Domestica, Domestica

I learned to cook by watching TV. Before there was the Food Network (or before I could afford the cable that aired the Food Network), there was Martha. While, yes, Hay, I agree with you that she is THE most boring human on the planet, her show was on at 5:00 pm in 2002. That year I was working at the INN University Ministries - long hours & paid on financial support. It was a tight year. I would come home for a dinner 'break' around 5:00 pm before heading back out for evening activities. I would come home at 5:00, pull up the paper lid on a cup o' noodles, and watch Martha. I couldn't cook & had no desire to try.

I remember I had a head of iceberg lettuce in the fridge. I think that's all I had. Martha was on in the background & I'd come home to find my weekly stock up of Hunt's spaghetti sauce, dried pasta & microwave popcorn had run dry. Damn. Iceberg. I dug through my roommate Emily's hippie food, nothing there I could stomach. Iceberg. Hmm. No dressing. Dressing was $3.50 a bottle, THAT wasn't going to happen. Just then, Martha was dressing a salad. She said (as if speaking to me), "you know, dressing a salad can be very simple. It's just a combination of oil, a tart substance like lemon juice or vinegar, salt & pepper." Uh, what? That's all that was in a $3.50/bottle vinaigrette? Revisiting Em's shelves, I found some olive oil & a little lemon-shaped juice squirter. "2 parts oil to 1 part lemon juice..." Martha instructed. Huh, not that different from mixing I drink, I noted. In two seconds, I made my first salad dressing. That was a big moment in my life - suddenly, I could cook.

That may sounds really stupid, but that's exactly how it happened. When I realized how inexpensively I could reproduce food I ordered in restaurants, I turned my back on cup o' noodles forever.

For the next few years, I learned to cook. When you learn to cook, for a LONG time, your focus is on combining ingredients to create a desired outcome. Once you string together a certain number of successes (and a few huge parties), your focus changes...or at least mine did. As my cooking evolved, my focus left my "outcome" and honed in on my ingredients. After a few years in the kitchen, suddenly what I was USING in my creation matter as much as the creation itself.

In MY cooking, I noticed that it simplified my dishes and it re-set our palates. For example, we were very used to and comfortable with my chili. Fine. When I was shifting to ingredient-centered cooking, I started making chili with dry beans instead of canned beans. Dry beans had a "strange" texture [I hadn't mastered the prep] and "didn't taste as good" [had less sodium!]. But after awhile, our palates were re-set to what a bean is SUPPOSED to taste like. Yeah, like, beans don't naturally come with that brown ooze all around them! It was revolutionary to my cooking.

Thanks to convenience foods & celebrity chefs like Sandra Lee, we have confused what the phrase "homemade" or "from scratch" means. Personally, I still believe a brownie from a brownie mix is homemade. And what does "from scratch" really mean? It's not like I grew the wheat used to make my bread flour. I used a boxed chicken stock instead of one I made...does that mean my soup is "from scratch"? Who knows, and really, who cares. Rather than those phrases, I prefer ingredient-focused cooking. While not catchy, it suggests that when I create something in my kitchen, I've paid as much attention to what goes into my dish as what is created out of it.

The result is a scaled down, simplified menu. Flavor comes from the ingredients (radical, I know...but when you pay for organic chicken, you want it to TASTE like chicken, not like BBQ sauce). To get the MOST flavor out my ingredients, I want to have as much a hand as possible in selecting or creating them. When a recipe calls for something I would normally get out of a can, bottle, tube, canister, packet, jar...I've started to ask myself how I can create that ingredient myself.

I'm about 18 months into this venture & I have to say, it's pretty kick ass. Not only are we WAY down on our sodium & grocery expeditures, but I'm able to experiment with unique flavors (like in Asian food) by making my own version of prepared foods I would have normally bought prepared (like sweet & sour sauce, for example). Man, I love Asian food. I REALLY love making it less intimidating to prepare at home.

It drives me NUTS when celebrity chefs say "this is so easy" or "you'll be surprised how easy this is" or "how easy was that?" (Ina's favorite line). NO, IT'S NOT EASY. That's like Laura showing me the wedding dress she made for herself & saying "Carlee, I don't know why you didn't make your own wedding dress, ITS SO EASY". No. I'm not going to tell you that everything I make is "easy". What I WILL say and what I truly MEAN is that the PRACTICE TIME IS SHORT. While I've been sewing since I was a kid, my skills are about maxed out at curtains. The practice time with sewing is long. The argument I'm making about creating your own ingredient-focused pantry & fridge staples is that you'll only need to try it a couple times before success. The practice time is short.

Long story long, this is what I've been up to these days - stretching my legs in the kitchen, trying to commit some new skills to memory - like bread baking. Talk about intimidation.

In the pictures below, we got a couple stories - the wheat bread on the left & center didn't fill the loaf pan like it was supposed to? Still tasted great. The second loaf of the same recipe (too sad for a picture) didn't rise at all. Why? Many theories on many websites, I have no idea. I boiled the dough enough to get a little rise, baked it anyway. It had the density of a bagel & quickly found it's way to the food processor. Made perfect bread crumbs anyway. The bread on the right is a braided loaf. The picture in the cookbook showed the bread braided about 10 times & about 2 feet long. Uh, mine had 4 little braids & was about 10 inches long. ?? Tasted great. Oven obviously cooks a bit hot. Each loaf cost about 85 cents of organic ingredients. [except, as it turns out, there's not much of a demand for organic dried milk. ha!]

What have I learned in 2 weeks of bread baking? Every recipe is basically the same. Mix, rise, form, rise, bake, get out the butter. Hmm...not as complicated & mysterious as I thought. Easy? No. Practice time? Quick. Four loaves & I'm not looking at the recipe anymore.




Another staple I don't buy anymore - ketchup. For those of you who were Christmas recipients of my first attempt last year, I've finally made it through the 9 million gallons I made last year & attempt #2 tastes much better!

The fun thing about ketchup is that because the flavor of tomatoes varies so greatly, following a recipe is pretty much pointless. Sure, get your basic flavors in there, but ketchup is just a combination of tomatoes, sugar & vinegar. I used Jamie Oliver's ketchup recipe as a starting point. The flavors are easy, it's the technique that makes ketchup, ketchup.

In these first three pictures, you'll see the starting point - sauteed softened veg (mostly onions cause, well, this is MY ketchup), add tomatoes to soften & squish.



Use an immersion blender (or regular blender) to blend everything together. Next, you have to get the skins out of the soupy mixture. Do this by straining it twice, pushing the mixture through the sieve so you get all the yummy juice out.



This bowl is after the first strain, next picture is the second strain back into the pot. Simmer until the ketchup reduces & thickens - probably an hour or so. This is when you flavor the ketchup. Start dumping in your sugar & vinegar - not to forget salt & pepper, basil, oregano, thyme or whatever you or your recipe calls for (sidenote: if you're using fresh herbs, add them before you strain so the big chunks don't end up in your ketchup). Cool, jar. So good.



Like my brother observed last Christmas "uh, how come it's not red?" - depending on your tomatoes, your ketchup may be more orangey. Don't be tempted to add food coloring like commercial ketchup. Instead, add some paprika to redden your ketchup. And don't be tempted to thick the ketchup with flour, just simmer longer to thicken.

This same technique can be used for other tomato-based creations - salsas, marinaras, soups (although, I don't generally strain them - just pulse up & go). Pretty soon you've eliminated a squeeze bottle, a jar & a can from your grocery cart. And, they taste more like tomatoes & less like partially hydrogenated anything or red 5.

Thanks for reading my food ramblings. I need to go - Jamie's just said "I'm going to show you something that no English chef has the balls to do" - I love Jamie. And cable. I believe it has something to do with potatoes & balsamic. Sometimes his Englishness terrifies me.