Scratch Cooking October 11th

It's been a few days and I have much to say, but where to start? Let's start with Jamie Oliver. He's young, hot, and all about scratch cooking! Did anyone see the New York Times article today on his new mission to help make the most unhealthy town in America - Huntington, West Virginia  -healthier by teaching people how to cook from scratch? A Brit teaching Americans about fresh, healthy food? Who would have thought that would ever happen? When I lived in London in the mid 80's, British cuisine was still butter and mayonnaise sandwiches!

So Friday and Saturday were all about taking whatever was in the refrigerator and making something from it. Sadly, Thursday was another migraine and head in the toilet day so Friday was a soup day. Chopped onion, chopped potatoes, chopped green beans, chopped brocolli and baby spinach with water, salt, pepper and herbs. I had 3 bowls of it. Sure, I was feeling icky and kind of wishing that I could just open a can of soup, but because I made it myself, it had the amount of salt that I needed, the ratio of vegetables to broth that I needed and I didn't have to worry about preservatives and additives sending me into another tail spin.

Saturday, I ended up at a friend's house after a hike and we made a kitchen sink salad. I will try to remember what was in it; romaine lettuce, chopped onion, chopped zucchini, chopped tomato, chopped pear, chopped almonds and a chopped leftover baked potato, plus some chickpeas. We put on a little olive oil and a little fig balsamic vinegar and looked at each other and said "this is either going to be really good or really disgusting". We each had multiple servings, so I guess that answers that!

During the week, my daughter and her friend expressed an interest in making gnocchi, so I suggested that we make sweet potato gnocchi from a recipe on IdealBite. I made the ricotta in the morning. By now, I am sure all of you know that recipe by heart!

The gnocchi were very easy and made a lot! We made 2 sauces. The first was a tomato coulis. I sauteed some chopped onion in olive oil and added some salt, pepper and 3 chopped tomatoes. I also added the seeds from about 6 caradmom pods and a splash of red wine. When it had cooked for about an hour, we pushed it through a seive.  The flavors were really lovely. For the other sauce, my daughter browned some butter, which is basically heating it until it gets brown and fragrant, and threw in some fresh sage leaves from the garden and salt and cooked it until the sage leaves were a little crispy.

My friend Michele brought over some heirloom tomatoes from the local community garden and some fresh mozzarella. We clipped some basil from the garden and made insalata caprese.

I remember the first time I heard about insalata caprese. Actually, I didn't hear about it, I read about it when I was 22 in a guidebook on Italy right before a trip I decided to take there on a whim. Actually, someone I worked with was going there to see her twin sister who was living in Bologna. I was tired of being broke in New York, okay with my job but hating my boss and ready for a change so I quit my job and found a chip ticket to Italy and tagged along for 3 weeks. I actually dragged my friend and her sister to the isle of Capri for Easter because I wanted to try that salad. We stayed at a place called the Eden hotel which was on the not touristy side of the island overlooking a beautiful groto. There were lemon and orange groves and sheeps and goats. We paid about $5 a night and because it was Easter and nothing was open, we had Easter dinner with the family that owned it. And the insalata Caprese absolutely lived up to expectation.

After dinner, which I must say was so delicious that 4 of us almost finished all the gnocchi, we went to see Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. I have no idea how that movie got an R rating other than the fact that most of it is about the American people getting f***ed by the investment banks. It's disturbing, funny and distinctly non-partisan. He hits as hard on the Democrats as he does on the Republicans, maybe even harder. See it, get pissed off and then tell me what action we should take because, seriously, children being locked up for profit? In addition to cooking up dinner, I'm ready to cook up a revolt. This system is broken and we need a new one!

So far today I am working on a few Bob's Redmill recipes. I met Bob once a few years ago when at his store in Portland, Oregon for breakfast. He looks just like the picture on the packages.

I made some quinoa sour cream fudge cupcakes. I just ate one with some of the homemade strawberry jam. YUUUUUUUMMMMMMM! I have some dough rising for the homemade buttermilk roll recipe on the back of the potato flour package. Okay, I'm off to shape some rolls!