Itadakimasu

Itadakimasu is the Japanese way of saying grace before a meal. A way of thanking everyone who contributed in the preparation of that food, from the people who grew the food to the people who made the meal. I've long thought before every meal we should take the time to remember and acknowledge where and how our food comes to us. To thank the plants and animals for giving their life to sustain ours. It seems to me in thanking just a god, you lose our immediate connection to the physical world around us. In a world of cubicles and boxes, where physical contact is more accidental and brutal than kind or purposeful, it seems more important than ever to remember our interdependence, that it can be a beautiful thing. Itadakimasu is a nice, simple way of saying all that.

Cooking Without Money

I was delighted to find out that there's an Italian dish called "potatoes with escaped lamb" (patati con agnello scappato). The dish contains no lamb, thus the "escaped lamb"! I got all this in Amanda Hesser's NYT article "1971: Mrs. Sebastiani's Malfatti". "Mrs. Sebastiani's" features an Italian peasant dish made with bread, spinach and Parmesan. Hesser explains, "It’s a more direct descendent of the cucina povera from which the dish originates, when cooks would make a meal of bread and what few ingredients they had."

Hesser's article reminded me that I wanted to blog about cooking on the cheap. At the moment, there's a real worry about "recession obesity", the fear that with less money available for fresh fruits and vegetables, people will eat a diet of Spam and empty carbs, thus becoming even more obese than they already are. The thing is, in many parts of the world, the poor eat nutritionally, and oftentimes, well. It's just that in the US and Britain, people have forgotten how to cook well on a budget (they also don't know how to cook). And they've forgotten about cheap vegetables like kale, cheap cuts of meat like pork legs, and complex carbs like beans. I frequently advise people to buy a good Italian cook book because so many of Italy's great dishes are based on cucina povera. I don't know of any cuisine that makes beans taste so good. And the recipes are so simple that you don't really need to know anything more than how to boil water. And if you can't get filled up on pasta e fagioli (pasta and bean soup), you need to see a doctor.

For a simple pasta e fagioli recipe, click here. The recipe is from Epicurious and directed at Americans so all the ingredients are easy to find.

One last thing, most Italian recipes will call for expensive Parmesan (and don't use the thing in the can because that is not Parmesan). I can't afford Parmesan. So I'll buy a small piece of Pecorino or Piave. Also, for cooking, most Italians use the cheaper Grana Padano, saving Parmesan for grating on top of dishes right before serving. I've heard that Grana is creamier and that's why it's preferred for cooking.

Squirrel Cuisine

We have a lot of nasty tempered squirrels around the house and I'm always kidding my husband by saying that he should go out and shoot a bunch for dinner.* Well, I guess I wasn't the only one thinking this because now there's a whole industry in Britain revolving around wild squirrel meat. Yes, nouveau squirrel cuisine has arrived.

I think I should begin with a little history lesson. This one is called The Battle of the Red and the Grey. Once upon a time in Merry Old England, the cute little Red Squirrels lived very happily in the cozy countryside, nibbling nuts and playing alongside the Hobbits and the elves. And then one dark day, an evil armada of North American Grey Squirrels arrived, devastating the landscape. The invading squirrels were big and nasty; the invasion was swift. Poor little Red Squirrels.

But all was not lost. Hearing the cries of the little Red Squirrels, the Gamekeepers of the Nation rose and began shooting the hell out of the nasty Grey Squirrels. Now, Gamekeepers are a thrifty lot. They don't like anything to go to waste. So what did they do with the piles of dead Grey Squirrels? Why sold them to pubs for the public to eat, of course! Well, imagine their surprise when fancy chefs (and even TV chefs) started buying the squirrels by the wheelbarrel full. And they're getting creative. One hotel restaurant is turning the nasties into mock Peking duck.

So how do nasty Grey Squirrels taste? According to an article in today's NYT's Dining & Wine section, it all depends on what the nasties have been eating. If you order squirrel pie, hope your dead squirrel lived on nummy nuts. Apparently, the NYT couldn't get enough of the story, going into a depth rarely explored in that publication.

If you'd like to cook a squirrel, the Guardian website has a squirrel pastie recipe (pasties are basically Welsh empanadas).


*For details, click here.

What I Just Cooked: Beans and Swiss Chard

I saw this basic beans and Swiss chard recipe on a Lidia Bastianich show. All I needed to do was blanch some chard in unsalted water, which I did. Then I drained the chard and chopped it up after letting it cool. The rest was even easier. In a large frying pan, I threw in sliced red onions, garlic, tomato paste, cooked white beans, and crushed canned tomatoes and sauteed the whole lot in some hot olive oil.* What I found really interesting was that you fried the tomato paste before adding the canned tomatoes. As the beans started to coat in the paste, I got the idea to throw in a small amount of dark brown sugar — something about the coating beans made me think of Boston baked beans. I really regretted not having any bacon to throw in. At last, the Swiss chard was added and the dish was finished. Lidia suggested using this as a side dish to meat but I just ate it as the main.

So how did it turn out? I think I'll give this concoction a B.

*In Lidia's version, she added red peppers instead of the red onions.