Cooking and Gadgets

Shrimp Broth

If you buy shell on shrimp or fresh shrimp with heads and shell you can make shrimp broth. It’s a very useful frozen pantry item to have for making risotto, fish soup or infusing a seafood pasta, or pan sauce with more flavor. And it only takes a half hour to make. In fact I never actually set out to make shrimp broth, it’s always a by-product of peeling shrimp for another dish, so it’s important to be flexible about what to put in the pot along with the peels in order to end up with a flavorful result.

With this batch I didn’t have any parsley in the house but I had carrots with tops. The tops taste like a combo of carrots and parsley so they’re perfect for any broth. I threw those in. Then I added a few peppercorns, some coriander seed (which for some reason I have in great quantity), a couple green scallion tops and some lemon zest and juice. I could just have easily added Italian parsley, red chile flakes, celery seed (I love the taste of celery in broths), chopped onion and some tomato sauce or fresh tomato instead of the lemon.

The Difference Between Radicchio and Red Cabbage

Last time I was at the supermarket, the cashier picked up my head of radicchio and punched in the code for red cabbage. The price came up as 70 cents.

I said, "Actually, that's radicchio, not red cabbage."

She voided it and punched in the correct code for radicchio. The new price came up as $5.50.

"Wow! That's expensive!" she said. "You should just get the red cabbage instead."

Get the red cabbage instead? Is she serious?

So what's behind this $5 difference between red cabbage and radicchio? Is it cabbage inflation? Is the Mafia getting kickbacks on radicchio sales?

Clay Pot: Not

Let me be unequivocal here: I hate my clay pot.

I bring this up because of the front page article in the LA Times Food section on October 28, 2009 entitled “Clay Pot Alchemy” in which Paula Wolfert, the cookbook author, seen smiling broadly in front of her multitudinous collection, announces she’s ‘never met a clay pot she didn’t like.’

Allow me to introduce her to mine. Such is my disdain for this thing that it lives in the very back of the very top shelf of our utility closet, reachable only by standing on the top rung of the step ladder, moving 8 bags of Rustichella d’Abruzzo pasta, a dozen 28 oz. cans of San Marzano tomatoes, 4 giant bottles of Dijon and several extra large boxes of Q Tips which we bought at Costco more than 3 years ago and I am not even slightly exaggerating when I say we could have Q Tips for life. Only then will you find my clay pot, wedged in the corner like some dunce who was sent there for getting the answer entirely wrong.

Because entirely wrong is what Clay Pot cooking is to me. The roast chicken from the little recipe booklet included with purchase was not “moist and browned” as promised but wet and wan. And the red peppers? The Zucchini? Those tomatoes? Limp. Limper. Limpest. I would have donated my clay pot to the National Jewish Women’s Council Thrift Shop where once a year I haul outsized, green lawn and leaf bags full of unworn clothes, or left it out in our alley where, no matter what you leave on top of those garbage bins magically disappears by the next morning, were it not for that one time.

My First Cookbook - A Treasury Of Great Recipes

Given my love of sugar and horror, its no surprise that the first cookbook I used was by Mary and Vincent Price. It was called A Treasury of Great Recipes. Long before you had the countless husband and wife teams traveling and writing about the places they've eaten, you had Mary and Vincent Price, of all people, with photographs and anecdotes told in what is clearly Price's voice. Charming and funny, he was a wonderful raconteur and gourmand.

The first thing I made from that cookbook was an Apricot Mousse. My mother would make it and put it in these adorable little ceramic pots with lids on them and called them pot de crème. That's why, when I went to look up the recipe, I though I'd hallucinated the whole thing because that wasn’t how it was categorized in the cookbook. But it enabled me to take a walk down cookbook memory lane. It was bittersweet to gaze upon my dusty volumes of Gourmet's compendiums. So sad. But, I digress.

Sausage Party

I consumed so many delicious things this year, it's really hard to pin down one meal or one bite. But if there was a night that stands out, and a single dish that truly made me happy, it has to be a sausage sampler that I consumed with my best friend Don in early November. He showed up one night with some Spanish chorizo sausages, a blood sausage, a couple of wedges of runny cheese, and a small cooler with a few kick ass craft beers in it.

We pan fried the sausages with a little olive oil, then poured some of Stone's Vertical Epic 11.11.11 into the pan to finish them off. This year's offering from Stone (their 10th beer in the Vertical Epic series) is a strong Belgian ale spiced with cinnamon and anaheim chilies from Hatch, New Mexico. It was the perfect compliment to the sausages. We drank the rest of what the sausages didn't swim in. Then we drank another bottle.

Among the sausages we stuffed in our faces that night was my homemade catalan-style pork and garlic sausage. If you like the simplicity of pork and garlic, you'll absolutely love this. And who doesn't like meat in tube form?

Cooking Techniques and Kitchen Gadgets