The Serene Chef

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.) ()

The Spice of Life

Let's look in your spice cabinet. Do you have a spice cabinet? Or a spice rack? Or are your little jars of spices jumbled on a shelf over the stove? Do you remember when you bought that jar of thyme?

One of the key requirements for serenity in the kitchen is having what you need, when you need it and where you can find it. A second requirement is confidence in the quality of your ingredients. The spice jumble is the place where most kitchens fall down, but the situation can be rectified easily. If you're in despair over the state of your kitchen, here's a place to start.

There are a myriad of ways of attacking the organization of your spices, but I want to highlight one in particular: test tubes. Test tubes are inexpensive and take up very little space. Even a rack of 30 or 40 tubes takes up very little counterspace. (The ideal situation would be a test tube rack that mounts on the wall, but the only version of that I've found so far is rather expensive.) And one of the best things about test tubes is that they don't hold very much. That's great, because spices are packaged in quantitites that are just too large. Unless you cook for the 101st Airborne, by the time you get two thirds of the way through the jar of sage, it has all the flavor of the dust behind the refrigerator. And nothing is as annoying as having to buy a huge bottle of a spice when you need a teaspoonful for a recipe you may never make again.

So, how do you buy small enough quantities? And how do you know they're fresh when you get them? Well, first, avoid buying in supermarkets. It is impossible to know how long those bottles have been sitting on the shelf. Second, except for the McCormick's tiny bottles, you will never use all of the stuff in the bottles while they have any value. There are a number of places where you can buy small quantities of individual spices. If you're in New York City, Adriana's Caravan is a top choice. And if you don/t live in Metro NYC, Adriana's Caravan is still a top choice. The list of available spices is mind-boggling, and most can be ordered in amounts as small as 1 ounce. You can buy online at the website (the catalog is also available as a PDF file.) And Rochelle Zabarkes, the owner of Adriana's Caravan has even written a book that has a wealth of information and ideas, available on the site.

There are lots of other online spice sellers, but having access to Adriana's I haven't tried them. Look for a willingness to guarantee freshness, a good selection, online information about the products (I think sellers have an obligation to educate their customers), and the ability to purchase in small quantities. Then buy small quantities of one or two items and test the freshness for yourself.

Now, about those test tubes. Science supply houses are the obvious source. One with a nice array of choices is Indigo Instruments which actually has sets that are intended for use as spice racks. Check them out.