TIPS FROM STEVEN JENKINS
Stop at four cheeses: "To serve more than three or four cheeses at a time is an insult to all the other ones that you've chosen."

Offer variety: "Make sure that all three or four cheeses you've chosen are as different from each other as possible ... in terms of intensity of flavor, the style of flavor, the texture, and the animal." Get a goat, a cow, and a sheep, Jenkins says. "Get something that's gushy, that you could just poke at and not even use a knife with, and then I want you to go increasingly more firm texture."

Ugly is beautiful: "Opt for cheeses that are funky-looking, that are rustic-looking, that are primitive-looking—cheeses you never see in a supermarket because they're rough or pebbly or gnarly or moldy. That's going to be a cheese that's worthy of you."

Old-time Chinese orchardists treated peaches with such reverence that they could be planted only within the royal precincts of the emperor. Their peaches were classified in one of two ways: golden (yellow flesh) or silver (white flesh). To the tribe of rare silver peaches belongs the mouthwatering peento (originally pan tao), the intensely flavored and odd-shaped peach we now know in the United States as the ‘Saturn’ peach. (Most U.S. peaches are yellow-fleshed varieties.) Low in acidity, much sweeter than yellow peaches and with almond overtones, ‘Saturn’ peaches simply taste better than other varieties. Plus, they’re easier to eat out of hand. The tiny pit doesn’t cling to the white flesh — you can pop it out with your thumb. Furthermore, ‘Saturn’ peach trees produce an abundant harvest, and the fruit’s thin red skin has little or no fuzz so it doesn’t have to be peeled.

Chinese Peach Soup

While it may seem criminal to cook ‘Saturn’ peaches*, this 18th century Chinese recipe (from the court of the Ch’ing Dynasty) takes full advantage of their delicate flavor. It makes a great starter course either hot or cold. The following is an adaptation.

6 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
2 cups peach juice (or water)
2 tbsp butter (the Chinese use lard)
1 pound peaches, pared, seeded and chopped into small pieces
1 tbsp rose water

Combine the sugar, cornstarch and juice or water in a work bowl, whisking until the starch is completely dissolved. Heat the butter in a deep saucepan until it melts, then add the sugar mixture. Add the peaches and cook over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, or until soft. Pour this mixture into a blender or food processor and purée until smooth and creamy. Return the soup to the saucepan and bring it to a gentle boil. Remove from heat and add the rose water. Serve immediately or chill to serve cold.

Serves 4 to 6 as a starter.

French Peach Soup

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 white peach
* 1 yellow peach
* 2-1/2 cups water
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1 bag peach tea
* 1/4 teaspoon lime zest
* peach ice cream, homemade or purchased (see homemade recipe link above)

PREPARATION:
1. Simmer the water and sugar together, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, add the tea bag and the zest and steep for 5 minutes. Discard the tea bag. Chill until cold.

Just before serving, peel and cut the peaches into 1/4-inch dice. Stir into the chilled syrup.

To serve: Divide the soup among 4 shallow bowls and top each with a scoop of peach ice cream.

ROAST CAPON WITH CHILE-CILANTRO RUB
(from Gourmet with my modifications)

Active time: 45 min Start to finish: 2 hr

1 (4-lb) capon or roasting chicken
4 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon pure mild red chile powder such as ground ancho
2 teaspoons ground cumin
3 tablespoons olive oil
Butter as needed

Rinse capon and snip away any excess fat from cavity using kitchen shears. Pat capon dry and season with salt inside and out. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

While capon is standing, mash garlic to a paste with salt using a mortar and pestle. Add cilantro, chile powder, cumin, and butter and mash to a paste again.

Arrange capon, breast side up, with neck toward you, and gently work your fingers between skin and flesh of breast, working your way down to thighs. Rub one third of spice mixture under skin of breast and thighs. Rub another third of butter mixture in cavity of bird, then tie legs together with kitchen string (or not - this is done to ensure even cooking with bigger birds usually, or for aesthetic purposes).

Put capon in a buttered roasting pan. Roast in middle of oven 30 minutes. Remove pan from oven and set oven to 450 degrees. Brush top and sides of bird with remaining mixture then return to oven (tent capon with foil if it gets too brown), until a thermometer inserted 2 inches into fleshy part of a thigh registers 170°F, about 20 minutes.

Let capon stand 20 minutes before carving.

The chicken came from a nearby farm, where one buys the chicks at birth and pays for their food, lodging, and education until they are plump enough to return the favor, at least for the food part. Muriel, the lady of the house, had slow-baked it in one of those clay pots from Alsace and Germany called Römertopf with whole garlic cloves, a quartered lemon, and fresh herbs from the garden. Maxence took care of the carving (he seems to be the appointed chicken carver wherever we go, it is such a useful skill to possess) and the platter of chicken parts was brought to the garden table with sides of mashed potatoes and green beans, and a saucière (gravy boat) of golden brown cooking juices, in which the softened garlic cloves were paddling about, ready to have their pungent-sweet pulp smooched out and used as a condiment.

* These recipes are quoted from a book called Recettes gourmandes du Poitou-Charentes by Francis Lucquiaud, a collection of the author's grandmothers' recipes.

Le Poulet de Muriel

1 large free-range chicken, about 2 kilos (4 pounds)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Fine sea salt, freshly ground pepper
1 large head garlic
1 organic lemon, cut in four quarters
4 sprigs of fresh thyme
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

Rub the skin of the chicken with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper on all sides, and place it, breasts-side up, in a clay pot or cast-iron cocotte large enough to accomodate it. Peel the outer layers off the head of garlic to separate the individual cloves -- don't peel the cloves themselves. Arrange the cloves, lemon, and herbs around the chicken.

Put the lid on, slip the pot in the cold (not preheated) oven, and turn the oven on to 150°C (300°F). Bake for three hours, or until cooked through (if you have a meat thermometer, insert it in the inner part of a thigh: the chicken is done when the thermometer registers 82°C / 180°F), basting the chicken with its own juices every 45 minutes or so.

Transfer the chicken to a cutting board, carve the different serving parts, and transfer to a warm serving dish (pour very hot water from the kettle into it and let stand as you cut the chicken). Transfer the juices, herbs, and cloves to a gravy boat, and serve immediately, with green beans and mashed potatoes.






Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle.

Via The Brass Blog is this delightful recipe for Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle. Makes me hungry just to read it. Time to start thinking about holiday cooking I guess.








Home made barbecue sauce.

Via Bribe Me With A Muffin is this excellent recipe for home-made barbecue sauce. Maybe if I keep posting enough scrumptious recipes I'll get off my rear and start cooking something. This one sounds very easy.








Chocolate cake.

Via Cooking for Engineers, a great food and general purpose cooking blog, is this recipe for chocolate cake. Just putting the link up so that I don't forget. The recipe sounds really good, and I like the well illustrated instructions. Makes things a lot easier. Really need to start making chocolate cakes again, haven't for a long while.






Mixed berry muffins.

If I'm going to get back into blogging, I think I better focus more on the good things, such as cooking, and less on the political stuff. Have to keep my blood pressure under control. If you're a food fan, the Food Blog has an enormous list of food related web sites, hundreds of them from all over the world. There's also an entry with some favorites, such as the Exploring the Silver Spoon, supposedly the bible of Italian cooking, and Here and There, all about chocolate, cooking and gardening. In Bribe Me With A Muffin, out of Boston, there was this wonderfully sounding mixed berry muffin recipe. I used to make muffins a lot but haven't for a while. Will have to get back into it. They're very easy and quick to make, and quite delicious.






The Cook's Thesaurus.

Stopped by Andrea Flick's weblog over in Germany, and she had some nice links regarding food and cooking.

I particularly liked the The Cook's Thesaurus, which is "a cooking encyclopedia that covers thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools. Entries include pictures, descriptions, synonyms, pronunciations, and suggested substitutions." The food of the month is chocolate, and they offer up some quick tips.


A couple other useful links she gives are this one to a food-related discussion on Metafilter, and one to Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages, which contains info on 117 (so far) different kinds of herbs and spices.

Andrea's site is always interesting. She's one of the original bloggers and always has some interesting links, and usually some great photos as well. Particularly good if you understand German, since she writes in both that and English.






Mad Cow USA: The Nightmare Begins.

Via This Modern World and Alternet is this article by John Stauber entitled Mad Cow USA: The Nightmare Begins. A long and well informed summation of the history of the problem, which is not new at all.


It goes on and on. Good stuff. I'd forgotten about Oprah being sued for disparaging the beef industry. But I shouldn't have. If I've learned one thing, dig deep enough into any crisis or problem in America and you hit the lawyers. Always, always, always.






The history of chocolate.

On a more pleasant note, the NY Times reports on an exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History called simply "Chocolate."






Cheese cake recipes.

Some utterly scrumptious sounding recipes over at Halley's Comment.

I'm just starting to appreciate the blog's use as a handy dandy notepad available from anywhere on the web. So three years from now, long after anyone's still reading those archives, I can look it up if I think of it. How nice. I have however long since come to think of the internet as god's desk, if you know what I mean, so it fits.

---

End of entries.