The Serene Chef

With Great and Solemn Thanks

With all of the pain and death in the news, it is appropriate -- on this day that seems sometimes to be devoted to gluttony -- it is especially appropriate to remember that Thanksgiving began as a celebration of gratitude to God for the incredible bounty of this land. In a world where most people belonged to the land, rather than the other way around, North America was something out of dreams and legends, where land was there to be occupied by anyone who wanted to be there, where streams ran clean and teemed with fish, where the air was sweet, and where wild game and birds were so plentiful they were actually dangerous. Still, the Pilgrims almost did not survive, and would not have, without the help and fellowship of the Native American tribes.

We repaid that fellowship with betrayal and death, we have befouled most of the streams, most of the animals we eat are more a product of the laboratory and heartless factory farms than nature, and the air is sometimes brown with filth. Still, this land gives us more than we should expect, more than any other land. Even so, there are today in this land, thousands of hungry, homeless and despairing people. We are only now starting to treat the earth with the reverence we should; we still take human life for granted, a commodity to be used and discarded. Even our expressed reverence for human life is more often a political slogan than real priniciple.

And yet, today is still a day to give thanks: for the continuing bounty of this land, for the science which is now giving us ways to heal some of the damage we have done (if not completely, significantly), for an electorate that has recently shown that there are limits to our greed and jingoism, and for a God that gives second -- and third, and fourth -- chances.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Simple Pleasures

A potato, salt, pepper and olive oil. Not much, but a glorious experience, and I've found another staple for my cupboard: basil flavored olive oil.

There was nothing in the house to eat. Well, not literally, but nothing I much wanted, and whatever it was, it had to be fast. I had just gotten my delivery from Urban Organic and I had gotten potatoes. Baked potatoes are always good, but not fast. I don't use my microwave for cooking very often, just for re-heating, but I was starving. I nuked two potatoes and reached from the butter, then stopped dead.

O&Co.'s flavored olive oils are
available individually or in a
set of five pretty 1.7 oz cruets

About two weeks ago, I visited the Marketplace at Grand Central and discovered O&Co. (formerly Olivers & Co.), a shop specializing in olives and olive oil. "A whole store devoted to olive oil", you ask? Well, yes. Olive oil is produced all around the Mediterranean, and in places as far away as Madagascar and Australia. There are oils suitable for everyday cooking, oils that are better for salads, flavored oils, even oils classified as "Grand Crus", drizzled over foods to "finish" them immediately before serving.

I like dipping bread in flavored oil as a snack or appetizer, so the extremely helpful salesperson presented me with four excellent oils. When most of us make flavored oils, we soak the flavoring ingredients in the oil and let them infuse the oil slowly. O&Co.'s oils are flavored by crushing the flavoring ingredients with the olives when the oil is pressed. The oil is then strained and filtered, leaving an intensely flavored, clear virgin oil. These oils are offered in a range of flavors, including basil, chili pepper, mandarin orange, lemon, truffle, mint and green lemon (organic lemons gathered while green). I ended up buying basil flavored oil and lemon flavored oil (which is wonderful with sweet-ish breads).

Back to the potato. I split it and fluffed it with a fork, added salt and pepper, then drizzled basil flavored oil over it. Heaven! (And better for me than the butter-slathered potato, since olive oil is monosaturated which can help reduce LDL (the "bad" cholesterol)).

The next day, I diced the second potato along with a cold chicken breast, seasoned it with salt and pepper and drizzled on the basil flavored oil. Bingo! A quick filling lunch with a soul-satisfying flavor. Lots of variations come to mind, like steamed broccoli with the potato (hot or cold), but the key thing is, don't use ingredients that overpower the oil. When I bought it, I ran off to find bread for dipping. At Zaro's in the Marketplace, I found a huge wonder raisin-walnut whole wheat loaf to dip in the lemon oil. Wonderful. The tart fruitiness of the oil was the perfect foil for the sweetness of the raisins, and some amazing synergy with nuts transported me. I'm not a big fan of lemon as a main flavor, but it lifted the bread from "nice" to "exceptional".

For the basil oil, I let myself be seduced by an olive rosemary bread. That was a mistake. As fragrant as the basil oil is, it was completely overpowered by the cured black olives and bits of rosemary. Don't get me wrong, the bread was wonderful, but not with this oil. Plain baguettes, a good semolina bread, perhaps, but whatever you choose, let the basil oil be the star of the dish.

Salter Aquatronic Aquatronic Food Scale - Salter Online

This scale is a must for serious and casual cooks. Measuring by weight is more accurate than measuring by volume (cups, etc.), and that's the secret both to consistent results, and to duplicating that wonderful recipe from your favorite celebrity chef. This scale allows you to measure both liquids and solids by weight. It comes with flipchart which tells you, for instance, that 1/4 cup of grated parmesan weighs one ounce, so you can simply weigh all of your ingredients, even if the recipe gives volume measurement. It also measures in grams with the push of a button, so you don't have to convert European recipes by hand. Another push of a button "zeroes-out" the weight of your container, so you're only measuring your food. It works on 2 lithium batteries (included), and it turns itself off when not in use to save battery life. (I've had mine for two years and I'm still using the original batteries.) ()