Stodge Spelt and Tummy Comfort

Spelt

Constantly being bombarded with food messages about $6 burgers with enough calories to carry you into tomorrow night or that light fatless stir fry that will carry you through the next 30 minutes I might tend to go for the burger. Alas Stodge is diabetic and I try to temper my need for carbos in a manner that will keep the sugar down and the feelings of tummy comfort high. I have mentioned my love of beans and all things corn like enchiladas, tacos and tostadas. Wheat is another story altogether. Pasta is lovely but too much too often brings me down as does a good crusty bread. White rice is like white sugar and must also be tempered.  

With these parameters and a desire for adventure in a satisfying meal I always survey the grain bins at the local wholesome organic market affectionately referred to as Hippy-Dip.  That’s Hippy-Dip with the high end olives Niçoise and $6 heirloom tomatoes. There I find short grained japanese brown rice that carmelizes nicely at the bottom of the pan, quinoa that leaves couscous in the dust, barley that soakes up beef or chicken stock like fatty tapioca, and spelt.

Spelt is a wheat purported to be an ancient hybrid of to middle eastern wheats. The babylonians and egyptians grew it and it is regaining its popularity. I love it.

Hippy-Dip’s instructions are to boil it like rice for an hour. BOR-Ring!

Okay, so why do I love it. Maybe it’s mexican ingenuity or maybe its culinary know how but my instinct was to do this with its large kernels.

I rinsed it. I drained it. I dried and toasted it in a large dry very hot cast iron skillet. Then I toasted it with oil and then simmered it in water with some chicken stock for one hour. Yum!

This pot served me well three days. As a side dish, with stir fry, with beans and as a stand-in in a fried rice style dish. Spelt has a wonderful nutty texture and flavor without seeming like chicken feed and took on all the flavors I threw at it without losing its substance. It is used in baking breads or making vegan patties but I haven’t baked bread since college and vegan patties are not stodge. Spelt is just fine as spelt if you just toast it to bring out its nurturing and comforting properties of taste, texture and aroma. I think the technique I used is called pilaf but regardless it makes a pleasant change from rice and a far tastier choice then millet.

I want to serve it to a friend who shies away from any thing new. I am going to add crumbled bacon to  it.

Stodge for the Great Depression

pinto beans

A couple of weeks ago I had a houseguest. He is an affable guy who needed a place to land until the check came in. He also laughs at my jokes. Being one check away from hobodom is something I know about so we arranged his use of my air mattress. Now my pecuniary lifestyle does not currently include a lot of wining and dining but it does involve having plenty of beans in the larder.

Like any strapping Tex-Mex lad I grew up with pinto beans as a daily staple. Potatoes were a distance second if I include tortillas and rice. “Ay, I have to put the beans on” was a phrase that was just part of the ambient noise in my house. Thanksgiving was traditionally american with roast turkey, cornbread stuffing, green beans, potatoes and refried beans. At christmas refried beans lend themselves as a side to ham quite nicely.

So when I learned my friend was staying I sussed out the fridge and put on the beans. The first day beans were served as a soup and my guest reminisced on how when I first met him I gave him a recipe for chipotle baby lima bean soup for his late bistro. Five days later he anxiously anticipated the tardy check. He wanted to go out to dinner. 

Though pasta and other dishes were served I prepared my daily beans (often with bacon fat). My friend coincidently timed his visit to a focused bean regime. Two weeks before I sunk into a case of the blues. The signs were apparent; I stayed in, avoided phone calls and chores. I focused on meals, the menus, the trip to the grocer, the prep and consumption. I did this three times a day and napped in between. Pasta appeared more then once that week. I indulged the blues for a day or two but by the end of the week I was anxious. My exhibit opened that weekend and my motivation was not kicking in sufficiently. 

I am not sure when the moment of enlightenment struck but I realized I did not eat one bean in over a week.

Forty-eight hours later I was fine though tired after the opening where thanks to a great business partner and a couple of friends everything was under control and I could shmooze and deal. I ate my frijoles that day.

Beans are my stodge. Not bread, not mac and cheese, not taters, but the protein rich carbo of my peoples. I know this but steered off the mexican health plan by eating pasta 3 days in a row and falling into what is for me a trap. When I am not thinking clearly, feeling myself or just in need of some fiber I am hardwired to need beans. Frijoles in soups, in tacos, with eggs, on tostadas, in salads, with pork, beef, chicken and fish. Even pasta fazul. Some even call me cosmopolitan for going beyond the pinto and cooking black beans, navy beans, red beans and garbanzos. New Year’s Day requires black-eyed peas with that christmas ham bone. My caldo gallego is a stodge lovers ambrosia of small navy beans, potatoes, kale and a side of crusty bread. Pea soup with ham as well as curry powdered lentils and sausage complete my love of legumes. Sorry pigeon peas.

I am well in the pink now, or perhaps more ochre. The resolution is noted. To avoid depression and be happy, chipper, randy and maybe a little flatulent I require my regular side of beans and a doctor prescribed shot of testosterone. The latter being the randy part.

Stodge Brings Home the Bacon

I just saw the story on ABC news about the Bacontreprenuers and how they want to make every guy’s dream come true and have everything taste of bacon and salt. My blood pressure is up just thinking about it.

Like any American kid I grew up with the smell of bacon. If anything could get me out of bed on a Sunday morning after a late night of horror and monster movies it was the smell of bacon frying. To this day I have a thick pottery cup on the stove to save those sizzling hot drippings and add that smoked bacon and salt flavor to my eggs, refried beans, pan fried potatoes, and anything else. Recently one of the burger giants had an ad with two girls at a club. One apparently brought bacon burritos hidden in her purse to attract guys with its smell. It did. 

Bacon’s artery plugging cholesterol do not keep me from crumbing it up and putting it on my Huevos Rancheros or placing whole strips on potato taquitos. Heating up salsa in a skillet with bacon fat makes corn chip dipping sublime. I know Jews and have met Muslims that succumb to its treyfous temptation.

The Bacontreprenuers also have bacon mayo, bacon salt, bacon lip balm, but alas none have actual bacon in them. They even have plans for bacon soap and beer. Should I dip my finger in the bacon fat cup and rub it behind my ears? Will I get lucky? Will I get trampled in the crush?

Excuse me while I go out and buy a pound of bacon.

Pineapple Salsa at the Family Fish Fry

Pineapple salsa over fried catfish

April in Texas is my favorite time to visit the family. Besides being around my birthday and Easter the weather is still generally mild and I always have the chance of experiencing a big ol’ thunder and lighting storm.

It also means lots of good eatin’ at my sister’s home and that of my niece and nephew’s homes. Yesterday being Good Friday we were obliged to eschew meat. That meant firing up the outdoor burner for a big pot of sizzling hot oil full of fillets of breaded catfish and red snapper. It was with the knowledge of the fish fry that I knew just what to do with a pineapple that smelled oh so sweet when I plucked it from a pile at the supermarket. At $1.99 each the bargain was not to be missed.

Now I have never made pineapple salsa but with intimate knowledge of chilies, salsa and pico de gallo how hard could it be? To be safe I called my buddy from Guanajuato, Mexico to consult with over the recipe formulating in my head.

1 medium pineapple diced
1/2 red onion diced
1-3 red hot chilies of your choice, toasted and finely diced.
2 small sweet red peppers or 1/2 small red bell pepper toasted and finely diced
1 small handful cilantro, chopped
Juice of one lime
dash of salt
a shot of orange juice (optional)

He agreed that my idea was sound with the suggestion of:

1 small handful mint, chopped

Pineapple Salsa is easy to make but since I wanted to use red chiles the only ones I saw were small thai chilies. I am aware of their potency and still managed to have one burst on the griddle. Ten minutes after the toxic cloud of capsaicin subsided and our throats and sinuses calmed down I continued with assembling the salsa. I only used one of the thai chilies and 3 red cherry-shaped ones that are mildly hot with a good pimento taste. My sister had bought the latter.

I did add orange juice but a little too much. It and the mint overpowered the pineapple. Next time I will use less mint and maybe skip the orange juice and try a touch of orange zest. Everyone loved it as an excellent companion to the fish and was complimented by my brother-in-law who asked for the recipe. He plans to use it for his fish tacos. 

The salsa was mildly hot. Enough so for my nephew’s wife to say it had quite a kick. Of course if I had made it exclusively for myself I would have used all 5 thai chilies and have that kick knock you down.

Tomorrow they are predicting thunder and lighting for Easter. I wonder if there is any of that salsa leftover for the Easter Ham.

An Evening with Chuck Roast

Pot roast for a stay home night.

When I saw Chuck Roast on sale last week I took my sharpie and circled the ad. It had been a while since I had made a pot roast and I was ready for this event. The next day I was at the IGA looking over the roasts and found a nice piece with nice marbling and size. The ritual of a roast is one I have been performing since college in Austin and it brings back countless memories of homey meals on chilly evenings. For a man into stodge a pot roast with plenty of potatoes, carrots and rich gravy to be slopped up with a nice gutsy bread is a meal to be eaten with the olfactory as well as the palate. Celery, bell pepper, onions, bay leaves, and spices enrich the dish.
The beauty of a pot roast is leftovers. What guy doesn’t want pot roast two days in a row? I don’t want to know him.

The Urban Crock Pot

 

Black Bean Mexican Soup

Recently one of my Facebook chums mused that he was offically a suburbanite now that he had a new crockpot. I commented that my crock pot was over 20 years old and has served me well in the City.

 

In these hard times when comfort food is a simple pleasure and “Slow Food” is in vogue the crock pot is naturally an excellent choice. For the guy that needs his stodge a crock pot is a handy device indeed. However one does not just throw ingredients into the pot willy nilly and voila! find himself with the perfect beef stew.

What I have learned is that a proper meal such as beef stew benefits from the extra time one takes with browning the meat and sauteing the onions and aromatics. Called the sofrito in spanish and mirepoix in french the ingredients vary by culture and region. A holy trinity by taste, but that is a story for another entry.

This browning and sauteing is done on the stove and for me in a cast iron skillet. These seasoned bits and pieces are added to the crock pot including any rouxes made in said skillet. Finally water, stock or wine is added to the skillet to deglaze it and make sure every bit of flavor completes your simmered meal.

Every meal doesn’t require such devotion however. A simple and plain pot of beans is just that but even beans need a little knowledge and that is to pour boiling water into the crock pot of washed beans. No soaking required. 

I have come home to the aroma of a long simmered meal when I took that extra time to put on the crock and coming home half crocked to a crock makes for a much more pleasant next morning.

Stodge on the Go! De Lessio

On a chilly day in ol’ S.F. a nice warm filling meal is usually on the agenda. Today I had a mid-afternoon meeting and I thought. Why not? It’s a block away from my meeting and I have not been there in a while. I was rewarded. De Lessio is a caterer/bakery on Market Street that expanded to a cafe with salad & hot food bars. Today I stodged up good. Mac & cheese, sweet potatoes, carrots, and chicken enchiladas with a little braised red cabbage on the side.

 

Hot Food Bar with Mac & Cheese

Needless to say I had to use restraint to skip the roast chicken, meat loaf, broc and the whole salad bar of about 20 offerings. De Lessio is promoting their well prepared food these days as coming from the best local food sources, mostly in Marin County. These growers are often organic or free range type farms, ranches and dairies. I have always liked De Lessio but today seemed especially delicious. Their chicken enchiladas were not smothered in goopy cheese but well spiced to beat half the Mexican restaurants in town. The mac and cheese was done to make any american proud. I just wish I could get by on about half the food I pile on the plate. You pay by the pound there and stodge ain’t light fare. 

 

Numerous people were there for late lunch and many were using ToGo cartons. As he often does the owner came by  to check if everything was okay. I complimented the enchiladas. Mom would too.

If I remember correctly De Lessio also makes a good Cubana sandwich and the beautiful desserts are a whole 12 page article of praise in the Sunday New York Times. 

I have a meeting near there again in two weeks. I’ll make a note to breakfast lightly and have lunch at De Lessio.

Introducing Stodge and the cauliflower

Cauliflower

When I have time I like to check out the features on the DVD after watching the movie which is what I did after watching Bend it like Beckham. Aloo Gobi was what the feature was about. The director, Gurinder Chadha is a large brown indian woman with a mole on her cheek. I swear she looks like a one of my relatives with a thick east london accent.

What Gurinder did was go to a friend’s restaurant a in London and film her preparing a family recipe for Aloo Gobi. Aloo Gobi is stodge with a curry twist. Potatoes, cauliflower, onions, garlic, chilis and every spice you can find down at the Bombay grocer down Valencia Street.

The show is a treat because Gurinder looks like she can be just as at home behind the wheel of an 18 wheeler as she is behind a camera. Meanwhile her mom and auntie, in full sari, are sitting on a prep table kibbitzing on what she is doing, mostly not to their proper liking.  In the end they approve of the dish and Gurinder’s womanhood remains righteous.

The trick is to apparently begin by sauteing the onion crescents until they are creamy golden. When you hear Mom and Auntie say creamy golden several times in their accents you know its important. It was cold and rainy in San Francisco the other night and its called for a good stodge. I had a cauliflower in the fridge a a couple of taters so this was the night.

I always start by getting those onions creamy golden in oil, if I remember I add butter and I am sure no self respecting indian would not do it in anything but ghee. Then I brown the thickish potato slices after removing the onions, ten minutes later I add the garlic, all the indian spices in my arsenal along with curry from Bombay Grocer and the cauliflower chunks. I use my largest cast iron skillet. brown things a bit more, add the onions, chicken broth and or water, cover and steam until the cauliflower is to your liking. I served it with rice. I also had some cold roast chicken from the Mi Tierra Market and my bowl of jalapeños from the can. I have been eating it every night since. I’ll take cauliflower over broc anytime. BTW, I salt lightly  whenever I add something new to the pot or skillet.

There are many recipes online for aloo gobi it you want  more detail. Some are elaborate others not so much. 

Aloo Gobi is great with yougurt or sour cream.