An Eclectic Mind

Comfort food from my childhood.

I find that the older I get, the more I look back with fond memories on certain aspects of my childhood. And since eating has always been high on my list of life priorities, it’s no wonder that I think back about food.

Last month, Mike and I went to the New York City area where I grew up to be tourists and spend Thanksgiving with our families. I took the opportunity to buy some of the foods I enjoyed as a kid that simply don’t seem to be available in Arizona.

One of these is Pastina. I bought two boxes of Barilla Pastina, which is the only one I could find. (I think we used to buy Ronzoni.) The Barilla Web site, where I found this nice box shot, has a good description:

There are few children in Italy who do not grow up eating Pastina, the classic tiny pasta stars that parents first serve as a child’s introduction to the delicious world of pasta. Here in America, parents choose Barilla Pastina for their young children because it is made from 100% highest quality durum wheat; is enriched with essential nutrients, such as thiamin, iron, riboflavin and niacin; and is easily digested. And grown-ups love the deliciously nutty flavor of Barilla Pastina, too, especially in soups and simple broths.

When they say “tiny,” they’re not kidding. Pastina makes rice look huge.

We ate Pastina for breakfast many times, usually at my grandmother’s house after a sleepover. My mother’s mother was second-generation Italian; her parents had come to New York with the wave of Italian immigrants in the early 1900s. My mother was born in the Bronx and lived in a true Italian neighborhood until she was 8, when my grandparents moved to northern New Jersey. The Italian influence was pretty heavy on that side of my family, although my mother was fully Americanized. Her brother, who was 16 when they made the move, stayed more Italian. He married a second-generation Italian woman who tried hard to keep the family as Italian as possible throughout the subsequent years.

I’m the product of a third generation Italian mother and second generation German father. I don’t consider myself either nationality; I’m American — whatever that really means.

Back to Pastina. When my grandparents made Pastina, they didn’t follow package directions, which called for the usual boiling and straining of the pasta. Instead, they used far less water and let the tiny pasta soak it all up in cooking. Then, before cooking was done, they dropped a raw egg into the pot and stirred the mixture until the egg was cooked. They served it in bowls with butter. I’m not sure if this is how everyone served Pastina to kids, but it’s the way we had it.

My grandparents are gone now, so I couldn’t call them for a recipe. Instead, I sort of winged it. What I came up with works and is very tasty. Here’s the recipe/instructions for one serving:

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup Pastina
• 2/3 cup water
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste

Cooking Instructions:

1. Combine Pastina and water in a large, deep bowl.
2. Cook on high in microwave for 2 minutes.
3. Stir, add butter.
4. Return to microwave and cook on high 1 minute.
5. Stir, break egg into mixture and stir again to scramble and mix it in.
6. Return to microwave and cook on high 1 minute.
7. Stir one more time.
8. Return to microwave and cook on high 1 more minute.
9. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Please keep in mind that my microwave is 21 years old. I think it’s only 700 watts. So you might have to adjust the cooking times shown here.

After about 3 minutes of cooking, the Pastina should have soaked up most of the water and be tender. (Remember, this pasta is really tiny.) The last two minutes are primarily to cook the egg.

I really like this — it’s true comfort food. If you give it a try or have had it in the past, please share your comments about it here. Use the Comments link or form below. I’d love to hear from you — especially if you grew up in an Italian household and enjoyed this for breakfast, as I did.

The best of both worlds.

I love chocolate chip cookies. I also love oatmeal cookies. So what could be better than two cookies in one?

• 1 cup (2 sticks) margarine or butter. (I admit I usually use margarine, but sometimes I use one stick of each.)
• 1-1/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional; I include it)
• 2-1/2 cups uncooked oatmeal. You can use either quick or old fashioned, but I think it tastes better with old fashioned.
• 1 12-oz package semi-sweet chocolate morsels
• 1 cup coarsely chopped nuts (optional; I don’t include them)

Heat oven to 375°F. Beat together margarine and sugars until creamy. Add eggs, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Add combined flour, baking soda, and salt; mix well. Stir in oats, chocolate morsels, and nuts; mix well.

Baking instructions when you have time to spare:
Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 9 to 10 minutes for a chewy cookie or 12 to 13 minutes for a crisp cookie. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove to wire rack.

Baking instructions when you’re busy with other things:
Lay a sheet of wax paper or aluminum foil on the bottom of a standard-sized sheet pan. Spread the batter evenly over the paper, making sure you bring the batter right to the lip of the pan. Bake about 15 minutes or until batter starts to brown. Cool 5 minutes on pan, then lift paper out to flat surface such as a large cutting board. Using downward strokes with a large knife, cut into squares.

Baking instructions when you want to bake it another day:
Using floured hands on a floured surface batter into one or more log-shaped rolls about 1-1/2 to 2 inches in diameter. Wrap rolls tightly in aluminum foil. Refrigerate up to 2 days. (I’m not sure about freezing this; you might want to give it a try with a small quantity of batter.) When ready to bake, unwrap and slice rolls into 1/2-inch thick slices. Bake on ungreased baking sheet for 10 to 12 minutes.

Cool completely. Store in tightly covered container.

Yields: about 5 dozen cookies (or equivalent bars).

Something different.

I spent most of the day cleaning out my closet, doing errands, and sending out take-down notices to file hosting companies illegally distributing my ebooks. It’s this last task that I found most depressing. There are hundreds of pirate sites out there and getting my book off one server is like stomping out a fire in hell. There’s always another fire to stomp out. Always. But I just can’t give up.

To cheer myself up, I thought I’d make myself a chocolate egg cream. But when I opened the fridge to pull out ingredients, my eyes fell upon the Jones Vanilla Cream soda. What would happen, I mused, if I mixed that with milk? Would I wind up with a vanilla egg cream?

I tried it. It worked.

The recipe:

• 8-10 ounces milk. I use 2% because that’s what we buy at home.
• 1 12-oz can vanilla cream soda. Jones works.

Put the milk in a very large glass. It should be only half full. Slowly pour in the pop, stirring constantly. Stirring is important; if you don’t stir, it will overflow. Pop in a straw and enjoy.

I think that if you used skim milk and diet soda, this might be low-calorie. But I don’t drink diet soda. I hate the taste of artificial sweeteners.

Good on salmon.

Everyone knows what it’s like to be at the right place at the right time. It’s when special things happen.

We were at the right place — Mike’s mom’s apartment — at the right time — when a neighbor came by with vacuum-sealed packages of freshly frozen salmon. The neighbor and her husband had just returned from a trip to Alaska, where her husband had gone salmon fishing. He’d had 50 pounds of salmon shipped home. Evidently, their freezer wasn’t big enough to accommodate it all.

The salmon looked beautiful and was frozen solid. She was gracious enough to give us three packages of it — enough to feed six people. We stopped off at the local supermarket for a cooler bag and stored the fish and some ice in it for the trip back to Arizona.

One piece remained pretty much frozen solid. The other two were defrosted, but very cold. We had one for dinner last night and will probably eat the other tomorrow.

During dinner last night, Mike said it might have been the best salmon he’d ever had in his life. I certainly can’t remember having any salmon that was better.

To go with it, I wanted to make some dill sauce. Dill goes really well with fish, especially salmon. A nice sauce would be a change in the way we usually eat salmon — just grilled with salt, pepper, and lemon. I asked Mike to pick up a packet of Knorr dill sauce mix at the local supermarket. As might be expected, they didn’t have any. They didn’t have any fresh dill, either. So Mike came home with a squeeze tube of “dill blend.” I read the ingredients. Dill was one of them. I couldn’t pronounce many of the others. But, in an effort to make the best of a not-perfect situation, I set about finding a dill sauce recipe that I could make with what I had in the house, which did not include cream, sour cream, yogurt, or anything resembling cream.

I tracked down a recipe that used mayonnaise. We had some of that. Although the recipe didn’t sound very enticing, we had plenty of dill blend to spare and I figured it was worth a shot.

Here’s the recipe as I modified it:

• 3/4 cup mayonnaise. The original recipe called for 1-1/2 cups, which was way too much for my taste. (Keep in mind that when I was a kid, I wouldn’t touch mayo. I was an adult before I started using it (sparingly) on sandwiches.)
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice. That seemed about right, even with less mayonnaise.
• 2 tablespoons dill weed. The original recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon, which wasn’t nearly enough. I assumed the recipe called for dried dill weed rather than fresh (my preferred type) or “blend.” I just squeezed in a bunch of the green stuff Mike had brought home and added more, after stirring, to get the right color. I wanted to be able to see and taste the dill.

Combine all ingredients, mix well, and refrigerate for an hour. I think the hour is very important if you’re using dry dill weed, as it will provide enough time for the oils in the mayo to hydrate the dill and release its flavors. If you’re using fresh, chop it up before adding it. And, of course, if you’re using tubed “dill blend,” the flavors have already been released in the factory, where some of them may have remained, along with that fresh dill aroma.

The resulting mix reminded me a bit of tartar sauce (which is another thing I only recently started eating). But it tasted very good with the salmon. I’ll make it again with the real deal dill sometime in the future.

Or maybe I’ll just make a proper dill sauce with the right ingredients next time.

One of my favorite condiments.

Up until about 15 years ago, the only time in my life I’d ever had chutney was back in my college days. I was dating a guy with rich parents and they ate well. Sometimes, if we were lucky, we’d get to go with them. There was an Indian restaurant right off Second Avenue in the Sixties — my brain is saying 62nd Street, but I really can’t be sure. That was my introduction to Indian food, including curry, tandoori, poori, and mango chutney.

I liked what I ate. (That is the story of my life, isn’t it?)

Years ago, I ran across this recipe for mango chutney and figured I’d give it a try. It was easy enough to make and the pint yield held up remarkably well in my refrigerator. I mean really well. We were still eating it two years later with no sign of it going bad. I guess it’s the vinegar.

What’s this good on? My favorite is pork tenderloin. You grill up the tenderloins whole, then slice them into 3/4-inch medallions. Spoon on a little chutney and let the hot pork and cold tanginess of the chutney roll around in your mouth a bit before you swallow. Heaven. Good with a salad that has some kind of mildly sweet dressing, like a raspberry vinaigrette or honey mustard.

Here’s the mango chutney recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 pound mango, coarsely chopped. I use the frozen cubed mango and chop each cube into 4 or 6 pieces. It sure beats peeling and slicing fresh mango and I bet no one can tell the difference when it’s done.
• 1 cup golden raisins. You can use the regular kind if you can’t find goldens.
• 1 cup packed brown sugar. This is an excellent recipe for using up brown sugar that has solidified in an improperly closed bag. But fresh brown sugar won’t hurt it.
• 3/4 cup vinegar. I use white vinegar.
• 1 jar (2-7/8 ounces) crystallized ginger, finely chopped. I don’t know what kind of jarred ginger they’re talking about. Here on the edge of nowhere, I can get crystallized ginger in a little 3-oz bag. Close enough.
• 1 clove garlic, chopped. I chop it really fine.
• 1 teaspoon salt. I probably put a little less than that.

Instructions:
Place all ingredients in a sauce pan and heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 45 minutes or until slightly thickened. Remove from heat, cool. Place in a sealed container — a canning jar works well for this; I avoid plastic for anything I want to keep long term — and store in refrigerator. Serve with pork (as discussed above) or Indian curry dishes.

I should probably mention somewhere that this doesn’t really smell very good while it’s cooking. After all, you are cooking vinegar. Not worth leaving the house for, but certainly not something you’d cook up when you’re trying to fill the house with nice aromas.

If you try this recipe and like it, please do let me know. Also let me know what else it’s good with. The only reason it lasts so long here is that I only eat it with pork — and I’m the only one in the house who does!

A recipe from the Westin Bay Shore, Vancouver, BC.

I like cereal for breakfast. But I don’t like heavily processed cereals with a lot of mystery ingredients and sugar.

So when I was staying at the Westin in Vancouver last week, I decided to give the muesli item on their breakfast menu a try. One taste and I was hooked. I had it every morning of my stay. And on the last morning, the waitress offered the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked oatmeal (not instant)
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup raisins (they used golden raisins)
1/4 cup canned peaches, drained and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 cup (or more) half and half or milk
2 cups fresh fruit like bananas, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries

Instructions:
Mix the first five ingredients in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, right around breakfast time, the oats should have absorbed all of the half and half or milk. In fact, if the resulting mixture is too dry, you can moisten it up a bit by adding more half and half or milk. The raisins will be plump, too. Dish out the mixture and top with the fresh fruit. Enjoy!

One note here: The recipe I got called for a mixture of cream and whole milk. That’s half and half, isn’t it? The waitress also said you can cut calories and fat by using just milk. If you do this, use whole milk — I don’t think lowfat milk would make the result as creamy and rich.

Technorati Tags: fruit, muesli, oats, food