Keepers of the Flame

A couple of weeks ago, Katherine and I spent an afternoon pasting hexagonal post-it notes on a large conference room wall at her office in San Francisco. On each hexagon (see examples in the photo) we wrote the name of a recipe or a story that has appeared on my blog since the middle of May. It was quite an impressive collection. We sorted the recipes by appetizer, soup, main dish, etc. and the stories by a more complicated system. Our purpose was threefold: to see what I had done in these last nine months, to look for any holes which I might want to fill in the next stretch of time, and to ponder the question of how to turn this blog into cookbook. We didn't get very far on this last issue except to determine that I still want to create a cookbook.

Here are the stats on what’s appeared: 7 appetizers, 4 soups, 23 main dishes, 18 salads, 7 salad dressings, 6 grains/starches, 10 vegetables sides, 5 relishes, 6 desserts, and 8 baked goods. The main dishes broke down as follows: 4 chicken, 1 beef, 3 ground meats, 3 pork, 2 shrimp, 7 vegetarian, and 3 pasta. No fish. So starting today with three nice warming winter soups, I’ll be filling in some of the missing pieces.

But something more important bubbled to the surface that afternoon.
“Keepers” for me has always referred to the fishing term. Keepers are the fish you keep to eat. Everything else gets returned to the pond. The recipes I give you are the ones I love the most. Recipes worth keeping.
But there is another meaning as well.

Those of us who cook regularly, who buy produce and raw meat, who chop and sauté, who dish out steaming bowls of home-made soup are “keepers” of a cooking tradition. Not unlike Ancient Rome’s Vestal Virgins who tended the sacred flame of Vesta, the goddess of hearth and home, and prepared food for rituals necessary for the health and well-being of Rome, we cooks, male and female, moms and dads, standing at our stoves, are keepers of the flame. Sitting with our loved-ones at a table over a home-cooked meal, we too tend to the health and well-being of our friends, our families and ourselves.

In my darkest moments, I worry that we keepers of the hearth may cease to exist. After one or two more generations of families with no one cooking in the kitchen (will houses cease to have kitchens?) and with the food industry doing everything it can to process our food for us and pumping it full of cheap ingredients that make us fat or fatter, what is the future for the home-cooked meal, made from real ingredients that nourish and sustain? Who will teach the next generation how to cook? Who will teach them the difference between a tomato and a potato?

This morning, I watched the TED speech of Jamie Oliver, a celebrated British chef, who won this year’s TED prize ($100,000 and the help of everyone in the TED audience to accomplish his goal) and who, at 34, wants to change how people eat in Great Britain and now here. His acceptance speech is tough, challenging and inspiring. His wish is to form a strong sustainable movement to educate every child about food, to inspire families to cook again, and to empower people everywhere to fight obesity.
We who are the current keepers of the flame need to find a way to join him, to find each other, and to make sure that all the recipes we love, our “keepers,” get passed along to the next generation. Our future depends on it. Are you with me?

Jane's Bacon and Lentil Soup

¾ cup small red lentils
1 bay leaf
4 cups stock or water
10-12 slices thick smoked bacon (10-12 ounces uncooked), cut crosswise into ½-inch pieces
1 small onion, finely diced
1 small carrot, peeled and finely diced
You can add some fennel and some red and yellow pepper, chopped, if you have them on hand
1 garlic clove, minced or pressed
1 can (14 ounces) diced tomatoes
OR
1 large beefsteak tomato or comparable smaller ones, peeled, cored, seeded, saving the juice and adding it to the soup. See instructions below.
½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh mint, plus more for garnish
Salt and pepper to taste
1 green onion, both white and green parts, thinly sliced
Sour cream or crème fraiche, optional

1. In a medium saucepan, stir together the lentils, bay leaf, and stock or water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until the lentils are soft, about 20 minutes. They will change from an orange color to a muddy yellow—do not be alarmed.
2. In a soup pot, cook the bacon pieces over low to medium heat, turn as needed to brown but not crisp. Remove from the pan, leaving the bacon fat. If there is a large amount of bacon fat, you might want to pour some of it into a container to save for another use. Leave 1-2 tablespoons in the pot.
3. Add the onions to the soup pot and sauté over medium heat until tender and starting to brown, about 8-10 minutes.
4. Add the tomatoes, the cooked lentil mixture, ¾ of the bacon (save some for a garnish), the oregano, cumin, and mint and stir until mixed. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the bay leaf. Adjust seasonings to suit you.
5. Ladle into bowls. Garnish each serving with the sliced green onion, bacon and sour cream, if desired.

Great served with lemon cornbread, on October 16, 2009 blog.

To peel a tomato: Drop the tomato into boiling water for 10-15 seconds depending on how ripe it is. Remove, slit the skin and peel it off. Remove the core. Slice in half around the equator. Place a small sieve over a bowl or pitcher. With your finger, remove as many of the seeds as you can into the sieve, allowing the liquid which comes out with them to drain into the bowl. It is, to my mind, precious tomato juice.

4-5 servings
Adapted from Sara Perry’s Everything Tastes Better with Bacon

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

2 tablespoons butter
2 large carrots, peeled, sliced
1 cup chopped yellow onion
1 garlic clove, minced or pressed
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons curry powder
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch of cayenne or smoky hot paprika
1 or 2 butternut squash (2 pounds in all), peeled, seeded and cut into chunks
1 teaspoon salt
5 cups apple juice, preferably organic and unfiltered
1 cup heavy cream or combination of heavy cream and milk
¼ cup chopped cilantro
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the butter in a soup pot over medium-high heat until melted. Add the carrots, onion and garlic; mix well. Sauté for 5 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.
2. Stir in the fresh ginger, curry powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cayenne. Cook for 1 minute.
3. Stir in the squash, salt, and apple juice. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes or until the squash is tender.
4. Process the soup in batches in a food processor or blender until smooth. Return the soup to the pot, adding additional apple juice if needed for desired consistency.
5. Stir in the heavy cream. Cook until heated through, stirring occasionally. Do not let it boil. Add more salt or seasonings if necessary. Ladle into soup bowls. Drizzle with additional cream if desired. Sprinkle with cilantro.
If you want a bit more protein, fry up some bacon or pancetta, cut in ½-inch pieces. Add some to each bowl of soup.

8 servings
Adapted from The Toledo Museum of Art Aides’ Art Fare: A Commemorative Celebration of Art and Food

Cream of Tomato Soup

This may be one of the easiest soups in the world and one of the few places where spaghetti sauce in a jar works beautifully.







1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
1 large onion, minced
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 cup red wine
1 48-ounce jar good-quality, non-meat spaghetti sauce
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, with juices
½ cup finely chopped fresh basil or 2 tablespoons dried
2 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the butter in a soup pot. Add the garlic and onions and sauté until they are golden.
2. Pour in the red wine and simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Add the spaghetti sauce, tomatoes, and half of the fresh or dried basil; simmer very slowly uncovered for 1 hour.
4. Add the half and half and the heavy cream; continue to simmer over low heat for a few more minutes. Do not let the soup boil. Add the dried basil, salt and pepper to taste.
5. Ladle into soup bowls, sprinkle with the fresh basil, and serve immediately.

10 servings
Adapted from Joan Nathan’s The New American Cooking

C-CAP and other parties

February 26

It has been a busy week. Lot's of parties, which doesn't seem normal for a blustery week in late February.

Before I go into detail, though, let's start with the news: A new pastry chef is starting at Aquavit on Monday. Candice Chia, formerly pastry sous chef at Café Boulud, will be executive pastry chef there. And Marcus Jernmark, who last time we heard, was running the kitchen, but hadn’t been promoted yet, is now executive chef.

That’s all according to Aquavit owner Håken Swahn (Marcus Samuelsson’s business partner). He’s the gentleman in the picture at the beginning of his blog entry, standing next to Rita Jammet, a former restaurateur and very proud mother of Nicolas Jammet, partner in the burgeoning Sweetgreen salad and frozen yogurt chain.

I learned all of that on Wednesday at the annual C-CAP benefit. But the week started, as weeks do, on Monday, when D’Artagnan, supplier of foie gras and other goodies, threw a big party at Guastavino to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

I invited my friend Blain Howard, the ultimate combination of video game geek and cool guy. It was interesting to watch him as he talked about video games with Autumn, a friend of Will Blunt of Starchefs.

She asked him what his favorite video game was, and he said Super Mario Bros. 3, and then went into details as to why, and how that was his favorite of old-school games but his favorite new game was Bioshock, which is apparently a really scary one.

And then he really geeked out on all the details and I lost track.

It’s fascinating to see someone who once worked at Abercrombe & Fitch as one of those models/salespeople talk like that. Such poise and confidence while also being so phenomenally dorky. It’s charming.

So we ate ribs and foie gras and cassoulet while drinking wine from Southwestern France and sharing opinions about Caprica.

On Tuesday I went to the launch of Burger King's new batch broiler during lunch and then stayed at work late to finish writing about sourcing obscure ingredients — a story you'll get to enjoy a couple of weeks from now.

Wednesday, as you know, was the always awesome C-CAP fundraiser, which you can read about here (complete with slide show).

The second picture in this blog entry is of John Fraser, executive chef of Dovetail, and Gramercy Tavern pastry chef Nancy Olson. John gave me the scoop on a big, exciting change underway at Dovetail and then asked me not to tell anyone.

So I won’t tell anyone, but be on the look-out for an excellent announcement from John in early March. Second Monday of the month maybe.

Last night was a really fun party at the Astor Center celebrating the 10th anniversary of Gastronomica, where the irrepressible Dave Arnold, director of culinary technology at the International Culinary Center aka The French Culinary Institute, was making cocktails out of local rye whiskey, and also serving up amazing little passion fruit puffs, made by adding a little bit of one of those methylcellulose compounds to passion fruit purée, puffing them up and then freezing them in liquid nitrogen.

Dave said this was an old trick, possibly developed by Sean Brock, but he wasn’t sure, after the gang in molecular gastronomy world realized that things that didn't contain much moisture were easily eaten even right after they'd been frozen with liquid nitrogen.

So he poured liquid nitrogen over the little passion fruit puffs, popped one in his mouth and then blew what looked like smoke out of his nose. Like a dragon.

Of course it was vapor from the liquid nitrogen, but it was awesome.

Pavia Rosati ate her passion fruit puff seductively and elegantly, blowing vapor out of her mouth like she'd just smoked a cigarette and then French-inhaling it again up her nose.

She’s marvelous, that Pavia. She really is.