Thank God for China

I make all my own broth and soup stock, and my recipes are sound and never fail. They are simple and easy, if you've got the time to make them. Chicken stock, beef stock, veg stock and seafood stock all provide the base for much of my cooking, whether making enchiladas, soup, etouffe, gumbo or even simple boiled shrimp.

But leave it to the Chinese to provide us with the simplest and most wholesome of all stocks. Prime stock is perfect for all manner of soups, while clear stock is great for cooking and seasoning, sauces and reductions. They are made with the same set of ingredients:

Equal parts poultry, lean pork (bones optional), and ham (bones optional). Use junk cuts and leftovers, like the bones from your barbecue.

That's it!

Just put everything in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, skim the shit that rises to the top, cover partially and simmer for three hours. Strain and cool. That's prime stock.

Remove the ingredients, clean the pot, put the ingredients back in, cover with water, bring to a boil, cover partially and simmer for two hours. Strain and cool. That's clear stock.

With the same set of ingredients, you end up with two completely different stocks, ready for any number of recipes. The simplicity is its beauty, something only the Chinese could invent.

Thanksgiving Isn't the Sexiest of Holidays

No matter how you dress it up, and for obvious reasons. There's no mistletoe dangling playfully over your head, no sexy Santa underwear to prance around in or adult novelties to exchange (batteries included). Although the season is right for stretching out in front of a warm fire, it's more often to ease the achin' in your bacon and sleep off an overdose of tryptophan than to get some sweet luvvins.

So why do so many people get married around Thanksgiving? There's cranberry sauce on my mother's wedding dress, and I know a few people at work who had pumpkin pie instead of wedding cake. Maybe it's because the family is already gathered together. I don't know.

Anyway, here's a pumpkin pie recipe that works for me. Everybody at work thinks its fookin marvelous and asks me why I don't have my own restaurant. In this economy? Are you mental? I use Kroger brand for the eggs, pumpkin, condensed milk and pie crust, but I grind the spices fresh from whole sticks of cinnamon, nutmeg, dried ginger and whole cloves. Make sure you get the deep dish pie crust or half your pie will end up baking on the bottom of the oven. Also make sure your crust isn't broken. If you wait until the day before Thanksgiving, like, uh... today... all that will be left in your grocer's freezer are bags of frozen pie crust crumbles and a couple of nice pie tins. Your family will be sad and your honey won't give you no luvvins.

Sweet Luvvin Pumpkin Pie

1 frozen deep dish pie crust
1 can of pure pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix)
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
fat pinch of salt
Cool Whip

Preheat oven to 425.

Mix pumpkin, condensed milk and eggs, add spices and salt and stir until well combined. Pour into the pie crust and bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Turn the oven down to 350 and bake for 30 more minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before carving. Plate a generous wedge and add a dollop of Cool Whip. Take your insulin and enjoy.

After the family has gone home and the kids are in bed, lay your honey down beside the fire, smear with Cool Whip, and get busy. You got calories to burn.

How to Boil Rice

This may seem like a waste of blogspace, but I simply must share my discovery.

When you cook regular white rice, does it end up fluffy and light or sticky and gloppy? Do you follow the directions on the package? Or the cookbook? Or the cooking show on television?

You know the directions I mean, the ones that say rinse the rice in cold water to wash away the excess starch. Excess starch sticky and bad. Right?

Wrong!

A few weeks ago, I was in a hurry trying to get supper ready and I skipped the washing step. My rice always turned out sticky anyway, so I figured, what difference could it make?

It made a world of difference. The rice turned out light and fluffy and wonderful. I thought it was a fluke, so I have tried this experiment several times since, with different kinds of rice, long grain and short, even sushi rice, and the result is the same. If you want light, fluffy rice, DON'T wash it before cooking.

Where in the world did this rice-washing myth come from? I think I have it figured out. Rice made for eating with Chinese and Japanese cuisine is supposed to stick together, especially sushi rice. So they wash their rice to make it stick together. Logic says that if you wash off the excess starch, the rice will be less sticky, but the opposite is true. Washing off the starch makes it more sticky. I believe this method of cooking was transfered over to the American table and the American cookbook, but for the wrong reason.

Americans wanting light, fluffy rice find themselves unable to make anything but sticky glops of rice, because the directions tell them to wash the rice before cooking. So they end up buying this stuff:

because converted, parboiled rice is the only commercial rice that comes out light and fluffy. You certainly don't buy it for the speed. Cooking this stuff takes almost as long to cook as regular white rice, and the quality is less than desirable.

So next time you buy a bag of rice, first make sure it's grown in America (support the local farmer), then follow the cooking directions except for that whole washing part.

And as an added bonus, rice cooked in this manner makes excellent stir-fried rice.

Good Eats

Although I love autumn and the smells and the fairs and football, and the first cool nights and the sky full of stars, and although summer in Memphis is generally a miserable affair, with the smothering heat and the humidity and the dim endless nights and the mosquitoes and the grass that always needs mowing, I do love summer for the food - the fresh vegetables and fruits.

By early spring I am usually sick to death of weak, tasteless grocery store produce, and that combined with my inherited horticultural gene usually induces me to plant a garden, but this year I decided to restrain myself because we were planning to move and I didn't want to do all that work just some so stranger could enjoy my tomatoes. But alas, the move hasn't happened and I am gardenless for the first time in almost a decade.

Luckily, I have parents who grow a garden, and I still live close enough to the country to get out and find a fruit stand sometimes. This past weekend being the perfect example, we drove down Highway 72 toward Mt. Pleasant and found a man and his watermelons and peaches. The peaches were tiny, smaller than plums, but good heavens were they good! And the watermelon!

The same day, my mother brought us a mess of green beans and a bag of peas, five ears of sweet corn, and some peppers and tomatoes. I've canned 19 quarts of her green beans already this year.

I also finally broke down and splurged on an organic, free-range chicken. I had begun to fret of late over the declining quality of my fried chicken and feared I had lost my touch. Alas, it was not my touch at fault, as I discovered last night. That lovely but expensive bird tasted as I remembered fried chicken used to taste.

So for Sunday dinner we had fried chicken, fresh peas, fresh green beans, fresh sweet corn, fresh cucumber and fresh tomatoes and fresh peppers. The peas were simply divine - I'm glad I was able to rediscover (through trial and error) my grandmother's lost recipe for peas. And as they say in Deliverence, I love good corn.

Mama Crook's Peas

First of all, these are not the peas you're thinking of. Generally, these are purple hull peas or some other kind of field peas, not your green or English peas, and certainly not black-eyed peas, which are foul seeds that taste like cigarette ashes. Purple hull pea vines grow low to the ground, though I did grow vines one year that came up to my waist and we didn't want to pick them for fear of snakes.

Shell your peas (or buy them shelled), wash them, and put them in a pot with enough water to cover by an inch or so. Add a half-slice of thick bacon or salt pork, a tablespoon of salt and three tablespoons of sugar, then cook that bitch til she's done. The sugar is the key. Without sugar, your pea will taste like shit.

Daddy Crook used to love the pot liquor. He'd crumble corn bread over his plate and pour the liquor over the bread. This is a good way to not waste any of it, because it's too good to waste. You know what they say about boiling vegetables boils all the nutrients out? The nutrients are still there - in the liquid. That's why old country folk love their pot liquor.