Oil Strike!

If you have a dry face and hands and more and if lotion is not working for you even with successive applications, try vegetable oil. You do not need a lot. It is initially very oily on your skin, but will be mostly absorbed in 10 to 15 min. Blot with a cloth or paper towel if necessary. One application lasts all day.

I have been using soybean oil. Any oil would work - peanut, olive, safflower, canola etc... you could do the girly thing and flavor it w/ herbs and essences and aromatics.

If you have struggled with dry skin, I think you will like it. Plus it is cheap.

Choke Cherry Juice, Reduced, w/ Wild Game

Harvested the last of the wild rice today. Got some roasting in the oven and choke cherries boiling on the stove.

Googled choke cherries and found wine and jelly recipes, which seemed involved and intricate w/ all kinds of discussion about jelly bags and cheesecloth and pillowcases and muslin and hanging and dripping.

Use a colander and a strainer or " china hat" . If your jelly is not perfectly clear, call it jam. Add sugar to taste.

I added a cup of sugar to a gallon of choke cherries and boiled it about 20 minutes and strained it and intend to use the juice like wine in any sauce or gravy based wild game recipe. It is darker even than Cabernet or Bordeaux and you could use it in any Bordelaise recipe or Coq au Vin, which means w/ venison, beef, chicken or wild fowl.

Why I Would Die and Return as Bacon

Boil your fresh garden green beans till al dente and then saute' them w/ bacon and onions and garlic and red pepper flakes. Add some butter. Good enough to die for. Bacon is so great and so are green beans and onions. Lots of garlic, lots of red pepper.

You will know that you are eating.

Keeping it Simple, Fish, Sweet Corn, Zucchini

You would not think that after 40 yrs of cooking personally and professionally, that I would screw up a meal at home.

Fish, corn on the cobb, zucchini. The corn was the best but not all that good either - boiled it instead of roasting it in its jackets. Over a fire or in the oven. Diminished/diluted when boiled in water.

Zucchini, like summer squash should be fast sauteed w/salt, pepper, garlic and finished w/ parmesan cheese. It should have body. I simmered it slow and it was soft and mushy. I am generally w/ Julia and believe that vegetables like broccoli should be cooked beyond crunch ( carrots, too). Not summer squash or zucchini.

When doing fish - floured and pan fried - and if you are doing a beurre blanc type sauce( reduced wine, herbs and butter), use plain flour, not a highly seasoned variation w/ paprika and cayenne and garlic that you would do as a shore lunch on a camping/fishing trip. Overkill and a muddied flavor. Keep it simple. Do one or the other. Roll the filets in plain white flour, saute in butter, and or olive oil, remove from pan, add wine, reduce, add herbs and cold butter pats. With highly seasoned flour leave it at that, fry it and eat it.

I hate it when I screw up a simple meal.

The Best of Summer

A warm soft evening. Perfect. Finally.

Sunnies dredged in seasoned flour( salt, black pepper, cayenne optional but recommended, granulated garlic, paprika) sauteed in olive oil and/or butter and finished off w/ a pan sauce made by adding white wine( any) to the pan drippings along w/ garlic, parsley, and tarragon. Reduce, add butter pats, swirl, pour over fish.

Serve it with fresh garden broccoli, and summer squash. The perfect end to a perfect summer day.

Garden Days, Finally

Keeping it simple and not screwing up what you've already got is easy when you are dealing w/ fresh garden harvestibles.

Summer squash, for example. They are like a little yellow zucchini and you can treat them the same way.. Slice in 3/8 inch rounds, season w/ salt, pepper and garlic and saute' in olive oil( or any, or butter) a few minutes on med heat, strew w/ parmesan cheese and serve. A great late night snack. Go light on all the seasonings so you can actually taste the delicate flavor of the squash.

Mn Early Garden Gumbo

Sometimes, often, you have to work w/ what you've got, which in this case was great: jalapeno peppers and yellow summer squash from the garden. No tomatoes yet. Sausage, chicken and crappies it was, along w/ onions.

If you have bacon, brown it w/ the onions nice and slow in veg or olive oil, you can add butter too, add peppers, then summer squash, sliced sausage, chicken ( boneless, bitesize) then paprika, lots( 3, 4 tablespoons) - make sure you have enough oil and cook it slow so nothing burns, hum a song, blues, something rythmic, slow, or think of your first girlfriend and how her mouth tasted like sweet corn, add garlic, lots , add enough flour to absorb the oil( a tablespoon or two, cook for two minutes) and a cup and a half of chicken broth or water w/ bouillon cubes or base, add 2 bayleaves, black and red pepper to taste, add crappie filets and simmer a few minutes till chicken and crappies( or any fish) is done.

Serve w/ any kind of rice, your favorite, and rustic or french bread for dunking. Kids can pick out the parts they like. We, of course, like it all. You can use cajun seasoning or Herbs d' Provence if you like.

Minnesota Gumbo

So I get home from work today at the antique shop and I'm thinking of old food. Not really.

I'm asking the kids ( 12 yr old daughter, 8 yr old grandson) what they want for dinner. I look in the freezer. Kielbassa, crappies and a tomato basil marinated chicken from the best little meat market in the world( Thielen's in Pierz), and I say kids what would you like, kielbassa, crappies, or tomato basil marinated chicken and as they are thinking I decide on all three in a gumbo. How about gumbo I say and Nati says yes. It is great when you get to choose all of the possibilities. If multiple choice was like that in school we would all be A students. Which is just one of the reasons I like food.

Gumbo it is, a Mn Gumbo. I'll tell you more about after I cook it and we eat it.

Reincarnated as Food

If I was to die and come back as food I would come back as bacon. I would ask that you cook me slow and lay me down on a bed of toast( New England Brown Bread),garden greens, fresh, and ripe sliced tomatoes w/ a slathering of mayo.

Or if I was cremated to return as paprika, a little smokey and sweet w/ a little heat, the Hungarian kind. Be generous and cook me slow w/ bacon and chicken and onions and garlic.

A Sweet Little Tart

Luscious wild red raspberries have been ripening at the rate of a pint a day for the past wk; congregated on and around an old log and brush pile on these 13 acres of Platte Lake land. The recent rains have no doubt encouraged this profusion of bloom and sweetness. My young black lab/ spitz eats them too, off the low hanging shrubs.

I have eaten them w/ cereal, plain, and with cottage cheese and w/ yoghurt and juices blended in smoothies, and also made a galette of them - a rustic free form open faced tart( pie) w/ the addition of a few domestic blueberries.

Berries and sugar is all you need, plus a pie dough crust, which I experimented with by melting the butter in a microwave, adding it to the flour, salt, sugar dry ingredients along with cold water at the end to get the desired consistency. I am kind of a lazy cook and was looking for an easier way than cutting the butter into the flour. It worked, resulting in a flaky tender crust that had enough body and strength to support a cooled slice eaten by hand. Perfect. I am a pastry lover, and fussy, and it shouldn't be too sweet.

If you asked Mona Lisa Vito( the Marissa Tomei character) in the My Cousin Vinny movie if the pie was luscious and sweet but not too sweet she would say," It wuh."

Single sheet of pie dough:
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup( 1 stick) melted butter
1/2 cup cold(ice) water

Method:
Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl, add melted butter and ice water and stir with wooden spoon just enough so it is all moist - don't over miz - form into a ball, place on waxed paper, place another sheet of waxed paper on top of the dough, flatten somewhat w/ hand, and roll out w/ rolling pin so it is a couple of inches bigger than your pie pan or dish. Remove the top sheet of waxed paper and using the remaining bottom one carefully but in one motion flip the pie dough onto the surface pie pan or cookie sheet or cast iron pan or whatever you are using. Poke holes all over dough w/ a fork, add a pint of berries evenly
distributed over dough, leaving a 2" border of berry free edge, sprinkle a quarter cup sugar over berries, fold dough over berries around the perimeter, dot w/ cold butter pieces according to how much you love butter, sprinkle a little sugar on dough perimeter, and bake in a 400 degree oven for a half hour or until berries are bubbling and the crust is golden .

Eat hot right away w/ ice cream or whipped cream or sour cream, cool and then eat more until it is gone.
Method:

A Slow Change Curried Curve Ball

AWOL for a month - too busy at work - too much cooking.

A wk off, tho; and here I am.

Got some bass, sunnies, northern pike, and walleye in the freezer.

Thawed bass the other night and asked my 12 yr old daughter how we should have it and she suggested curried, which we then did. Its a nice change from the same old shore lunch style.

Curried Platte Lake Bass: 1/2 onion, 1/2 green pepper, 1/2 red pepper - 1/2/ inch chopped
4 fillets bass
cooking oil - 2 - 3 tablespoons
2 tablespoons curry powder
garlic - 2 cloves chopped
crushed red pepper to taste
coconut - 1/4 cup or to taste
milk - 2 cups
flour to thicken - 1 tablespoon

Method:
Saute' onions till translucent on med to med low heat, add peppers and continue cooking till onions are somewhat brown ( carmelized) and peppers are soft, add curry powder and continue cooking, stirring, for a couple of minutes. Low heat is important. You don't want to burn the curry or it will be very bitter. Add a tablespoon or two of flour, stir, add 1 cup of the milk, garlic and crushed red pepper, turn up the heat to med. The sauce will thicken as it heats. If it becomes to thick, keep adding milk until you have the desired consistency. Add coconut.
You may poach the fish filets in the curry sauce, or pan fry them separately. A little bit of chicken base or a bouillon cube will make the sauce richer. Serve w/ rice.

Exotic, simple and delicious.

Bloomsday; The Inner Organs Of Beasts and Fowls

Today is Bloomsday, the16th of June, one day in the life of Dedalus and Bloom

I read that book ( Joyce's Ulysses") as a lad on the lam ( " in headlong flight") in Europe back in '69. I loved it - it was an easier read for me than Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, curiously.

I was there in Pamplona for the "running of the bulls," and all thru Europe. A guy from NY wore my sandals in the run and lived to tell of it, also returned my sandals. Joyce spoke to me on a personal level in his novel, more so than Hemingway.

Bloom in the outhouse ,I could relate to that, and Molly, Wow, I could really relate to that. Dedalus on the beach?, yes.

As far as organs go, grind them up and make them soft and palatable like liverwurst, the poor man's pate', and eat them on a saltine cracker w soft cheese and mustard and onions with a glass of Burgundy or Pinot Noir. Or beer. Organs go great w/ beer.

The Salmon Colored Dawn, Continued

After you grill your Salmon outdoors over a woodfire in your Weber, you can serve it w/ a sauce that I call Norwegian hollandaise, which is simply chopped hard boiled eggs immersed in plenty of melted butter with dill weed. It is comfortable and familiar, rich and delicious.

Grilled zucchini/ and or summer squash and potatoes both w/ olive oil, salt, pepper, and any herb mix will work. Microwave half or quarter cut potatoes till nearly done and finish on the grill. Toss vegetables in oil and herb mix and grill from raw. They cook fast.

The Salmon Colored Dawn

I love food. It has been with me thru thick and thin.

The wind has stopped blowing, and it is time to grill.

There was a movie once where the guy in the insane asylum was asked by his shrink what happened. The guy says the wind done it to me. It was the wind. That's what its like on Mille Lacs sometimes. I was right there on the big lake for 25 years. If any of you wonder what happened, I'm like the guy in that movie. The wind done it to me. The wind plus some other stuff.

If you are going to grill out this summer( duh), do a sauce involving a half jar of orange marmalade( 6 oz), 1 tablespoon Balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 2 tablespoons water, 1 chopped jalapeno pepper, 3 med cloves garlic, minced. Leave the seeds in the pepper. It is sweet and hot like a young lover, and streaked with color like an early morning sky on Platte Lake in May.

Do it on salmon and all the beautiful blond gamebirds like grouse and pheasant, and chicken, plus duck.

Oh, dispense w/ the charcoal and build a real fire w/ real wood. Ash, oak, maple, alder, cherry, apple, all available in this area. Even birch or popple. Popple is delicious is you are a certain kind of mammal w/ big front teeth and a wide flat tail.

It is good enough to eat.

Like tiny round hay bales, but they taste better

As I watch a food network show about egg rolls, I am reminded of the exquisite marriage of fresh julienned vegetables with any or all of the gamebirds or chicken all rolledup like a little old fashioned round hay bales.

Making egg rolls is a little messy and prep intensive, but when it is time to eat, it is time to eat. A half dozen or more sauces - sweet, hot, pungent, salty, fiery, cool and combinations thereof will satisfy everyone.

One of the dipping sauces can be tabasco( to taste) and yellow mustard - just like Chinese hot mustard. Sweet, hot Thai chili sauce is great( sometimes called just sweet chili sauce), hoisiin( chinese BBQ, basically), soy sauce w/ green Japanese horseradish, fish sauce, rice wine vinegar, etc... . They're all great.

You don't need exotic vegetables - celery, cabbage, carrots, onions, mushrooms, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots - any combination you can get or like. If you are good w/ a knife cut them in thin strips or use an attachment from your food processor.

You can get egg roll skins at just about any corner store, these days. Try them. You will be a hit.

Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

I made ice cream utilizing liquid nitrogen tonight. 1 pint whipping(heavy) cream, 1 / 3 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 / 2 cup cut up strawberries 1 liter liquid nitrogen.

Usually it takes hours to make ice cream. Liquid nitrogen, the most common gas in our atmosphere here on earth( 78 % ), is about 400 degrees below zero. You can get a 5 liter bottle at your local welding supply for about 30 bucks. You pour the liquid nitrogen just like you would water into your cream and sugar and vanilla mixture and stir w/ a wooden spoon until it is the consistency of ice cream, while stirring constantly. Do about a cup or less at a time until you achieve the ice cream texture. When the cream was about half thick I added strawberries, and continued stirring and adding more liquid nitrogen until my final desired consistency was achieved. It took about 5 minutes total.

5 minutes for real ice cream w/o any fake ingredients. Read the label of chemicals in ice cream. The nitrogen steams( evaporates ) away as you stir ( like magic in a Guthrie play production of A Christmas Carol when the Ghost of Christmas Past appears). When it stops steaming and if your ice cream is not thick enough, just add more. One of the easiest and fastest recipes that I have ever done.

I like it easy and I like it fast. This was great. And like any recipe, really, you can make it taste the way you like it. Taste the cream, sugar( OR HONEY), and vanilla in your bowl and add to taste as you want. Make it taste the way you like it - you will be the one eating it - it doesn't have to be anyone else's recipe - this is for you, as in all recipes. Use the basic recipe for a guide and go from there. I used cut up strawberries - use whatever fruit you like. Cut them to the size YOU like.

I must find out how they make nitrogen into liquid and how it remains stable and a liquid un that bottle which is not under pressure. Some configuration of mechanics inside the bottle must keep it from contact w/ our air so it remains a liquid. I will research that and let you know.

Terve' tuloa.

The Mn Fish Taco

A taco is a mess to eat, and tortillas are over rated, as are wraps. A wrap is a poor excuse for a sandwich - raw and doughy. An eater friendly Mn fish taco would be a walleye finger in a hot dog bun covered with a finely shredded cole slaw. If a slice of bread was twice the usual size, you could make a sandwich w/ one slice - just wrap it around the filling - fish in this case.

San Diego Taco Town

I just got back from 10 days in San Diego, birthplace of the fish taco, made w/ fresh grilled fish - mahi or wahoo or a local deep fried whitefish, with shredded green and white cabbage, white sauce, and served in a soft flour tortilla w/ salsa on the side. Excellent, though it has been my feeling that unless the cabbage is shredded very finely, it can dominate/overwhelm the texture of the fish.

I prefer a fish taco made w/ romaine lettuce is which leafy but w/ body and crunch. We did them at my restaurant( Headquarters Lodge) w/ blackened walleye.

Grow Your Own

Along with the tomatoes and peppers and others in my expanded garden this yr, I will be including tobacco. Seeds and info are on line. Looks fairly simple, cheap, doable in Mn; drying and curing seems to be somewhat of an art, as does the rolling of a fine cigar, which is what I am interested in doing.

I look forward to finishing off a great meal w/ espresso, chocolate, cognac, and a dandy cigar.

A Cold Beer and an Egg Salad Sandwich

Sunny and 55 degrees or more( today?) gets me thinking of an egg salad sandwich and a cold beer on the porch. It is nice to think of that again. You will want your early chives and/or green onions and just enough jalapeno pepper so that you know that you are eating when you are eating.

Oh, maple sap, in addition to calcium, has potassium and magnesium - just don't know how much, as if we needed and excuse to imbibe one of nature's finest....

Time to plan a garden w/ plenty of tomatoes and peppers of all sorts because they are so good and good for you too, and you can save a lot of money if you simply harvest and freeze them. Freeze jalapenos whole and tomatoes quartered. I will double my production this yr by adding plants( 6-8 tomato)and 10 - 12 pepper, and by locating my garden in a sunnier and hotter location. Tomatoes and peppers love the sun and the heat, as do I.

Maple Sap

People in South Korea believe that drinking maple tree sap will make their bones as strong as the maple tree.It is bottled and sold in that un-reduced form and is a growth industry. According to an article in the NY Times, it has plenty of calcium, and tastes like weak slightly sweetened green tea. I will research that.

With the right marketing, it would probably sell in America, too.

A Perfect Day

I stumbled upon A Perfect Day tv show involving Swedish chef/tv show/cookbook writer Tina Nordstrom. I posted about her last summer. She did a cooking show series on PBS within the last couple of years. The camera loves her and she is a good cook. She cooks outdoors in beautiful regions of Sweden. It is outdoor food at its best.

She did a recipe for a fish soup that included cinnamon, cumin, coriander, garlic, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, sausage, and Baltic Sea perch. Chicken bouillon and a pinch of sugar completes the broth. These non traditional Scandinavian spices may resemble allspice which is commonly used in a Finnish Fish Soup recipe that I have posted previously.

Check out perfectdaytv.com to see Tina and a couple of other chefs do all their cooking outdoors.

Puttin it on the Ritz

Tuna fish on a cracker was the only food on my Oscar menu last night. Mayo, lemon pepper, parsley, basil and horseradish topped w/ half a grape tomato all sittin on the Ritz. Not an award winner, but at least as interesting as the show. Chased w/ a V-8.

It occurs to me that several of the( female) actors would look good on a Ritz, too, or on anything, really.

Smaller is Better

The Mn Dept of Health website is current as of May '08 and lists all species and sizes of Mille Lacs fish as ok for unrestricted consumption. Perhaps the new study's findings will be added at a later date.

To err on the side of safe, eat smaller fish- they are better tasting, anyways.

Experts say the benefits of eating fish outweigh the risks, not to mention the benefits of actually catching fish, not the least of which may be self esteem if you are a Mille Lacs area fisherperson.

As in a current or recent Compass Magazine piece that I did for the Mille Lacs Messenger, I suggest you flour fish and pan fry in olive oil and finish them off w/ fresh herbs and white wine and butter. None better. It is the French way.

Big Fish, Little Fish

As reported in the Startribune and on TV yesterday, fish meals of northern pike and walleye should be limited to one per week because of historical and ongoing mercury contamination.

What about bass and catfish, for example, and other larger fish favorites? Why are they exempt from contamination?

Another question. If these bigger predator fish get contaminated from eating many smaller fish, couldn't we likewise get contaminated by mercury when we eat many smaller fish?

I will do some research and get back to you.

The Hot and the Sweet

The curried sunfish was a yin and yang of sweet and hot. I wrote the previous recipe before cooking it and have made some adjustments.

Use a half chopped onion and a quarter cup oil( olive or veg) and 2 tblsp curry powder; add flaked coconut while simmering at the end.

This would be excellent w/ chicken or pheasant or grouse - in that case you can either precook the birds or brown them as boneless portions in the pan along w/ the onions.

Keeping it Hot

Internet access down for a week or so. It is a pleasure to be back

We're going to heat up the neighborhood today by doing curried sunfish with plenty of garlic and onions and jalapeno peppers. You cook curry powder as you you do paprika to get the full depth of flavor. Gently saute'/carmelize onions in oil, add curry powder and continue to cook on low for about 5 minutes. Paprika is a whole different spice when you cook it this way and so is curry powder. It has completeness of flavor that is deeply satisfying and there is no shortcut to get it. Be generous with curry powder - 3 tablespoons- or to your personal taste.

At this point you traditionally would add cream or coconut milk, but its too cold and also unnecessary . Add enough flour to absorb the oil in your pan( a couple tablespoons), stir and simmer a couple of minutes, then add milk and stir till you have the desired consistency - the thin side of thick in a nice sauce/gravy.

Two ways to cook the fish. Either pan fry crispy( flour, cracker crumbs, etc) and serve on the side with rice and curry sauce, or simmer/poach the fish filets in the curry sauce.

Notes: Add extra cayenne or crushed red pepper to curry sauce for additional heat. Add peppers to onions when the onions are half done, and garlic too. Low heat is required in order that you do not burn the curry powder or onions or garlic.

Cold and Hot

Twenty five below zero this AM and the temperature is to rise today to some twenties above. A 50 degree rise. Wow.

In the meantime try a hot Hunan( I think) style stir fry w/ venison. Onions, mushrooms, water chestnuts and venison sliced thin ( 1 / 8 inch ) w/ plenty of garlic, crushed red pepper, and a couple tablespoons of black bean sauce( I used Kikkoman), all tossed w/ Ramen Noodles.

Do the onions in veg oil first till soft, add mushrooms and water chestnuts, then meat, then a quarter cup of water and bean sauce, garlic and red pepper. Toss w/ prepared noodles. It is rich and spicy and a great counterpoint to the frigid air outside. It heats you up from the inside out.

Well, he ( Childress) got her into the bar, but couldn't get her back into the dining room in the 2nd half( re: metaphor from previous post). He should have let Jackson run.