Manolo’s Food Blog

 In a friendly discussion over dinner with Ceci, Mr. Henry brought up the topic of swine flu.

“H1N1 flu!” she said sharply. “Use the correct terminology.”

The rebuke smarted. Mr. Henry is unaccustomed to being upbraided for political incorrectness especially with regard to his favorite entreé, the noble and virtuous swine, baron of the barnyard. Striving always to use correct terminology as well as correct grammar Mr. Henry would never knowingly insult a pig.

Ceci happens to be U.S. director of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, an organization that has inaugurated a new and useful system for labeling foods as well as supermarkets according to degree of humane treatment.

With a score of 76 points, Whole Foods wins by a mile. At the back of the pack, Wal-Mart gets 10 points. Clearly such labeling is still in its infancy but the effort is worthwhile.

From the site you will learn that “natural” is a weasel word not clearly defined by law or custom, a word often more misleading than helpful.

Oops. There he goes again employing unfair and harmful species stereotypes against benighted weasels forever condemned in the public imagination to notorious roles of thieves and sneaks while they simply try to provide for their weaselly little families. Mr. Henry sincerely regrets the error.

Mr. Henry forgot the livers.

It could happen to anyone. It could even happen to you if you had endured three solid weeks of liquid skies.

In New York it’s been raining forever. Strange never-before-seen varieties of mushrooms are sprouting from tree roots and branches. The baby hawks have frizzy feathers. Liberal-minded New Yorkers have acquired new empathy for Bangladeshi villagers in monsoon season.

Friday afternoon a soggy Mr. Henry’s lumbered into Citarella. Center cut pork chops, sweet potato purée, asparagus under the broiler, and cucumber salad constituted his quick and easy dinner menu. The humidity, however, had sapped his strength. He needed fortification.

For strength nothing beats chicken livers, especially chicken livers Moroccan style.

To rinsed and trimmed livers add salt, black pepper, chopped garlic, a teaspoon or more of cumin, a half teaspoon each of curry powder and hot paprika (cayenne works very well, too), and a couple tablespoons of olive oil.

After the livers have marinated for a good long while, sauté them in their marinade and serve them on toast with lots of chopped cilantro (or parsley). Finish with cold clementines.

Normally Mr. Henry marinates for a few hours, perhaps a day….marinates his livers, that is, not himself. But this time he plainly forgot. Since no one else in the family enjoys this hearty delicacy, no one missed them at table.

On Monday he remembered. What would a weekend bathing in strong spices do to a chicken liver?

It worked miracles – an intensity of flavor never before experienced. Considering the gravity of the moment, he felt it appropriate to open a bottle of Burgundy at lunchtime.

John Updike writes in his final book Endpoint:

                                              Perhaps
we meet our heaven at the start and not
the end of life.

If Updike is remembered only for a single line, this should be the one.

Although Mr. Henry’s rejoinder may not achieve the eloquence of Updike’s iambic pentameter, here goes:

At breakfast you may eat the sweet
you left untouched the night before
and greet the day’s beginning with
the satisfaction knowing that
tomorrow you’ll have more.

The sweet in question this week is Mr. Henry’s favorite dessert from a platter of figs: prunes stewed in red wine with sugar and cinnamon. On yogurt it transports you to a heavenly realm.

The season is early for pit fruit – peaches, plums, nectarines. White peaches in the market aren’t bad but cannot approach the sublime aromas they exude in August.

Citrus in June has faded a bit from the high quality of springtime Indian River fruit, but pineapple remains a dependable choice. Its palate-cleansing acids encourage good digestion leaving the stomach full and the mouth clean.

Breakfast is the one moment of the day when something sweet is genuinely appropriate. Coffee’s bracing bitterness seeks balance in a delicate, sophisticated sweet. Instead of an icky, oily gut bomb like a doughnut or a Danish, reach for plum tart, apple pie, banana bread.

Even the morning mayhem brought to you by The New York Times cannot defeat the genuine thrill of such a breakfast. It’s a transcendent experience – life’s promise in each mouthful. Plus, you have the whole day ahead of you to walk off the calories.

Mr. Henry was short on time and on ingredients. Ocean caught off St. Augustine, cleaned and frozen in skim milk right on the boat, mahi-mahi filets had not yet completely thawed. At 11:15 a.m. Mother Henry was ravenous, asking whether her son was ever going to fix that fish.

When lunch is late, Mother Henry is not at her best.

How do you hurry a mahi-mahi onto the lunch plate? The answer is salt.

Sea salt liberally applied helped the fish thaw. Scouring the fridge for ingredients, Mr. Henry found a bottle of capers, a lemon, and some dried parsley flakes – just sufficient to construct a sauce piccata.

Dredge the salted filet in flour (with black pepper) and sauté to a light brown in a mixture of butter and olive oil. Remove to a serving plate and deglaze your pan with lemon juice, white wine, or both. (Add more butter if you want more sauce.) Add capers and chopped parsley (fresh is preferable), combine briefly and pour over the filets.

From start to finish the whole thing won’t take more than five minutes, so don’t begin until your guests are ready to eat.

The recipe works equally well with filet of veal or breast of chicken. To assure the meat is evenly thin, pound it flat beforehand between plastic wrap.

Capers are a curiosity – immature flower buds cured in brine or vinegar. The best ones are Italian cured only in rock salt. Before using these you should them soak in cold water for a few minutes.

Mr. Henry’s friend Famous Howard lives exclusively on take-out. In his refrigerator there are precious few items, but always a bottle of capers. Howard finds the addition of capers adds immeasurably to the flavor of almost any sandwich.

As a history buff Howard might be excited to learn that capers are mentioned in The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian story from the third millennium B.C.

On a golf course if water is temporary, that is, if the course designer did not place it there as a deliberate hazard, it is called casual. If you hit your ball into it, on your next shot you can get relief, that is, you may pick up your ball and drop it one club length away from the water.

In the whole of Florida, however, there is no relief from casual drinking water. Florida tap water is naturally sulfurous and unnaturally chlorinated. Pick your poison, vacationer.

Water, water every where
And all the boards did shrink
Water, water every where
Nor any drop to drink

Ya’ll know it’s an albatross of a problem.

Although bottled water may not taste sulfurous or chlorinated, it still harbors that plastic aroma, plastic that pollutes landfills. When it’s 87 degrees and 97% humidity outside, however, you’ve simply got to drink plenty of water.

Steer clear of Gatorade, whatever you do. Mr. Henry understands that down here Gatorade has been used in enhanced interrogation techniques – Gatorboarding. Very effective.

Iced tea remains the savior, the universal donor. Try to avoid “sweet tea,” too, for obvious reasons. (Sugar makes you thirstier.) After a few days in the Sunshine State you begin to crave tea with top notes of sulfur and chlorine.

Add a squeeze of lemon for a tart, minerally aftertaste, what connoisseurs of sauvignon blanc affectionately call “cat pee.”

Mr. Henry’s own recipe is to put several tea bags (English breakfast) in a big pitcher filled with water left to steep slowly in the refrigerator. Because the tea develops no bitterness, you need neither milk nor sugar.

Ever since Mr. Henry began working from home, lunch has become his special repast, a delightful and often solitary communion with leftovers and a laptop.

In winter he usually applies heat to whatever he finds resting in the refrigerator but from spring through autumn lunches are eaten cold. Indeed, many foods taste better cold or at room temperature. Italian antipasti served under olive oil aptly illustrate this principle.

Whether eating cauliflower, asparagus, fennel, potatoes, lentils, cucumbers, lettuce, olives or bread, there is one magical preparation that seems to transform each into a fulfilling experience – hummus.

A preparation of ground chick peas with tahini, hummus surely dates to prehistory. In the Middle East both chick peas and sesame were cultivated as early as 10,000 BC.

Did Eve prepare hummus for Adam and the boys? Alas, her recipes don’t survive.

Native to India, cucumbers are mentioned in the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.

Wandering in the desert the Hebrews sent forth lamentations for chick peas and leeks so abundant back in Egypt.

A certain degree of imagination is required to believe that the Garden of Eden was once located in Iraq, yet surely pockets of beauty remain. Have you ever tasted dates from Basra? The salty, sandy soil of southern Iraq yields the most flavorful date.

When you pour a dollop of olive oil on feta cheese does your imagination not stray back to classical Athens, an empire built on the exportation of olive oil?

Mr. Henry eats the food of the ancients. Moreover, when he cooks he usually reaches for an iron skillet probably indistinct from ones forged by the Hittites late in the second millennium BC. Sic transit gloria mundi.

For Mother’s Day brunch Mr. Henry is serving potato latkes with smoked salmon, avocado, tomato, and crème fraîche. (Since guests of all ages will be there, he will not make his more fanciful latkes of Jerusalem artichoke, parsnips and carrot.)

Potato latke

6-8 Yukon gold or russet (Idaho) potatoes, coarsely grated
1 medium white onion, diced
1 or 2 eggs mildly beaten
½ cup bread crumbs
carrots, grated (optional)
splash of half and half (optional)
grated nutmeg (optional)
squeeze of lemon (optional)
salt & pepper

First dice your onion and squeeze a bit of lemon on it, if desired. Add salt. In the few minutes while you grate the potatoes the lemon’s acids will quickly macerate the onion and soften its bite.

Some recipes call for squeezing water from grated potatoes either with a dishtowel or through a strainer. Some even demand you save the starchy white residue at the bottom of the bowl and rejoin it to the mixture. Normally Mr. Henry soaks them in ice water and then rolls them in a dishrag. It’s quick and it works.

Whichever path you decide to take, do it fast. Daylight is burning. People who skipped breakfast to save room for brunch are getting cranky. People who started pouring champagne before the food was served are getting loopy and loud. If the chef wants peace and harmony for mother, he had better get down to business.

Many recipes call for making cute little individual latkes. Instead Mr. Henry makes two big flat crispy ones. Turning a big piece, however, takes some clever sleight of hand. Scrape it free with your spatula, put a plate or another pan on top, turn and hope for the best.

Mix everything together. In an iron skillet with a little vegetable oil fry a thin layer (half your mixture) as brown as you can get it before burning. Place the first latke in a warm oven while you fry the second.

Then build a sandwich with smoked salmon (Scottish, the smokiest), avocado, tomato, and crème fraîche (or sour cream). Slice a pie-shaped portion for each person. An arugula salad on the side, some fresh fruit for dessert, and you’re good for another year of mother love.

And here’s a thought for the day: After brunch, when mother is feeling the champagne and everyone else has gone home, dress her in Roman sandals and snap her photograph seated in a Carlo Mollino chair.

Do you harbor the suspicion that high school mathematics only served to help get you into college? Do you maintain that polynomial equations should be banned as torture under the Geneva Convention?

You may be right, but basic middle-school mathematics remain essential to adult life, particularly the concept of ratio as amplified by Michael Ruhlman.

Baking always seems to be more wizardry than science. While rolling dough you must pay special attention to keep the butter from melting. With confidence only gained by experience, that is, the experience of failure, you must administer timely applications of ice water.

Firm in the belief that all sensuous pursuits require spontaneity, however, whenever Mr. Henry sings, bakes or makes love, he likes to wing it. And since winging it precludes thumbing through cookbooks searching for recipes, he rarely follows directions.

Ruhlman’s Ratio is the new bible for a chef in the heat of passion. No fumbling around for cookbooks. No fluttering the pages. No searching in the dark for your chef’s toque.

Do you judge a book by its cover? For Ratio, the book is the cover, that is, the treatise inside is summarized in the chart illustrated on the cover. Ratio is a Periodic Table of the elements of cooking, especially for custard, crust, dough and sauce.

Mr. Henry’s favorite ratio is phi, the golden ratio first described by Euclid in 300 BC (or very nearly). The angle of the Great Pyramid (Khufu) at Giza conforms precisely to this ratio. Some argue that the Parthenon does, as well.

The golden ratio is 1 to 1.6180339887.  Unique among positive numbers, the ratio of the short part to the long part is the same as the ratio of the long part to the whole. That is, A is to B as B is to A + B. This ratio occurs naturally in the arrangement of branches along stems as well as in the geometry of crystals. Throughout the Renaissance the golden ratio was considered to be the guiding principle of aesthetics.

What does the golden ratio have to do with food? Although Ruhlman fails to pursue this avenue of enquiry, a serious lacuna in his exegesis, fortunately for his readers Mr. Henry can report the surprising answer here:

Bread, the staff of life, man’s essential food, what Charles Issawi called “the only thing worth eating.”

In bread the ratio of water to flour is 3 to 5, close to the golden ratio of 10 to 16, arguably close enough to achieve mathematic and aesthetic harmony. Q.E.D.

On Easter evening Mr. Henry removed a pink package from the refrigerator shelf and slid the dressed rabbit from its plastic cocoon. Still attached to the inner cavity a plump brown liver quivered like a bird’s wing. On either side grape-sized kidneys lay snuggling. Deep behind the forelegs a little white lozenge of sweetbread obscured a surprisingly tiny heart.

Mr. Henry was about to get his Easter treat. Ignoring insults muttered by certain so-called family members devoid of appreciation for organ meats, Mr. Henry cut up the rabbit and fired up the iron skillet.

On the viscera he sprinkled sea salt, herbs de provence, and a generous few tablespoons of olive oil.

First out of the pan came the sweetbread, a nutty, mild, delicate hors d’oeuvre for one. Second came the liver, still pink inside, milder in flavor than chicken liver. Last came the kidneys and heart, their round shapes more resistant to the skillet’s heat. Admittedly their dark, strong flavor dark may not suit everyone’s taste, but Mr. Henry embraces the dark side.

Served on toast each was different, each sublime, the organs comprising a rich and savory feast grand enough to sate the hungriest chef.

Cooking the rabbit itself proved a more exacting challenge because the leg meat is dark but the saddle is white. Like with chicken, white meat cooks much quicker. When baking the rabbit you must take care to remove the white well before the dark is done. Baked in a sauce at 400 degrees the white meat is done in 30-40 minutes, for example, but dark takes a good hour.

The common solution it to braise, but Mr. Henry likes to find the uncommon solution. David Tanis’ A Platter of Figs has a marinade of crème fraiche, mustard, bacon, and garlic with fresh thyme and sage.

It was good, very good, but memories of dinners in the Piemonte kept coming back. Rabbit braised in wine sauce with mushrooms accompanied by a barolo of twenty years vintage will fulfill your every aspiration in life.

Surely rabbit is the finest meat of all. At $6.99/lb. from Vermont Quality Rabbits, it’s remarkably inexpensive, too.

If like Mr. Henry you are partial to classifications, you could divide the world into three culinary groups: sweet-milk people, sour-milk people, and no-milk people.

Western Europeans and their descendants drink fresh milk and eat aged cheeses. Central Asians and Middle Easterners eat yogurt and fresh cheeses. Far Easterners can’t stand milk products of any kind.

Hosting a holiday dinner for native Wisconsinites Kate and Dan, the Henrys decided to surprise these dairy-staters with an exotic sour milk feast the Three Wise Men would enjoy, in case they happen to show up unannounced on the doorstep.

Those unpredictable Magi, they never call ahead. Like the British they come from the East bearing gifts, ever so tasteful and appropros, expecting you to reciprocate in kind.

Lacking confidence in his command of Persian cuisine, and lacking as well access to fresh pomegranate juice, za’atar, and other basic components of Middle Eastern food, Mr. & Mrs. Henry improvised a version of South Asian food that, while very spicy, was not so hot the kids would refuse it.

Interestingly, yogurt plays a central role in almost every dish from dahl to korma to naan, flat bread Mrs. Henry cooked on a hot dry skillet.

Lamb korma became the principal dish and was accompanied by red lentil dahl and aloo gobi, cauliflower in a spicy mix of potatoes, tomatoes, and peas.

For a gentle kid-friendly chutney Mr. Henry quickly stewed three diced mangoes with diced ginger, brown sugar, orange juice, and in lieu of vinegar a little verjuice, a sour grape juice. The result was mouth puckering and palate cleansing.

Then he prepared a simple raita with only four ingredients: cucumber, sheep’s yogurt, mint, and salt. Core the cucumbers and grate them coarsely. Mix with salt and let sit covered in the refrigerator for several hours. After this quick pickling, push out all the salty water and add chopped mint and yogurt, as much as you like. Mr. Henry likes a thick mix, mostly cucumber, less like a sauce than like a salad to lighten the meal and cleanse the palate.

For dessert, there was watermelon, clementines, mint ice cream, and the remainder of the pinot noir.