This Doesn't Suck

“WHAT?!” I squawked.

“I don’t like it,” Beth repeated.

“But you like corn, and you like cream, and I replaced the lima beans with edamame, and you like that,” I insisted.

“Yes. I like those things, but I hate the succotash taste.” She patted my cheek. “More for you.”

More for me indeed.

Amy’s Take on Tash
The prime elements of succotash are corn and beans. They’re in season now, at the juxtaposition of summer and fall. You can tart it up with other things, too. This serves 4-6 people as a light main dish or a generous side.

4 ears fresh corn (will render 4 cups kernels)
1 pound edamame (will render 2 cups of shelled beans)
1 large red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise and sliced
1 T butter
1 c heavy cream
1 t dried thyme or 1 T fresh thyme leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Throw the edamame, in its shell, in a pot with a half inch of boiling water. Cover and steam them about 5 minutes, then drain and pop them out of their shells.

Cut the kernels off the cobs of corn. Use a sharp knife, stand the ear on end, and cut close to the cob, taking care not to cut into it. Cut off 2 or 3 rows at a time. Then turn the knife over and scrape the dull edge along the cob to extract the “cream.”

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Sauté the onion, pepper, and zucchini until the onion are translucent. Remove from the pot and set aside.

Pour the cream in the pot and boil gently until reduced by half. Throw all the other ingredients in there and bring them back up to a bubble. Turn the heat down, cover the pot, and simmer for 5 or 10 minutes—until the corn is cooked and the edamame are tender. Correct the seasoning and serve to acclaim!

Bienvenue Bluie!

Welcome to the family, petite chou!

This holiday season, through a combination of comparison shopping, lurking in cooking stores, and fortuitous receipt of gift cards, I made a longtime dream come true. I bought a 4.5 quart cobalt blue French oven from Le Creuset.

There was my new baby, all round and smooth and perfectly blue! What would I do to welcome her to the family?

I knew: I’d make cassoulet from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. No, I had never made it before. But it’s one of my favorite kinds of food: making it once is like making four other different things! Twice!! And I would get to put Bluie through her paces.

First there was shopping. I did not want to use lamb, as Mastering suggests. (My better half does not want to eat anything cute and fluffy.) Goose, duck, and partridge were uncomfortably expensive—especially right after the excesses of Sparklemas. I decided to use pork.



Polish sausage and ham hock

from Tollefson. Pork rind from

Finer Meats.

Even on a regular day, this dish calls for four different kinds of pork: roast, side or salt pork, sausage, and pork rind. I thought a nice, flavorful ham hock would be the perfect economical stand-in for rich duck or goose confit. I went to the Minneapolis Farmers Market to see Dan Tollefson, my favorite pork farmer in the world. He set me up with everything but rind. After calling all over the city, I found it at Finer Meat Company just a few blocks from my house. Who knew that this store was there? And why didn’t they tell me?! Finer Meat has a beautiful array of fresh, smoked, and salted meats. They have a shelf of meat-related groceries. (They have butcher hats on, for crying out loud!) They sold me a half-pound of lovely pork rind for a buck.

I’m not going to recite the recipe, since it is tiresome in its length and also it’s not mine. My Google fu turned up this, which will get you there. Instead of goose, I used a pork roast per Mastering’s original instruction. Instead of lamb, I used a ham hock per my imagination.

First, make a roast. Brown a pork loin and then some onions and carrots. Throw in a bouquet garni, then cover and pop in a 325 degree oven for an hour and a half.

(Just so you know, I used some bean cooking water to wash this tasty brown stuff back into the pot.)

Pork rind: weirdly elegant?

While all that jazz is going down in the oven, time to start the beans. Child specifies the quick-soak method. While the beans soak in their hot bath, freshen the pork rind in two changes of boiling water. Then cut it into quarter-inch dice and simmer it for a half hour. You’re essentially making gelatin here: the softened pork rind will melt to nothing but collagen. It will add velvety body to the finished dish.

All the stuff in the picture to the right, here, has got to get crammed into the same pot to simmer for an hour and a half. Julia wasn’t kidding about an 8-quart pot. I didn’t listen. I’m using the gray pot because Bluie was in the oven during this part.

C'est magnifique! Also I don't

speak French.

While the beans are cooking, or maybe the next day, you can make another meat dish. Mastering has many suggestions, including lamb braised with browned bones that add flavor. I had some meaty pork bones left over from Sparklemas dinner. I browned those in Bluie, then browned two chopped onions and two diced carrots. The bones went back in the pot along with a ham hock, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, a can of tomato paste, two bay leaves, four cloves of mashed garlic, and a half teaspoon of thyme. I braised that in the oven for an hour and a half.



Finally, everything is cooked and it smells like a French chophouse in here. Time to assemble...

...and top with crumbs and butter.









After baking it looks... um, it looks rather brown.

But it tastes like the heavenly congress of pork and beans. Which it is!




And though I scrubbed her with an enamel-safe pad and plenty of soap, Bluie has a few brown battle scars on the bottom of her. Ah, c’est la vie, little one. You work hard in this family of pots and pans. You get a mark here, a ding there. But you are no less beloved for it; no less beautiful to me.

These Beans Are Greek to Me

How Greek is this dish? Heck if I know. I had it on vacation two weeks ago in a restaurant called Ethos. The hostess had a large swooping mane of platinum-colored hair and a flowy tiger-striped blouse. She kept the waiting list in her head and seemingly knew what every single person in the restaurant, whether staff or customer, was doing and what they needed next. She was born to be a maîtresse d’hôtel.

That staff of hers is great, too. Our server knew not only every dish, but every one of a dozen fish on the menu by their Greek and English names. Some of them were catch of the day. She knew all those fish well enough to have a favorite.

She brought a green bean dish with a sharpish-tasting tomato sauce. There was a subtly sweet, woodsy undertone to it, though, that I could not place. Finally I found and identified the culprit: whole allspice. Who would expect to find that at a Greek restaurant?

Well, when your mouth is full of something good, you don’t need to know what’s Greek. You just need to enjoy.

Ethos Green Beans
The allspice berries at Ethos were nearly tasteless, their deliciousness having escaped into the sauce via stewing. My guess is that the chef starts a batch of the sauce in the afternoon and then keeps it on the back burner all night. When the kitchen receives an order for this dish, maybe Chef scoops up a dollop of sauce, tosses in the beans and dill, and then simmers them tender while he or she makes the rest of the meal.

2 T olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups chopped tomatoes (I used a pint of cherry tomatoes plus one small beefsteak tomato)
½ cup white wine
3 allspice berries
A sprig of oregano
1 lb green beans
2-3 T chopped fresh dill
Salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a wide-bottomed, deep pan. Sauté the garlic and onion until translucent. Toss in the chopped tomatoes and fry them a bit until the pan starts to dry out. Add the wine, allspice, and oregano. Turn down the heat, cover the pan, and simmer for fifteen or twenty minutes. Check the pan often and throw in some water if things are getting too dry. It would be best if the dish could simmer on low heat for a long time, but if there isn’t time for that, cook it harder. The idea is for the tomatoes to break down into a thin sauce.

Throw in the green beans and the dill, stir, and cover the pan again. Let the pot stew, stirring occasionally, until the beans are quite tender, perhaps ten minutes or more. They will not be the bright green of steamed beans; they will start to turn olive-colored.
For the last minute or two, take the cover off the pan and check the thickness of the sauce. It should be thin but with some body, like gravy. You may need to let some extra water steam off.

Season to taste. Yum!

Beans and Sausage Belong in Soup

Honestly, you guys, I don’t set out to cook cauldrons full of undifferentiated glop. This cauldronful is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the vat of stuff I made last post. This is bean soup, a magic soup full of protein and fiber and flavor. It will fill you up on a cold night. It will make your house smell so good.

Beth and I invented this soup because we wanted to make dinner for some friends. But we did NOT want to spend the last hour fussing in the kitchen while the friends stood about awkwardly, wondering if they should offer to help. The beauty of this soup is that it is easy to make. The secret of its deliciousness is in patience, not effort. Give it enough time on the stove for the vegetables to soften and melt a bit. The mellow bean flavor is punched up with sage and sausage*. Kale adds bright color as well as vitamins and minerals.

Add a salad and some good bread, and you’re done.

White Bean, Kale and Sausage Soup
Serves 6-8
Dry beans are more planning and monkey business than canned beans. Of course, they are correspondingly more delicious. You can soak and cook some extras, then pop them in the freezer to cut down your prep time for a future soup.

1 lb white beans: cannellini, great northern, or navy
2 bay leaves
4 peppercorns
3 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
8-12 oz sausage*: sweet Italian, hot Italian, andouille, chorizo; anything with garlic and/or chile
1 bunch kale, roughly chopped
4-6 leaves of sage
Salt to taste

*If you are a vegetarian, then instead of sausage, get some olive oil, a chopped bulb of fennel, some cayenne, and some chopped parsley.

Soak the beans overnight.

The next day, put the beans and their soaking water in a soup pot. DO NOT discard the cooking water. All the deliciousness is in it. I don’t care what your mom said about how throwing out the water will reduce bean gas. It won’t. It will only reduce my regard for you. Don’t you step to me.

Ahem. Make sure there is enough water to cover the beans. Add the bay leaves and the peppercorns. Bring them to a boil, then simmer them until they are tender.

Keep a kettle of water on the stove while you cook beans. If they need more water, bring the kettle to a boil. Adding cold water to beans makes their skins tough. Passive-aggressive little sulkers, aren’t they?

Toss the carrots, onion, and garlic cloves in the pot. Keep simmering until these soften. The garlic should break down. You can stir this into the broth, which by now should be getting thick and creamy as the beans break down, too.

About an hour before you plan to serve the soup, add the sage.

Meanwhile, brown the sausage. Or heat the olive oil and saute the fennel bulb, adding the cayenne for the last few minutes. Put the frying pan contents in the soup, reserving the cooking fat.

Sauté the kale, then pour a half cup of water in the pan and cover it tightly. Turn the heat down and steam until the kale is tender, maybe 20 to 30 minutes. (Keep an eye on it so the pan doesn’t get too dry.) Stir the kale into the pot. If you have parsley, sprinkle it on top of each bowl of soup.

Mangiamo!

Fish Tacos with All the Fixings

This post originally published 8.23.2009. Photos added 9.20.2009.

[REDACTED: Friend, I’m sorry. I just came home from a weekend out of town, and so I did not cook and photograph this dish for you like usual. But I plan to cook it next Friday—and then you could cook it, too, and it would be like we were having dinner together. Cheers!]

Two or three summers ago, I made it my mission to create the perfect fish taco. After extensive research at restaurants, fish shacks, and taco stands around the Twin Cities, I settled on a few (highly opinionated) fish taco axioms:

• Grilled fish, not breaded and fried. Breading hides the fish; it’s for poseurs. Also, the entire arrangement will be wrapped in a tortilla, which is technically a kind of bread.


• Corn tortillas only. No wheat. Wheat tortillas are the wrong size, texture, and flavor. Plus they are morally bankrupt! Tortillas are made of corn! ¿Entiende?


• There should be vegetables, but you should never put iceberg lettuce in a fish taco. In fact, you should never put iceberg lettuce anywhere. Certainly not in your mouth.


• There should be some sauce. A finely chopped pico de gallo is good. There’s a special fish taco sauce, too. At the very least, there should be a lime to squeeze on the taco.


• Finally, it would be a really nice touch to serve some black beans and queso fresco to go along with the tacos.

I used these rules to develop my own recipe for fish tacos with all the fixings. This would be a good thing to serve to friends for a last summer hurrah on the patio. Maybe throw in some margaritas or Negra Modelo and a nice fruit sorbet for dessert.

Fish Tacos with All the Fixings

This will serve four people. There is a lot going on in here, and this is the order in which I think you should fix things.

Prep List:

• Pickled onions


• Seasoned fish


• The sauce


• The fixings


• Grill the fish


• Heat the tortillas


• Assemble the tacos

The pickled onions:

This excellent pickle comes from Diana Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking.

1 lb red onions, trimmed, peeled, sliced thin
½ c fresh lime juice
1 ½ t sea salt

Put everything in a glass bowl, mix, and allow to macerate for 2 hours. Maybe stir the onions halfway through and press them down into the juice. They will make more liquid as they pickle. They’ll keep, refrigerated, for weeks. (But when you find out how good they are on a sandwich, they will never live as long as a week.)

Back to prep list

The seasoned fish:

2 t thyme
1 t black pepper
¼ t cumin
½ t cayenne pepper (more if you are a chile-head)
½ t salt
1 lb catfish fillets

Mix or grind the seasonings together. Rub them into the fish fillets. Stack the fillets and set aside 1 hour or more.

Back to prep list

The sauce:

Besides the bare minimum of squeezing a lime over the fish, it's fun to dress up your tacos with sauce. You can use a fresh homemade pico de gallo. You can use any kind of good quality bottled salsa. I also serve this one.

8 oz sour cream
Juice of 1 lime
Bufalo chipotle sauce or any hot chile sauce

Mix them all together, adding chile sauce to taste and lime juice until the sauce is like a thin mustard. I use a funnel to pour the sauce into a squeeze bottle.

Back to prep list

The fixings:

• Half a head of red or green cabbage, cut as fine as you can. (I’d use a knife. Food processors tend to mush up the cabbage.)


• One or two jalapeños, cored, seeded, and sliced into thin rings.


• A bunch of cilantro, picked off the stem if you are patient or chopped if you are not. It is acceptable to have some soft stems in your cilantro.


• The pickled onions.


• The sauce(s).


• Tortillas: They must be the small corn kind. You will need four per person, two for each taco.


• Black beans: These go next to the taco, not on it. If you don’t want to make your own, then Bearitos has a nice fat-free refried black bean.


• Queso fresco: Crumble it and put it on the hot beans. Mmmm.

Back to prep list

Grill the fish:
Grill it two or three minutes on a side, then test it with a knife. If it is almost as cooked as you’d like, take it off the heat. The fish will continue to cook a little on the serving plate.

Back to prep list

Heat the tortillas:
You need 16 small corn tortillas to make 8 tacos for 4 people.

I have one of those hateful glass-top electric stoves. Its only saving grace is that I can do this right on the stovetop. You may prefer to heat up a dry skillet.

Put the first tortilla on the hot, dry surface for about three seconds. Flip it over (use your fingers if you are clever or a spatula if you are cautious) and put the second tortilla on top, then wait three seconds. Flip the stack over, then add the third tortilla and wait three seconds. The tortillas should be getting some dark spots on them from this treatment. Even if a bit of charred tortilla gunk accumulates on the hot surface, you’re still good.

Continue flipping the stack and adding a tortilla until all the tortillas are on the stack. Do the final flip, wait the final three seconds, and then transfer to a warm plate and cover with a clean dish towel.

Back to prep list

Assemble the tacos:
For each taco, lay two tortillas on the plate so they overlap. Take a fork to the fish fillets and flake/break off about two ounces of fish per taco; put this on the tortillas. Squeeze on some lime. Dress with fixings as desired, being careful not to overstuff. Top with a wee bit of sauce(s). Put a nice spoonful of black beans on the plate and put some crumbled queso fresco on top of them.

To eat the taco, fold the tortillas over the bottom and then fold the sides over to make a packet. It’s better to make a lot of little tacos than one giant taco.

¡Buen provecho!

Szechuan String Beans

Everybody should have problems like this: I have too much garlic. There’s a bag of fresh string beans in the refrigerator, too. At this time of year, there are string beans everywhere: at farmers markets. In CSA boxes. Spilling out of gardens like a green and yellow tide. But don’t be upset. There’s a solution, and it is Szechuan string beans.

In her Still Life with Menu Cookbook, Mollie Katzen describes her frustration at trying to cook this recipe in a house full of taste-testers. “It’s difficult to accumulate a dinner-sized amount of something when it disappears faster than you can make it,” she writes.

It’s true that if you cook this dish as part of a meal, it will likely have been nibbled away by the time you set the table. The trick, in my opinion, is to make it on a day when you are home alone. Or if you have just fallen in love in the last few minutes, and the object of your affection comes to your house while you are fixing this, then perhaps you will be swept away on a wave of romance and share your string beans with your visitor. The following week, though, things will be back to regular. You’ll be snacking on more than your share by the time your sweetheart rings the doorbell.

I have altered this recipe a tiny bit to include fresh chiles instead of Katzen’s crushed red pepper. The key points are for the wok to be hot and the beans to be dry. It seems like a lot of garlic here, but don’t be scared. High heat knocks the fight out of garlic and leaves it tasting sweet rather than pungent.

Szechuan String Beans

2-3 T sesame oil
2 lb string beans, cleaned
8 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Thai chile, minced
Oh, use more garlic and chile if you like. It’s fun.
½ teaspoon salt

Heat a wok over medium-high heat. Add the oil. Wait for the oil just to begin smoking, and then throw in the beans. Turn the heat to high and stir-fry—that means constant tossing! Keep this up for five minutes or more, until the beans are seared and blistered.

Add the garlic, salt, and chile. Toss, toss, toss some more! Stay at it for another 2 or 3 minutes until the garlic is cooked. Be sure to toss madly so that the garlic doesn’t burn.

Put the beans in your serving dish. You could serve them hot with rice as a main course. You could serve them warm or at room temperature, too, if any are left by the time they cool down.

Enjoy!