoes (Waters called for two) do stem from my old recipe — minestrone soup must be red, right? I already explained the endive. Zucchini was going to be replaced by turnips, but I decided I drew the line at trying to cut up turnips as the umpteenth vegetable. I left out the originally required green beans because all they had at the super were two-pound packages; I needed just a half pound and generally don’t like buying prepackaged green beans anyway.

Let the insanity begin! After two hours of chopping (one hour with husband’s help), I think I was ready to begin. Here’s the pre-soup tableau; you can click on the image to see an enlargement.

Longer story short, the cooking, from heating olive oil to scooping into soup bowls, took a little over an hour. Apparently my vegetable-to-liquid ratio was too high–by the time I added the spinach, that “soup” was hard to stir! I had to all all the bean cooking liquid, about 5 or 6 cups total. If I had used canned beans, I’m not sure what I would have added.

The result: absolute perfection! Fresh. Mellow. Melded. LOADED with fabulous vegetables. I ate a huge bowlful and loved every minute of it. Spinach was the most assertive flavor, which was fine by me. Caught without a crunchy accompaniment, I had sliced a whole-wheat kaiser roll into slices lengthwise, toasted them to a crisp, and served them with rosemary butter (adaptation of Waters’s herb butter).

Minestrone. It's day two, so the spinach is darker (still tastes fab, though!)

I had leftovers for lunch and supper the next day. Here’s a second-day photo. Unfortunately, the attractive spring green of the freshly cooked spinach had given way to a less tantalizing darker, blacker tone, but I wanted to show you the texture of the soup. (Again, you can click on the photo to see an enlargement.) I was tickled to discover that the soup I once believed only existed in a red broth was a melody of beautiful greens; it sort of reminded me of pesto. I look forward to making this again in all of its variations. Including the elbow macaroni.

A simple fix: Wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper

For the actual recipe, scroll down to the bottom of the post.

Just days after denouncing all dietary crap, I found myself in a little late-night quandary. While hastily preparing a portable lunch for the next day, I realized I had no crapless salad dressing on tap. In the home fridge we had Kraft Lite Ranch and Newman’s Own Light Lime Vinaigrette, the latter of which would have been good enough by my new standards but I really wanted to try to throw a dressing together before my quickly approaching bedtime. I’d just need a little guidance. Let me check a few cookbooks . . .

Hm. Fresh Tomato Vinaigrette or Blue Cheese Dressing from Healthy in a Hurry? Nope. No tomatoes on hand; no blue cheese to speak of. Okay, how about Apple Basil Dressing or maybe Orange Tarragon from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites? Intriguing, but no basil and no tarragon. And I had no creamy cucumbers, no minted dill, no lemon tahini, no fresh buttermilk, nor any ingredient these seemingly basic dressings required. I was too stubborn to Google “viniagrette” — why did none of my cookbooks have a simple vinaigrette recipe?

Finally — on page 649 of The New Doubleday Cookbook — a recipe for French Dressing (Vinaigrette). After the confusing mental image of bright-orange bottled dressing passed, I was part relieved, part shocked, to see the headnote and ingredients:

Called vinaigrette in France, French dressing is simply three to four parts olive oil to one part vinegar, seasoned with salt and pepper. . . ¼ cup red or white wine vinegar, ¼ teaspoon salt, ⅛ teaspoon white pepper, ¾ cup olive oil

That’s a lot of oil. I know “real-world” salad dressing can have a lot of oil but this proportion of oil to vinegar seemed too extreme for my taste. I don’t want my greens swimming in oil any more than I want them coated with corn syrup.

But I never ended up testing this ratio; turns out I had a salad dressing bottle that had ingredients and amounts of various “healthy” dressings listed on its side: after all my searching for recipes, I followed their French Vinaigrette instructions:

2 oz. Olive Oil, 4 oz. Rice Wine Vinegar, 2 Tbsp. Mixed Parsley [??], 2 tsp. Dijon Mustard, 1 tsp. Minced Garlic, 1 tsp. Sugar, Pinch of Salt & Pepper

This concoction didn’t taste grand straight from the bottle, but it tasted good enough on the salad.

What I didn’t know at the time was the first recipe offered up in The Art of Simple Food was indeed Vinaigrette. (This book was sitting on the coffee table, not the cookbook shelf, when I consulted the shelf for recipes. This weekend, however, I was poised, primed, and ready to prepare vinaigrette to Ms. Waters’s ingredients, which were more or less in the same proportions as those in The New Doubleday Cookbook, except that her instructions went beyond measuring and mixing ingredients, explaining how to taste the salt’s influence on the vinegar, then at the end ending more oil or vinegar until everything seems balanced. Right at the end, she instructs, “Taste as you go and stop when it tastes right.”

I might have taken this taste-as-you-go directive too literally; after tasting salt and wine vinegar together, I added just one part oil, not three or four. I tasted. Already the mixture seemed too oily for me. So I added another part vinegar; resulting in a ratio of 2 vinegar to 1 oil. I tasted again. I really liked it. Smooth with a nice acidic kick and peppery bite. I tried this version on my greens (the first time I ever used endive!) and it added zestiness without overpowering the airy freshness of the leaves. Even with a store-brand wine vinegar and a moderately priced olive oil, it tasted right.

A Quick, Light Vinaigrette

I like using red wine vinegar, but white wine or rice wine vinegar may be used. This basic recipe can spawn dozens if not hundreds of variations. Makes about 6 tablespoons.

2 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt
Fresh-ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Press the garlic clove into a small bowl or liquid measuring cup. Add vinegar and salt; whisk to blend. Taste; adjust. Whisk in pepper, then oil. Taste; adjust.

Per tablespoon: About 43 calories (40 from fat), 5 grams fat (1g saturated*, 0g trans), 0 mg cholesterol, 195 mg sodium, 0g carbohydrates.
* Analysis was done using a generic vegetable oil category.

Oatmeal Corn Meal Bread, from The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones

While composing the opening paragraph for a post about my favorite cookbooks I realized I had only two cookbooks that I really really loved, at least in my current collection, plus a handful of hardy go-to books, the recipes and advice of which result in many a speedy or satisfying meal, but don’t possess the material or artistry or style to bring them from 4-star (like it a lot) to 5-star (love it!) status.

The two books I own that I will happily curl up with to read and eagerly anticipate what recipe I shall try next are The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones and White Chocolate by Janice Wald Henderson. It’s not just that I love kneading and shaping and baking and eating bread, or am delighted by the ivoryness, creaminess, and subtlety of white chocolate, but that these are the only two cookbooks I own about foods that I adore and through which I allow myself an occasional flight of fancy.

The Book of Bread, by Judith and Evan Jones

My current cookbook detachment probably stems from most of my choices having been heavily screened by my brain, not my gut or my tastebuds. As a lifelong waist watcher having subscribed to various trendy or tried-and-true truisms about health and weight control, I’ve stocked my shelves with titles such as Secrets of Fat-Free Cooking, High-Flavor, Low-Fat Vegetarian Cooking, The Tofu Cookbook, and Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish. Of these four examples, I’ve kept only the Ornish book, thanks to the recipes for Jean-Marc’s oven “fries”, and pumpkin bread, which I liked and made constantly.

As a kid, I went from Betty Crocker’s New Boys and Girls Cook Book straight to Betty Crocker’s Low-Calorie Cookbook. As an adult, I’ve rejected dozens of fine cookbooks and hundreds of potentially worthwhile recipes simply because they did not offer nutritional information — the calorie, fat, or fiber counts that have until recentely deemed a book “respectable” or a recipe “doable” in my eyes.

White Chocolate by Janice Wald Henderson

That ends now.

I want cookbook freedom — to read cookbooks and test recipes regardless of the absence or presence of a handful of dietary statistics. Can I do this and still count Weight Watchers points? Of course — the vital statistics (cals, fat, fiber) can be found using NutritionData.com or the points calculated directly through Weight Watchers’s online tools, and serving sizes can always be adjusted to be sensible, if not always satisfying. Opening up the vast world of cookbook cuisine need not mean expanding the waistline . . . at least I hope not. I want to seek out a few new cookbooks based on my favorite foods—be they cookies, cod, or Camembert—and simply appreciate them for what they will be — indulgences, perhaps, but also the honest acceptance of the fact that though I joyfully embrace fresh leafy salads, simply roasted chicken, and refreshing glasses of clear, cold water with lemon, there’s more out there to experience and enjoy and life’s to short to feel guilty about it all.