The chili rice thing

I found out today that this dish is as good with chicken (I used hindquarters and wings) as it is with beef, which is very good indeed. I developed the recipe maybe a decade ago when I was researching pressure cooking for FoodDay. The beef version of the recipe ran with the article in The Oregonian.

Oh, and did I mention it was fast? Open a few cans, toss in the meat -- it's all ready in less than half an hour (pressure cooking time is only 15 minutes, although it takes a few minutes to get the pressure up).

The Chili Rice Thing

3/4 cup brown rice
1-1/2 teaspoon lard or oil
1-3/4 cup water
Bay leaf
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 4-ounce can diced chilies
2 tablespoons minced onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon chili powder
3/4 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons beef (or chicken) base (Better Than Bouillon is a good one)
1/4 to 1/2 pound piece of beef or pork or a couple of pieces of chicken (2 hindquarters or 8 wings, etc.)

In a pressure cooker bottom, brown the rice in the lard. Add the water, bay leaf, tomatoes, chilies, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, beef or chicken base and meat.

Put the lid on the pot, bring it to a boil and cook at high pressure for 15 minutes.

The result is a bit soupy; serve in bowls.

Serves 2-3.

No pressure cooker? You can probably put everything in a pot in the oven for maybe 60 to 90 minutes at 350. But I haven't tested the recipe that way.

Walnuts

I wrote this in June, then found it again when I was moving files to my Apple.

Always before, I shelled walnuts in the context of other activities. At one point in my life, while watching television––hard to believe now that I watch virtually no TV. I was always trying to get the task over quickly. It was a stop, usually unwelcome, on the route to somewhere else, like making cookies.

But today, I am shelling walnuts on a warm midsummer Sunday afternoon in a quiet urban backyard, and this is precisely what I wish to be doing with my time at this time.

When the nuts have my undivided attention, I see so many things. A half-shell, unscathed, would make a fine boat for a miniature sailor. I remember, as a child, fitting one out with a toothpick mast and a little paper sail.

The nutmeats are shaped like little human brains. Some people on the fringe of nutritional thinking have made the connection that they are therefore brain food. The thin, dry membranes that separate the halves look like pelvises. Perhaps they are good for childbirth, too.

The shells, wrinkles and scored––I wish now I had thought of walnuts when I needed an object to work on in a drawing class. I envisioned the subtle shading that would demarcate the indentations; the fine, trembling lines of the veins; the nobility of the complete shell, as simple as an egg but so much more complex.

I remark how the interior of the shell so follows the contours of the meat. Does the shell form the meat or does the meat form the shell? Does it matter?

I treasure each motion, sweeping of a nut from the bowl, watching the other nuts in the bowl shift when I take one, finding a useful point to leverage the nutcracker, hearing the sharp sound of cracking, exploring the feel and parallax of an individual nut as I turn it around and around, pulling at sharp edges, easing out the meat.

How could I have been impatient with any of this?

What yogurt is good with

I seldom buy flavored yogurt. Don't like it much (although Brown Cow makes a fine product with cream at the top that you can toss if you're being good or mix in if you are feeling like a treat. Try the vanilla; it's flavored with maple syrup.). I can create fruit-flavored yogurt by mixing in a few spoonfuls of jam.

You'll want to start with good quality plain yogurt -- Nancy's or Trader Joe's French Village or Brown Cow plain. The cheap supermarket stuff tastes nasty. Or buy a yogurt maker and make your own. I used to do that, using Nancy's as my base.

Today I experimented with texture, mixing in chopped roasted almonds for crunch, dried cranberries for sweetness and chopped candied fruit peel (it's in the 2004 recipe set, for those of you who get my yearly mailing) for chewiness.

Other candidates are granola, chopped dates, raisins (especially golden ones), other types of dried fruit and other varieties of nuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. I suppose you could add mini chocolate chips--they were in the breakfast condiment trays everywhere when we visited Germany--but I resist the idea of candy in yogurt.

And of course, there is always fresh fruit or berries, or even applesauce. My favorite is bananas, with brown sugar. That is an intoxicating combination.

Fruit salad

I've been making a lot of fruit salads this summer. This morning's was cantaloupe, banana, orange and tiny champagne grapes. Instead of adding honey and lime (see Honey, below), I chopped up a couple of dates for sweetness.

Eat plain or with plain yogurt (high quality yogurt, such as Nancy's or TJ's French Village, tastes great plain) and maybe granola.

Using honey

A correspondent asks: Do you happen to know what the honey to sugar equivalent is? I have a jar of honey. I'd like to use it up in cooking, but I'm not sure what the equivalent is between sugar and honey and I don't want to do a one to one and have things too sweet.
Thank you!

Answer:
You really can't substitute honey for sugar because the honey has so much water in it. It tends to make baked goods heavy. So make sure your recipe calls for honey. One baked thing that you can substitute it for sugar in is bread -- it makes the texture smooth and the bread may keep it from going stale so soon.

I use a fair amount of honey. Mostly I put it in tea and coffee instead of sugar. Keep it in a jar or sugar bowl on the counter. That way it'll be convenient to use.

I also make a lot of mixed fruit salad. For dressing, I dissolve a tablespoon or so of honey in some hot water, cool and add lime juice to taste.

You can have it on toast (ummm, with butter!). You can put it on your hot cereal.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Salad with cold oranges

I still remember picking out this recipe at the Berkeley Co-op. In the produce section, you could pick up recipes printed on cheap green paper that highlighted new ways to use fruits and vegetables. This recipe was dated September, 1968; I probably picked it up in 1970 or '71.

The idea of a salad with onions and green pepper and oranges seemed unbearably exotic in those days. Now it's way less strange, but still an unusual combination.

I made this for an office potluck recently, to good reviews. It was the first time I remember having putting in the cucumber. It didn't add that much, and you could leave it out.

------------
Ensalada de naranjas

4 oranges, chilled
1 cucumber
1 small sweet onion (or red onion)
1 green pepper
Lettuce
French dressing (see text)

Peel and slice oranges, discarding seeds. Peel and slice cucumber; chop onion and green pepper. Arrange lettuce on a flat dish and place onions and cucumber on top. Sprinkle with onion and green pepper. Serve cold, with a simple dressing of olive oil, wine vinegar, salt and pepper (use a 2-1 ratio of oil to vinegar, maybe 1/4 cup oil and 2 T. red wine vinegar -- I always just eyeball it).

Serves 6.

Hard peaches

Produce buying has been easier in recent years, probably because I'm not buying much fruit at the supermarket. Greengrocers and farmers markets tend to have fruit that's already ripe or that will ripen soon. So it's been a while since I bought home a bag of peaches that just refused to ripen.

Here's a handy guide to how fruits far after picking, from Shirley Corriher.

Fruits that never ripen after picking: soft berries, cacao, cherries, grapes, citrus fruit, litchis, olives, pineapple and watermelon

Fruits that ripen only after picking: avocados

Fruits that ripen in color, texture and juiciness but not in sweetness after picking: apricots, blueberries, figs, melons other than watermelon, nectarines, passion fruit, peaches and persimmons

Fruits that get sweeter after they're picked: apples, cherimoyas, kiwifruit, mangoes, papayas, pears, sapotes and soursops (also known as guanabana)

Fruits that ripen in every way after picking: bananas

Oddly, this list does not include plums, but they seem to be like apricots, getting jucier and softer but not necessarily sweeter.