As Mary Bailey Said, "Salt, so our Life May Have Flavor!"

Here is the thing about tomatoes this time of year. They are the best thing ever. This is a universally known fact. Even people who don't necessarily care for tomatoes realize that summer tomatoes are the best tomatoes. The thing is, even the most perfect tomato needs at least one thing (and, typically a couple more) if you want to maximize that deep, juicy summer goodness. That thing? Salt. Right now there are purists gasping for air, hypertensives who have been living on reduced sodium diets are angrily denying that any adulteration, let alone something so overused as mere salt, does anything other than bastardize the flavor of those tomatoes that have been sitting on the vine, getting a tongue bath from the sun and waiting only to be picked and eaten as one of nature's perfect foods. The thing is, I know I'm right. And if they're being honest, they know I'm right, too. By the way, did you know that the root word for "salad" is "salt"? Technically speaking (and I mean by the strictest of technicalities), if it doesn't have salt it's not a salad. Just something to keep in mnd. I don't say any of this to taunt people who have to avoid, for one reason or another, salt on their tomatoes. If you have learned to live without salt on your tomatoes, please don't relapse on my account. I am well-aware that salt is overused in the American diet and, truth be told, I could probably could stand to cut down on my own sodium intake. But some things need salt, dammit. A good piece of beef, hell, the best piece of beef will only get better if it is appropriately salted. Potatoes, that starchy roots that have actually fed entire nations are just not so good without salt. Tomatoes are like that. When I was a kid my parents had a garden and they would let me go out and pick and eat anything I wanted. One of my favorite things was to pick a fresh, red tomato, still warm from the midday sun, and eat it like hand fruit right there in the garden. And as great as it was, it only got better when my dad suggested that I take the salt shaker out to the garden with me and salt the tomato as I took bites. It was in that garden, as a ten year-old, that I really started learning about making salads. It was there that I learned that salt really makes tomatoes better. It was tomatoes and cucumbers from that garden that taught me my first lesson in honoring great ingredients by treating them simply but well and relying on the ingredients to make the impact on your tongue. Like some of my other posts here, I can't really provide a good recipe so much as some suggestions on how to treat your ingredients and make something delicious. You will probably like your salad different than I like mine and I already see that others have posted their own tomato salad recipes. I post this less to compete with other very good recipes and more to give suggestions on how to maximize the bounty of whatever summer tomatoes you are able to get. Start with some really beautiful tomatoes. You want them at the peak of ripeness. If you are feeling extra fancy, as I sometimes tend to do, blanch them and peel them. The peel makes them harder to cut, harder to chew and it disrupts the silky succulence of the flesh of the tomato. This is a strictly optional step but, as I have said, the tomatoes you get this time of year are worthy of the honor of a little extra trouble. And peeling them is simple, if a bit time consuming. All you have to do is get a pot of water boiling and drop in your tomatoes for about thirty seconds. Scoop them out and drop them into a bowl of ice water. Leave them there until you've blanched them all and had them cool in the ice bath. Scoop them out yet again and cut out the core with a small, sharp knife. From here, the skins of the tomatoes should slip off very easily. As you peel the tomatoes, cut them into wedges. You probably want to cut each tomato into eight evenly-sized wedges, but if your tomatoes are really large or pretty small, you might want to adjust them. The point is that your salad should be composed of tomato pieces that are all approximately the same size. By the way, this salad is even better and far prettier if you are able to find heirloom tomatoes of different colors. After you have all your peeled tomatoes cut into pieces, salt them liberally but not overwhelmingly. I prefer to use kosher salt for this step but if you only have table salt, it can work at this stage. How much salt is too much is a kind of tough question to answer. I'd say a very rough parameter is 1-2 teaspoons for a pound or so of tomatoes, but you'll have to develop a feel for it. The thing is, muchof this salt is going to go away anyway. Even if you are kind of heavy-handed with the salt, this “recipe” is very forgiving. And here is why. Don't put those tomatoes in a bowl. Put them in your colander and then sprinkle the salt over them. Now, gently toss them to get the salt evenly distributed. Put the colander in a bowl and then allow the tomatoes to drain for awhile. And hour or so is good. When you come back, you will see liquid in the bowl. What you've done is drain off some of the water in the tomatoes. While the salt has seasoned them, it's also served to concentrate the tomato flavor. That water can be discarded although I like to put it in the fridge, chill it and mix it with vodka for a refreshing tomato water cooler. Do as you wish. Now that you have seasoned tomatoes, the best thing you can do is treat them simply. Put them in a bowl and add some finely chopped “soft” herbs. I like a nice chiffonade (very finely sliced/shredded) of basil, some finely chopped chives and a few fronds of dill that have also been chopped up. Maybe you like parsley, cilantro or chervil. Add what you like but I would caution you against harder herbs like thyme and rosemary; while the flavors might be good, those herbs are pretty tough and hard to chew and they will disturb the texture you are trying to achieve. You will also want to add some allium, the botanical family that includes garlic, onion, shallot and the like. My preference is to use red onion and/or maybe a little sweet onion like Vidalia. Cut it finely into super-thin half-moon slices and separate them. If they taste super strong of onion, rinse them in a strainer under cold water for a bit to tame the onion-y bite. Me, I like onion and dressing the salad will calm them down enough for me. Another great member of the allium family to use here is shallot. They're oniony too, but much milder and don't need to be tempered with a cold rinse. Into the pool with them. Grind in some black pepper. Now, gently toss these wedges of summer so that everything is evenly mixed. At this point your salad is almost finished. All it needs is some good acid and some silky, buttery olive oil. These ingredients are simple, but they are critical to your finished salad. For the acid, you can use vinegar or you can use lemon juice. But don't make the mistake of using bottled lemon juice. These tomatoes deserve fresh-squeezed lemon juice. If you use vinegar, the salad calls for the best vinegar you can get. Don't use plain white vinegar and avoid apple cider vinegar too. My preference is for red wine vinegar, but white wine and champagne vinegars works just as well. I would caution you to avoid “flavored” or “herbed” vinegars. There is nothing wrong with those products, but they can sometimes taste a little funky and the point here is that you are flavoring your salad your way. Why would you go to so much trouble to customize your tomato salad and then use garlic vinegar? If you want garlic, just mince some and add it yourself. I'd also suggest that balsamic vinegar, while tasty, will produce a muddy-looking salad that won't be so appealing to look at. I've never used so-called “white balsamic,” but that might be an option. In the end, the only rule is that there isn't a rule. If you like garlic-and-orange flavored white wine vinegar, who am I to argue with you? If you love the taste of balsamic vinegar to the point that you don't care how the salad looks, you don't need my permission, but you have it anyway. Hell, if you enjoy the flavor the malt vinegar they use at Long John Silver's, I won't judge you or tell anyone. Finally, add olive oil. How much you want will depend on the type of acid you add and how much you use, but a 2-1 or 3-1 ratio (oil to vinegar) usually works pretty well for me. Olive oil is not where you want to skimp. Use the good stuff. Full-flavored, thick and green. This is what makes your salad luxurious. Again, as we've discussed, you want to honor those tomatoes. Do it by using the best ingredients you can. My olive oil of choice is Nunez de Prado from Spain. I find it to be thick, unctuous, fruity, grassy and everything I want in an olive oil. Again, you should do what you like. Gently swirl on the olive oil and stir your salad. Now, taste it. It might still be underseasoned, but I'd bet against it. If it IS underseasoned, now is the time to judiciously add a bit more salt, but this time don't use the same kosher or or table salt you used before. Try using a “boutique” salt like fleur del sel or maybe Maldon sea salt. These salts have larger and more irregular crystals which will have a tougher time dissolving in the salad, meaning you will get a nice salty crunch when you chew your tomatoes. If you do add a “finishing salt,” do so at the very last second so that you can help avoid dissolving the salt in the dressing. I know I've set you up to go to a lot of trouble to make a simple dish. The thing is, even though you can get “tomatoes” all year-round, these tomatoes are different than the so-hard-they're-crunchy winter tomatoes you can get at the megamart in January. These tomatoes are a treat every bit as special as a truffle. Even if they're easier and cheaper to obtain than those truffles, they deserve to be treated like the gift they are.

The Fortress of Solitude, but With Tomatoes

I became a newlywed in June, 2001. I got married a little later in my life than did many of my contemporaries and, as a result, I was set in my ways and almost certainly a pain in the ass to live with for that summer. My wife, who is the same age as me, was a once-divorced mother of one, so I spent that summer learning to live with not one person but two, one of them being a nine year-old boy. Also, we’d adopted two dogs from a shelter. Every party living in that house, including the dogs (who had been taken to a no-kill shelter by a family who liked the dogs just fine but couldn’t abide their constant barking), had experience living with someone else. Everyone except me, of course. Sure, I’d had roommates but, as anyone who has ever had a roommate and lived with a romantic partner will tell you, in terms of experience, the two are about as far apart as Pop Warner football and interstellar space travel. Other than some shared financial burden, you really don’t have to communicate with a roommate if you don’t want to. And, unless you are a “roommate with benefits,” I have to assume the fights lack a certain electricity because of the missing component of sex. So, I spent the summer of 2001 learning to live with a wife, a boy and two dogs. This was not an entirely easy transition for me. Living alone as long as I had made me finely attuned to “my stuff,” and how it was to remain untouched by anyone except me. I still struggle with this impulse and my wife will comment about how I am “turning this into a ‘my stuff’ thing” if I am being uncharitable to the 18 year-old man about to head off to Americorps and who has replaced the nine year-old boy who was the ring-bearer at my wedding. Don’t misunderstand me, I am not the only one who had to make adjustments. In fact, I’m not sure who had to make more or more difficult adjustments; me for the reasons referenced above or my new so-called "blended" family who had to become accustomed to sharing a residence with this possessive, slovenly dude who didn’t necessarily understand what was normal for a nine year-old boy, having not been one in decades and having never lived with one. At the time I was sure that it was me who was more put upon. “Hey, they’d been to my house a kajillion times before I married them (yes, I viewed it as marrying both of them, not just her); they knew what they were getting into. I was ALWAYS in control of the TV when they came over.” Of course, I was wrong. Way wrong. They had to make more and bigger adjustments. They’d already had a life without me. They didn’t need me, but they wanted me. My adjustments involved my own selfishness and how to make sure that particular beast was sated. Their adjustments involved making charitable allowances for me acting the role of selfish jerk. They were the ones who seem to have arrived at the understanding that they’d accepted me in their lives and that I must have been worthy, despite the fact that for a period of time I kept trying to live my life as if I was the only one in it who mattered. Thank god they had the patience to let me work out the kinks in my marriage legs. Still, when tomato season rolled around, late in the summer of 2001, I was a jittery newlywed. I was happy to be married but wondering why I couldn’t be alone more often. I’d been an incredibly lonely bachelor before I met my (then-future) wife and I certainly wasn’t lonely anymore, but I kept thinking that there must be some way to find a happy medium, some way to enjoy these people who lived in my house (yes, I am ashamed to admit that I occasionally thought of it that way) but still be alone when I wanted and also to maintain dominion over MY stuff. It was with that backdrop that my wife’s cousin got married. Well, I imagine her cousin probably didn’t think of it that way at all, but that’s how I, narcissistically, thought of it. As my wife and son (I don’t really care for the term stepson and never have although I am forced to use it on occasion) were both students, they were able to travel, with my mother-in-law to the wedding. The wedding was to be held far enough away that it qualified as real travel. As school was not yet in session, they both had the wherewithal to go for a whole week and enjoy the offerings Colorado in August presented. I, however, was employed and, having taken off a fair amount of time for my wedding and honeymoon, couldn’t really make the trip with them. Secretly, I was glad. They’d be gone for a week and I could go back to a short vacation in the bachelor’s dream life mythology I’d mysteriously invented for myself (but never actually experienced) after I got married. No, there wouldn’t be women. But there could be wine and song, couldn’t there? I could stay up late all week if I wanted to. I could watch what I wanted on the television. I could follow the in the footsteps of George Costanza and eat a block of cheese the size of a car battery. I could drink what I wanted at whatever bar I chose every night. I was looking forward to that week, let me tell you. The only things that would need my attention during my family’s absence were the dogs and the garden in the back yard. The funny thing about gardens in August is that they tend to explode. From May to late July you get a steady but not ridiculous stream of vegetables and you’re okay with it. You make some salads, you sauté something, you eat well. But in July it’s like you have a horn of plenty in your back yard. Every morning you see fully developed cucumbers that you swear weren’t there yesterday. Every evening a bumper crop of tomatoes that were hard green that morning have gotten to the peak of ripeness and beg you to pick them or lose them. I have never understood this phenomenon but it hit me hard the week my family went on vacation. Suddenly my bachelor’s paradise was ass-over-teakettle. I had to do something with this incredible stream of tomatoes for which I could only blame myself and my inability to stop overplanting. I took boxes of veg to the office but my co-workers were satiated by Tuesday morning. I ate massive salads. I took vegetables to my new neighbors who had welcomed us only a few months before. And still the tomatoes kept coming. What are you supposed to do when you have the house to yourself and want nothing more than to have a steak, a steak sandwich or something involving big meat while you watch kung fu movies? Is it too much to ask that in addition to dominion over my television that nature bend to my will as well? So, my week in bachelor’s paradise was spent “putting up” (as my grandmother called it) tomatoes. I’d seen my mother do this when I was a kid and I called her for advice. Canning didn’t seem all that difficult. I read The Joy of Cooking, an older edition as the current ones have taken out most everything to do with canning and preserving, and I went to the hardware store and bought a pressure canner, jars, lids, everything I’d need to create glistening jars of tomatoes to keep in my basement for the upcoming winter. Some bachelor I turned out to be. From steak and hunks of cheese to a task considered (wrongly) by many to be the most housewifely of all. My wife thinks I am a Depression-era housewife in the body of a Gen-X man in terms of my refusal to throw anything away and I have to say she has a point. I hate throwing stuff away and there was no way I was going to lose those tomatoes. So, I started canning. And I kept canning. And I developed a real sense of purpose while I was doing it. The thing is, canning is pretty boring. It’s also hot and sweaty. Add in the real but minuscule danger of botulism and you start wanting to do other stuff with those tomatoes. So, I looked up a recipe for ketchup which I then tweaked the hell out of. That was the best ketchup I have ever had. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I could duplicate it here as it was a mad scientist dash through my spice rack and hours and hours of constant low-level simmering and stirring because the tomatoes I used weren’t plum tomatoes with relatively low moisture, but were a mix of beefsteak, Brandywines, cherries and whatever else the garden was yielding. I have tried to duplicate that ketchup and have come close, but I haven’t nailed it and so I’m not going to try and tell you how to make it. What I will share with you, though, is my discovery that week of roasted tomato soup. I recall thinking of this recipe that hot sweaty week when I figured “what the hell, this kitchen can’t get any hotter. Why not use the oven?” I’d seen something similar on a television show for a tomato sauce and adapted that technique here. Roasting tomatoes drives off a lot of the water and concentrates and caramelizes the tomatoes, making a soup with an especially vivid tomato punch. And even though I had at least one steak that week, this soup was the best thing I ate. Roasted Tomato Soup Take your tomatoes and core them. This will work with any amount of tomatoes and you need only adjust the proportions of your other flavors to get them how you like. Cut them at least in half cross-wise and gently squeeze out the seeds and pulp. Some people say that the best, most essential flavor of the tomato is in those seed pods and they have a point, but I don’t like the seeds in the finished soup. Leave them in if you want. If your tomatoes are especially large, you might want to cut them into quarters. Put them in a bowl and toss them with olive oil to coat and sprinkle the liberally with salt (about 1 teaspoon per pound of tomatoes) and put them all in a roasting pan or rimmed cookie sheet. Now take one or two whole heads of garlic (use more if you like a lot of garlic, use less if you don’t) and cut them in half. Rub the cut garlic side with olive oil as well and put that in the pan. Now, take some fresh basil (left on the stalk if possible) and bury that basil underneath the tomatoes (the idea is to keep the basil from drying out or burning but still leaving its flavor with the tomatoes). If you have some parsley or other soft herbs, you can treat it the same as the basil if you like. I also like a few sprigs of fresh thyme. Now, put the pan in a moderate-to-hot (I usually go 350 but 400 would work too) oven and walk away for at least an hour. Depending on the juiciness of your tomatoes, an hour may not be enough. You don’t want to dry out the tomatoes completely but you want to drive off a lot of excess water and concentrate the tomato flavor. Ideally, you don’t want a lot of free liquid in the bottom of your pan but when the tomatoes still look a bit juicy but a bit caramelized around the edges, that’s when I take them out. From here, how you make your soup into actual soup is up to you. I have used a food mill and I find that it does a great job of removing the skins and any seeds you may have missed (as well as making the soup the perfect consistency), but my food mill is a pain in the ass to use and it isn’t usually my go-to option. You can use an immersion blender, but I have a little trouble getting the skins fine enough that I don’t notice them. I usually use a blender or a food processor with this but the down side, especially to the blender, is that it whips a lot of air into the soup and it takes away that deep, candy-colored red of the soup into something a step closer to the canned cream of tomato soup I was given with grilled cheese sandwiches as a child. If you want to remove the air, put your soup into a saucepan and add a little water to loosen it and then gently simmer until the water you added is boiled off and the soup has returned to its previous sin-colored red. Anyway, make sure you put in all the tomatoes and squeeze the roasted garlic into your instrument if pureeing. I usually leave the basil out because its flavor has leached into the tomatoes, but you can toss it in as well. If you use a food processor, it’s very easy to get this soup completely smooth, but I actually prefer that it have a little texture. Make it how you like it. After you have pureed your soup through your means of choice adjust the seasoning, into a bowl with it and generously drizzle with your best olive oil. It's possible, if you over-roasted the tomatoes, that this might be a little dry and thick. If that happens, no big deal, loosen it with a bit of water or chicken stock or even something like vermouth until you have the correct consistency. If you want, take some fresh basil and finely chop it into super thins shreds (what chefs and “foodies” call a chiffonade) and sprinkle them on top. Afterword About half way through Tomato-nee-Bachelor Week I was sitting down and enjoying a bowl of this tomato soup. I was sweaty and my back hurt from all the time I had been spending on my feet. Precious little kung fu had been watched. I had MY stereo playing MY music at full blast when something amusing occurred to me. I have no idea what it was. I’m the type of guy who tends to recall my own jokes (which is not a nice thing to admit or one of my better qualities, but it’s true), but that one has escaped me because very quickly after I made that joke to an empty house (MY empty house), I realized that no one was around to laugh at it. And I was just a little saddened by that fact. When Amy and Will came home a few days later, I was very happy to see them. And I still am happy to see them every day. I still get little blips of solitude, but the desire to act like a jackass has largely disappeared over the years and I find myself gladdened by that news and by the knowledge that it was those two (and my daughter, born three years into our marriage) that have made me worry much less about my stuff.

A Corny Story of Love and Proposal

During the period of my courtship, I had a job that required a fairly significant amount of travel. I was never one of those people you’d call a “road warrior,” but I traveled enough that I would be able to occasionally get free or drastically reduced upgrades to first class. However, the places to which I was traveling were so disparate that I could never pledge allegiance to one airline and really rake in the perks for my loyalty. Still, I’d flown enough that I had at my disposal two tickets to pretty much anywhere in the continental US. My then-girlfriend and I decided to use them to take a vacation to wine country. Even though we’d be on separate airlines, we found two flights into San Francisco that landed within an hour of one another and those flights just happened to be on the two airlines which owed me free tickets. I had some concerns about suggesting to my girlfriend that we fly separately, but, fortunately for me, she was a frugal girl who realized that any money saved on airfare would be money that could be spent on wine and restaurants, neither of which necessarily come cheap in Napa Valley. Still, despite the fact that my girlfriend was totally on board with flying separately, I was nervous because of a major detail to which she was not privy: I was going to ask her to marry me. I’d gone to some impossible maneuverings to get a reservation at a very exclusive restaurant in Napa Valley (I don’t like to name drop and I don’t want to publicize that the restaurant bent their reservations policy for l’il old me, a simple country lawyer from Kansas, so I won’t name the place, but if you fashion yourself a “foodie,” like me, you’ve heard of it)) and I was going to pop the question during our fabulous dinner at this fabulous place where, I had been informed, the world-famous chef was going to be in his kitchen that night. My girl was generous to a fault, so I don’t think it would have gone any differently had I said “I’m going to ask you to marry me while we’re in Napa Valley, so let’s take separate flights,” but I was still nervous about the potential fallout from such an audaciously skinflint-y move. Because of my guilty feelings about flying separately, I decided I would do everything I could to make my girlfriend’s flight as pleasant as possible. Which is to say, to make flying coach on a domestic airline at least bearable. I made her a mixtape and gave her my Walkman (this was back when everyone had a portable CD player, but no one had the ability to burn their own CDs.). I even provided some narration based on where I was guessing she was at various points on her trip. For example, I knew the approximate time at which she would stop and have a layover in Denver, so I made some Denver specific commentary and included the song “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver. Still, the worst thing about domestic coach travel in the US isn’t lacking something to do. I knew she’d have a book and my mixtape was to be a pleasant diversion, but wouldn’t assuage the worst thing about commercial air travel. That worst thing? The food. If you’re “lucky” enough to be on a flight where they serve a meal and don’t charge you $299.95 for a sandwich, a bag of cheese crackers and a cup of yogurt, you end up hating yourself for spending that kind of money on THAT kind (the horrible kind) of lunch. And if you are less lucky, there are no meal options on your flight at all. Nope, the thing I was going to have to do was pack my girl the ultimate sack lunch. But what to pack? I didn’t want her to have to fiddle around with utensils and it needed to be something that would taste good if it was cold (as I’d pack it) or got to something like room temperature (because I didn’t want to have to make her deal with cold packs and an actual lunch box, this needed to be something that, when she was finished, the wrappers and other detritus could simply be thrown away). I wanted it to be something she could fit on the little fold-down tray table she would have but not some sprawling five-dish lunch where things would keep falling over or getting bumped when she reached for the next bite of whatever. Most of all, of course, I wanted it to taste good. Of course, as I am a terrible procrastinator, I waited until the night before to actually, you know, do anything about this lunch I had planned. I looked through my fridge, freezer and pantry and found precious little. I had two ears of fresh, farmers’ market corn that I’d previous grilled the day before that were leftovers from a much larger grilling session. I had a tomato, I had a red onion, I had a red bell pepper and some cilantro. In the freezer I had a couple of pork chops and a bottle of vodka. So, I did what needed to be done. I poured myself a shot of the vodka while I contemplated my options. Then I got to work. I decided to make a sandwich of the pork and a salad, served on the sandwich, out of the veg and corn. To have something tasty come out of that mess of random ingredients was one part good luck and two parts seasonal vegetables picked and served at their prime. You might be tempted to think of this as a pork sandwich, but the pork is really an afterthought. If I’d had chicken, duck breasts or even flank steak, I’d have done the exact same thing but subbed in a different protein and no one would have said a thing. No, the star of this picnic lunch, eaten miles in the air while the diner is heading toward a life-altering question, is the corn. The corn is what made this dish. Sweet corn, plump and juicy, but a little charred from the grilling, with a few other things thrown in for color, texture and taste, is one of the great treats and is the star of this dish. Again, don’t be misled by the protein; after I “created” this salad (I use the quotes because there is nothing new under the sun and I have to assume someone, somewhere has done something similar to this dish, I’m just not aware of it), I have made it and had it by itself, meatless. The corn is what gets me every time. What I did was tea-smoke the pork chops. Tea smoking sounds difficult, but it really isn’t. However, while it’s pretty easy, it is a bit of a palaver and does leave with some unenjoyable cleanup. Given that the pork isn’t the star of this show, you could use any smoked, grilled, sautéed or roasted pork chop you have at your disposal. I just happened to go with tea smoking my pork chops because I had the implements available to me, I was out of fuel for my grill and because I’m the type of cook who will go to extra trouble just because. You could just as easily do this with shrimp, chicken or any other cut of meat. If you are a vegetarian, skip the protein altogether. As I said, the star here is the corn. The way I had cooked the corn was to peel back the husks and strip off all the corn silk. Then, I unfolded the husks back up to cover the corn and I soaked the corn in cold water for maybe five minutes. I find that grilling in the husks lets the char and smoky flavor permeate the corn but prevents it from drying out and shriveling in the intense heat of the grill. It’s actually a combination steaming/smoking/grilling method of cooking and, while it may be my imagination, I find it works very well at delivering tasty, plump corn. So, as I said, I started with the base of two ears of corn. I removed this from the cob with a regular kitchen knife, which is very simple to do. Simnply hold the corn perpendicular to your cutting board and cut the corn off in smooth downward strokes. One trick cooks frequently miss when stripping the corn from the cob is that they leave behind a lot of the intense, juicy-milky goodness from each kernel of corn. Look carefully at your now stripped ear of corn and you will find that you left behind a lot of the inside of each individual kernel and you want that because that is where the really intense flavor of the corn resides. Take the back of your knife and scrape down the cob and look how much juicy goodness comes out. You were going to waste that, weren’t you? Well, don’t. Take all your corn kernels and scrapings and put them in a bowl. You can throw away the corn cobs if you want, but I have learned that if you put them in a bag and freeze them, when you are next using your charcoal grill, putting a cob on the hot coals imparts a lovely smoke that you can’t get with any other wood. Add to your corn half a finely minced red onion. Mincing is critical here. Big chunks of onion are going to be strongly flavored and will upset the sweet corn that is…anyone? THE STAR OF THE SHOW! In fact, it’s probably not a bad idea to put that onion in a strainer and rinse it under cold water for a few seconds to really tame the onion bite. Into the pool with the onion. Add one clove of abused garlic. You can abuse yours with a garlic press, a kitchen knife or anyway you want to do it. Normally I use a microplane grater because it really amps up the garlic flavor. However, too much garlic could upset the balance of flavors so I’d mince it here and put it in the bowl. Take your tomato and cut it in half across the equator and gently squeeze out the seed pockets and excess water (you can leave them in, but you really don’t want this to be too wet if you’re going to make a sandwich). Chop the tomato into fine-ish dice; you don’t need it as fine as the minced onion but, again, big chunks aren’t the point here either. Now for your roasted red pepper. Wait, you did roast the pepper and peel off the charred, blackened skin and throw away the seeds, didn’t you? No? (Sigh) OK, go ahead and do that, wouldja? I’ll wait. … OK, all done? Excellent. Take the roasted red pepper and cut it into pieces about the same size as the tomato. Roasting is really a matter of preference as you might like the crunch. I find that the intense sweetness of a roasted pepper, along with the smoky flavors and the silky textures you can only get by roasting are a nice complement, but you should do what you like. Here comes the cilantro; I love, L-O-V-E, LOVE cilantro but maybe you don’t. Chiffonade or finely chop as much as you think you will want and add it. If you are one of those people that absolutely detest cilantro, add in something you do like; I could see chives, dill, parsley or any other “soft” herb in this although basil might blacken if you don’t eat it soon enough. Stir everything gently to combine and now notice how pretty it is, what with the red of the pepper and tomato, the green of the herbs, the purple of the onion and that slightly browned yellow of the corn. Go ahead and admire your work. Now, add one teaspoon of wine vinegar. I prefer red, but you can use white wine or, really, any vinegar you like. Just use good stuff. As I have preached before, honor your ingredients and they will thank you for it as will your dining companion, even if she is 500 miles away from you. I would avoid balsamic vinegar because, as great as it tastes, it will make the salad look kind of muddy; But if you’re in love with balsamic, go right ahead. I have to admit, the sweetness of balsamic would really go with the corn. Add a couple of teaspoons of your best olive oil, again, don’t skimp on quality or quantity. Grind in some fresh black pepper and add a quarter teaspoon or so of dried red pepper flakes, which will give a little zing but not make the dish hot. Add a teaspoon or so of kosher salt and stir to combine. Now, taste it. It probably needs a little more of something, whether it be salt, vinegar or oil. Go ahead and adjust. Once you get it right, the hard work is over. To assemble, take a whole loaf of “French” or “Italian” bread that you got at a supermarket. You can use a real baguette here, but a truly crusty bread will actually lose something here, in my experience. I actually use a loaf that doesn’t really have a crispy crust but that will have a little chew to it. Again, you know your baker better than I do, so pick a bread that you like. Cut it in half, horizontally/lengthwise and scoop out some of the bread from the top and bottom. When finished, you will have a sort of trench. Two trenches, actually. Take your thinly-sliced protein and lay slices of it across the bottom of your trench. Now, pile on your impeccably seasoned sweet corn salad and spread it out evenly and put the top of the loaf back where it came from. Wrap the whole sandwich in plastic and put in your fridge overnight. If you can, put some weights, like a heavy skillet or canned goods on top. The next morning, unwrap the sandwich and cut into sections, making sure to cut carefully so the filling stays in place. Re-wrap the individual sections and send them to Denver with your intended, making sure to take one or two for yourself because you deserve to avoid bad airline food too. Afterword: My plane arrived first so I was able, in those pre-9/11 days, to head to her arrival gate and await her flight. She got off the plane and I said “Hey, Lovergirl,” my pet name for her. The first words out of her mouth were “That was the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten.” They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I say it’s through flattery. Right then, any nerves I might have had about my proposal were pretty much dissipated. Anyone who wants to flatter me upon first sight is right for me. I’d like to say that the sandwich was the best thing I ate in that entire trip but that would be a complete lie; the meal we’d had at the world-famous restaurant remains, to this day, the single best meal I have ever eaten. I can still recite the menu, although that is made easier by the fact that I have a framed copy of it, signed by that world-famous chef, on the wall in the dining room. As you may have guessed, when I proposed, she said yes. And, advance planner that she is, my girl actually was happy about the separate return flights. All the way home to middle-America from the west coast she was able, with the aid of a notebook and pen and without my involvement, to plan pretty much every aspect of our wedding. She so much enjoyed the solitary flight that allowed her to plan our nuptials that she didn’t even notice that I didn’t have a lunch for her to take back.

Gin and Bell Peppers. Don't Knock It 'til You've Tried It

It was hot. Summers in Kansas City are brutal. Imagine summer in Washington, DC but without the entertainment spectacle of congressmen under indictment. Kansas City is noted for it's sprawl and all that concrete and asphalt provides both a reflector of heat as well as a heat sink where all the built up heat over the course of the day accumulates and then keeps things nice and toasty well into the night. 

It was against this backdrop that my wife and I made a trip to Kansas City's famous (at least in Kansas City) American Restaurant. The American is probably Kansas City's best and most expensive restaurant. Julia Child and James Beard, among many others, have dined there. It's current Chef, Debbie Gold, was on the most recent season of “Top Chef: Masters” and Gold and her former husband were winners of a James Beard award for “Best Chef- Midwest” as well as numerous other nominations. Esquire magazine called the restaurant she and her then-husband opened after leaving The American on of the country's twenty best new restaurants. Sadly, her marriage dissolved and the decision was made to close that restaurant. Happily, she went back to The American. 

Anyway, this summer as been ridiculously hot. While the last two weeks have seen a cold front that has made things positively pleasant, most of the summer has been noted by the listlessness-inducing heat. The kind of heat that makes one indolent and saps the will to do anything, especially outside. Against this type of heat we decided to enjoy some white-tablecloth dining. Yes, a large tasting menu combined with the heat would almost certainly make us torpid beyond belief, but at least it would be in an air-conditioned dining room and the meal would be free as we had been given the generous gift of dinner at The American as an anniversary gift from a good friend. 

We decided to make a full night of it. Another friend, through a chain of events I still can't explain, had a free night at one of the better hotels in town. Coincidentally, it had to be THAT night. And, by another coincidence, our friend was unable to use that reservation and she generously gave it to us. So, our evening was shaping up well. A free night in a posh hotel, a free dinner at the best restaurant in the city. An escape from our humdrum existence as suburban parents baking in the July heat. Who could ask for more? Well, it turns out that I could ask for more. And so could my lovely wife. 

We showed up at the hotel a couple of hours early so we could unload our luggage and then, perhaps, enjoy a cocktail at the hotel bar. I had repeatedly asked my wife, who was handling the hotel aspect of the evening, if everything with our reservation was squared away and she assured me it was. So, we went to check in and the front desk looked at us as if we were aliens. The reservation was not in our name, but we thought this had been worked out. It had not. OK, so we drop the name of our friend who had originally made the reservation and, voila, the reservation was there. Of course, neither myself nor my wife were able to produce identification that demonstrated that either of us was the person who had made the reservation and had paid for the room and the desk clerk politely told us that the only way we could have that room was to get our friend to confirm that the reservation should indeed be changed. Many phone and text messages later our friend was still unreachable so we trudged out of the posh hotel, luggage in tow, to try and figure out how we'd kill the next 75 or so minutes. 

As you might imagine in that situation, we were both cranky. I was put out by the fact that I'd asked, many times, about some sort of confirmation that our reservation was set up. The wife was upset about the fact that I was upset and also that our friend had led us to believe everything was taken care of and was then unreachable when it became obvious that everything was decidedly NOT taken care of. Add in the backdrop of stifling heat and a trudge through a hot parking garage that was exactly 234.5 miles from the hotel itself, and tempers were a bit frayed. 

What followed was a “what do you want to do now?” conversation where neither of us wants to do anything because we're both feeling kind of pissy and we both think we're justified in those feelings. We had quite a bit of time to kill before our reservation and the question was whether we wanted to head to the restaurant and kill time in the lounge or find another bar, have a drink or two and then head to our dinner. In the end, we chose to just head to the restaurant and have drinks beforehand. Thank god we did. We got there and they would have been perfectly happy to seat us right there. But, given our respective moods, I suggested that we cool off a bit in the bar. Hopefully, a cooling beverage and a comfortable chair would soothe our tempers and put us in a better frame of mind for our highly anticipated dinner. 

That may have been the best decision I made this summer. 

When we got to the bar, I ordered a sidecar, my standard cooling drink (which is NOT the girl drink my wife suggested I was ordering) and I enjoyed it immensely. As we nursed our cocktails and made small talk with our bartender we learned that he was actually a consultant bartender (apparently of some note, nationally speaking) who had been hired by the restaurant to come up with a new drink menu and to create an array of drinks that would “belong” to the restaurant. I immediately said that for my next drink I wanted him to make me his best drink and I only asked that it be refreshing. His response? “I'm going to make you a Beautiful Red Bell.” Which was really something, because I'd always wanted to be a beautiful red belle, but didn't have the complexion or the legs to pull off the necessary dress. 

Fortunately, the Beautiful Red Bell is a summer drink that relies on gin and ripe red bell peppers. I know the combination sounds odd, but the sweet summery fragrance of the pepper goes with the gin in a way I never would have predicted. I demanded, and received, the recipe for the drink and post it here for your enjoyment. This is best served in a cold martini glass, but I have to think that you could make a whole pitcher of these if you wanted to sip languorously on your veranda while watching the fireflies come out in the still of the evening. 

This may be the best summer drink I've ever had. Better than limoncello, better than a gin & tonic, better even than an ice cold beer standing by the grill while the steaks are cooking. God knows I wish I had a pitcher of these available to me when, after our dinner, we went home to find that the compressor on our home air conditioner had spontaneously combusted while we were out of the house. And that's not a joke. Our AC really did break that night. Still, the memory of this drink (and a ceiling fan turned to “warp nine”) helped keep me cool until the morning when I could call a repairman. 

Beautiful Red Bell 

 2 oz gin (the recipe calls for Hendrick's, which is my favorite gin and which I will use) 

 1 oz simple syrup 

 3/4 oz FRESH lime juice 

 2 thin slices red bell pepper 

 2 mint leaves 

 In a mixing glass, muddle the red bell pepper in the simple syrup and the lime juice. Add mint, gin and ice. Shake vigorously (mine was so well-shaken that there were bits of mint floating in the glass. I wonder if he might have also muddled the mint, in fact, but that's not what he wrote down.). Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a slice of red bell pepper.

What's Gonna Work? TEAMwork!

Tamales are Mexican celebration food. They’re meant for a party. I don’t know if other Latino cultures, such as Guatemala or El Salvador, also claim the tamale as part of their national culinary lexicon so this phenomenon may not be strictly a Mexican one. However, in my Mexican-American family tamales are the big celebration food. Oh sure, we have other stuff too. We have enchiladas and molé, both of which can be labor intensive and are fit for a celebration but so far as I know, there is only one food that is labor intensive enough to not only warrant a party for the actual labor, but also where such party has a specific name. In other words, tamales can be so much work that they warrant not only the celebration required for eating them but also a celebration just to make them. Such a party is called a tamalada.

 Although I am only half-Mexican, ethnically speaking, for some reason I have found that I more closely embrace my Mexican heritage than my “generic Caucasian” remaining fifty percent. I am told that I speak beautifully accented Spanish such that I sound as if it is my native language. This is one of the gifts my grandmother (I never called her abuela although she lovingly called me mijo and hijo) gave me and she always swore that when I was four years old I spoke Spanish fluently because she was frequently taking care of me while my parents were at work. Unfortunately, it didn’t stick and while I still have that beautiful accent, my Spanish is weak at best. Anyway, despite my lack of proficiency in Spanish and despite the fact that I look about as Mexican as Joel Murray, I find that some of the things that have become a stronger part of me are the distinctly ethnic ones. One of the things I miss most from my childhood is the tamalada.

 Please bear in mind, when I was eleven years old, I didn’t know I was attending a tamalada. All I knew was that the day after Thanksgiving was the day me, my mom and my kid brother would meet my aunts, uncles and cousins at my grandmother’s and make tamales that we would later have at Christmas.

Tamales are a lot of work and they’re best made by a team. Between making the masa (the batter, we’ll get to that in a minute), making the filling, soaking the corn husks, spreading the masa, filling them, folding them and steaming them it can take a team of two or three aunts, a similar number of uncles and six to eleven cousins (it was never an exact number in my family because I have a large family and some years people couldn’t make it for whatever reason) a whole day to churn out enough tamales to feed the army that would be showing up at Christmas. We made tamales at my grandmother’s house the day after Thanksgiving every year from the time I was about eleven at least until I went away to college. I don’t really remember exactly when or even why we stopped. It might have been my freshman year at school, but we might have kept it up awhile after that. It might even have gone into my law school years. All I know is that my grandmother was wracked by arthritis my whole life and at some point it became quite a burden. Add in the fact that the cousins of my generation were all getting older and had other things to do and at some point our post-Thanksgiving tamalada died out. To be fair, it probably continued without me for quite awhile, but after my grandmother died I don’t think anyone really had the desire to pull off such an undertaking.

 My family, however, was not ready to give up tamales for Christmas. Fortunately, in Kansas and throughout Kansas City there are many fantastic Mexican restaurants owned by abuelas y abuelos who work from family recipes who will sell tamales for you to take home. So, my young adult years were spent eating someone else’s tamales. I do not mean that to sound bitchy in the least. Every year my mom or my uncle or my stepdad would locate a source for delicious tamales and we would gather someone’s house and those tamales were good. You could taste the love and the history that went into those authentic tamales and I was grateful for them. Still, I missed knowing that my grandmother had been involved with making them even though the very act of continuing to have Christmas tamales was a tribute to the closeness of the large family she left behind (my mother has three siblings, I am the oldest of eleven first cousins).

It was missing my grandmother that, one year, led me to decide that I would make the tamales for the whole family at Christmas. This was going to be my Christmas present to everyone. What I had failed to realize was just how much brutal labor goes into tamales, especially if you hope to make a quantity large enough to feed a family of the size I described (don’t forget, there would also be non-family guests, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc.). If I wanted to, I could put away a dozen tamales myself (I left that kind of gluttony behind when I left my twenties, but I will still have five or six at one sitting) and I needed to make enough to feed everyone. But I did it. Instead of doing them all the day after Thanksgiving, I did it on phases. I made the masa and put it in the fridge. I made the filling and put it in the fridge. I made a few tamales and put everything away. I did, over the course of a week to ten days, what took an army of family members one day. I recommend doing it with people.

By the time I was finished with those tamales, I was sick of them. Sick of looking at them. I was sick of scraping dried masa out from underneath my fingernails (which were connected to chili-stained cuticles, by the way). I never wanted to look at another tamale again. I was so tired of them I didn’t even want to do the final cooking and then handed them off to my mother to finish (such was my desire to be rid of them that I was somewhat angry that my mom balked at doing the final cook when I had done, literally, all the work to produce them in the first place. I get why she didn’t want to and I was being unreasonable in simply expecting her to go along with it, but, in my defense, I was really tired of making tamales.) Anyway, I gave them to my mom sometime in early December and didn’t have to think about tamales again. When Christmas rolled around, I was eager to see how my first ever solo tamale adventure had gone.

They were, if I do say so myself, excellent. They were fluffy, they were savory and they were made by someone in my family. My family was so appreciative that suddenly all that work didn’t seem so strenuous. As a result, every other year (I am married so every other year we do Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with my wife's and the following year we alternate) I make tamales. And I do it all by myself. At some point it became a burden I was happy to take on. I’ve learned a few things that have helped me streamline the labor and making them all by myself isn’t such a big thing. And when I say I do it all, I mean I do everything that is functionally possible for me to do myself. I even render my own lard (because it’s as healthy as shortening and tastes better than either shortening or store-bought lard). I do it ALL. I’m not bragging when I say that and I sometimes miss my cousins and my extended family being around, but we’ve all gotten older, our lives have become more far-flung and most of us have kids of our own. I miss the tamaladas I used to attend (but didn’t know I was attending), but I adore the new tradition of being able to show my family how much they mean to me and I love the feeling of completing all that work.

 Last year was an “on” year for me to make tamales. The way I usually work is to set up a card table in front of the television for the actual assembly phase. While there is a lot of kitchen time in the preparation of the filling and the masa, when you’re putting them together, you can do it from your club chair while you watch college football on your big screen television. That was what I was doing last year when my five year-old daughter wandered into the family room and said “can I help you Daddy?” I knew I’d have to change channels from my football game to Wonderpets (theme song: What’s Gonna Work? TEAMwork!) I handed her a butter knife, showed her how to spread the masa and smiled as my blue-eyed, fair-skinned, one-quarter Mexican daughter unknowingly wandered into her first tamalada.

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This recipe is adapted from Rick Bayless’ tamale recipe. But I have made enough changes that I feel okay about calling it “my” tamale recipe. Unfortunately, if my grandmother had a recipe, I never got it from her. This recipe makes about 18 tamales but I usually triple or quadruple it for a family as large as mine. One difference between Bayless’ recipe and mine is that I follow the advice of the great chef Paul Prudhomme and try never to add water when I can add another, more flavorful liquid. Water’s only purpose in cooking is to dilute, which makes sense if you’re making stock or even bread, but why not take the opportunity to add a flavorful liquid instead of water? To the end of adding a flavorful liquid, start by buying about two pounds of bone-in “country-style” spareribs and cut out the bones. You can either roast the bones until they’re brown and then drop them on a stockpot or just put them in the stockpot. Chop up an onion and put it in with some smashed garlic cloves and maybe a chopped carrot and a stalk of chopped celery. Cover with cold water and simmer gently until you have a flavorful stock. Strain and let it cool. (This can be done in advance and even frozen well ahead of time as long as you thaw it before use)

For the filling: 8 large (about 2 ounces) dried guajillo chilies, stemmed, seeded and each torn into several pieces 8 large (about 2 ounces) dried ancho chilies , stemmed seeded and torn into pieces 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground cumin 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano 1 1/2 pounds boneless pork (those country-style spareribs you de-boned earlier), cut into 1/2-inch cubes Salt

For the batter: 10 ounces (1 1/3 cups) lard (or vegetable shortening if you really have to. But bear in mind, you should try to live without regret), slightly softened 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 2 pounds (4 cups) fresh coarse-ground corn masa for tamales (if you can’t find fresh ground masa, try looking at markets that cater to a Latino clientele but if you still can’t find it, use 3 1/2 cups dried masa harina for tamales mixed with 2 1/4 cups of your hot pork stock or water if you have to) 1 to 1 1/2 cups pork stock or chicken broth (I prefer the pork, but you can use purchased chicken broth if you need to) 1 package dried corn husks (also available in Latin markets) place about half the package of husks in a large bowl or pot and cover with boiling water and let them soak until the water has cooled down

1. Preparing the filling. Toast the chili pieces in a hot dry pan until they become fragrant and curl up slightly. Soak them in a bowl with just enough hot stock to cover (put a small plate over them to keep them submerged in the stock) After about twenty minutes, they should be hydrated. Put them in a blender with the soaking liquid, garlic, pepper, oregano and cumin. Blend to a smooth puree, adding more stock if needed to keep everything moving. Strain the mixture through a medium-mesh strainer into a medium-size (3-quart) saucepan. Really try to push everything you can through the strainer. I even pour a little more stock through the strainer to make sure I get everything out of the chilies I can. Add the meat, 3 cups more stock and 1 teaspoon salt. Simmer, uncovered, over medium heat, stirring regularly, until the pork is fork-tender and the liquid is reduced to the consistency of a thick sauce, about 1 hour. Use a fork to break the pork into small pieces. Taste and season with additional salt if necessary. Let cool to room temperature.

2. Preparing the batter. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat the lard or shortening with 2 teaspoons salt and the baking powder until light in texture, about 1 minute. Continue beating as you add the masa (fresh or reconstituted) in three additions. Reduce the speed to medium-low and add 1 cup of the stock. Continue beating for another minute or so, until a 1/2-teaspoon dollop of the batter floats in a cup of cold water (if it floats you can be sure the tamales will be tender and light). Beat in enough additional broth to give the mixture the consistency of soft (not runny) cake batter; it should hold its shape in a spoon. Taste the batter and season with additional salt if you think necessary (the batter won't taste very good at this point. Don't worry about it. Just try to gauge the salt). For the lightest textured tamales, refrigerate the batter for an hour or so, then rebeat, adding enough additional broth to bring the mixture to the soft consistency it had before.

3. Setting up the steamer. Steaming 20 tamales can be done in batches in a collapsible vegetable steamer set into a large, deep saucepan (if you stack the tamales more than two high they will steam unevenly) but it's a balky process. To steam the whole recipe at once, I recommend something like the kettle-size tamale steamers used in Mexico (available inexpensivley at Latino markets) or you can improvise by setting a wire rack on 4 coffee or custard cups in a large kettle. It is best to line the rack or upper part of the steamer with leftover scraps of corn husks to protect the tamales from direct contact with the steam and to add more flavor. Make sure to leave tiny spaces between leaves so condensing steam can drain off.

4. Forming the tamales. One at a time, form the tamales: Lay out a large pre-soaked (and cooled) corn husk and spread ¼ to 1/3 cup of the batter into a rectangle over it (be sure to spread the filling on the “cupped” side of the husk). Spoon 2 tablespoons of the filling over the center of the rectangle of batter, then fold over the sides of the tamale so the batter encloses the filling. Fold the thin end of the husk up and set aside while you repeat. Set them in your steamer open end pointing up.

5. Steaming and serving the tamales. When all the tamales are in the steamer, cover them with a layer of corn husks. Set the lid in place and steam over a constant medium heat for about 1 hour. Watch carefully that all the water doesn’t boil away and, to keep the steam steady, pour boiling water into the pot when more is necessary.Tamales are done when the husk peels away from the masa easily. Let tamales stand in the steamer off the heat for a few minutes to firm up. For the best textured tamales, let them cool completely, then re-steam about 15 minutes to heat through.

Working Ahead: Both filling and batter can be made several days ahead, as can the finished tamales; refrigerate, well covered. Re-steam (or even microwave) tamales before serving. For even more flexibility, batter, filling or finished tamales can be frozen. Defrost finished tamales in the refrigerator overnight before re-steaming.

Don't Come in! I'm Dressing!

To some people dressing/stuffing is an afterthought at Thanksgiving. It’s become one of those dishes that lead to conversations like this: “Honey, why are you even making dressing this year? We always make it and no one ever eats more than a spoonful or two. Can’t we just skip it?” “No, we can’t just skip it. It’s TRADITION. We’ve always had it and we always will. Plus, you know Gavin will eat it. He loves the stuff.” “Well, alright. But I don’t want you killing yourself this year since you’re cooking the turkey and all the sides. Can we agree that you’ll just buy a box or bag stuffing at the store this year instead of making it yourself? I’m going to the store right now. I’ll pick up a box of Stove Bottom or Pepper Itch Farms, okay? Gavin won’t know the difference. No one EVER notices the stuffing. Besides, Gavin doesn’t have NEARLY the palate he thinks he has. I’ll bet he doesn’t say a thing.” “Well…okay. But pick up two boxes, would you? We’re out of dog food.” Well, not me. As the above couple points out, I do like dressing. And if I’ve never actually said anything about the stuffing from a box, it’s because my mother taught me manners. But trust me, I know. And it’s because I am a congregant at the Church of Thanksgiving Dressing, I have learned to make my own. 

 I am, happily, related to several other parishioners who also worship at this altar of deliciousness. Both my mother and my mother-in-law make delicious dressing. In fact, it was my mother’s ability when I was a kid to make something so delicious out of little more than a loaf of Wonder Bread that got me hooked on the stuff. As for my mother-in-law, well, a few weeks ago my son went off to serve his country in Americorps and we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner in early October as he won’t be able to come home until Christmas. And my mother-in-law made the dressing and she nailed it. I point out these examples from these two very talented cooks because I want to give hope to people everywhere that dressing or stuffing can be a valuable addition to your Thanksgiving table and deserve to be treated more seriously than a box of breadcrumbs soaked in “bouillon” –flavored saltwater. 

I bring up the talents of my mother and mother-in-law because even with the pressure of their abilities setting the stage for me, the Thanksgiving dressing is something I have consistently requested the duty of making regardless of who is hosting the dinner. Again, it’s not because they can’t do it. It’s because I love to do it. Regardless of whether my wife and I are hosting Thanksgiving, going to my parents’ or my in-laws, I always ask to make the dressing and those kind, indulgent women always allow me that opportunity. 

 As a result, my Thanksgiving dressing, while simple, is a huge production. I would caution you to remember that “simple” does not mean easy. Losing weight is simple. If you eat less and exercise more, you will lose weight. But, as anyone who has ever tried to do it can tell you, just because the prescription for weight loss is elegant in its simplicity, it’s in the actual work that people tend to lose their way. I say that as a caveat to let you know that you do NOT have to adhere to the whole palaver I am about to describe and that I go through every year. Shortcuts abound and while I don’t take them when I make my dressing, I am both an idiot and manically driven to find the platonic ideal of Thanksgiving dressing. There is no reason for you to punish yourself the way I do and I encourage, no, I urge you to make your Thanksgiving dinner as trouble-free as possible. Still, it is my hope that by listing all the steps I go through to make dressing, you might find a few helpful hints or ideas that you can incorporate into your own Thanksgiving meal. Few things would make me happier than you and me cooperating to force the people at Stove Bottom into repurposing their factory made “stuffing” for use as mortar in public works projects. 

 I suppose that I should first point out that I use the word “dressing” whereas a lot of people use the word “stuffing.” My understanding is that “stuffing” is merely dressing that has been forced into the cavity of the bird to cook while it roasts. As I am polytheistic, I not only worship at The Church of Thanksgiving Dressing, but I am also a supplicant to the god Alton Brown. And Alton Brown, from his perch on Mt. Olympus, has decreed that Stuffing is Evil. Well, I’m also a (not very good) Roman Catholic and I’ve broken plenty of the rules set down by that church so if you want to convert your dressing into stuffing, it’s okay with me. 

 Alton Brown does have a few good points, though, about how stuffing a bird with room temp breadcrumbs soaked with meat stock and fat is begging for food borne illness. For that reason, if you do choose to stuff your bird, do so at your own peril and at least do yourself the favor of microwaving the stuff to get it piping hot before you spoon it into the bird. Best of luck. In any case, you can take the stuff I’m about to describe and cook it in your bird or in a roasting pan and, as long as you cook it all the way through, it’ll be delicious. 

 Making dressing for me is an exercise in process. A lot of things have to be done in advance of the fourth Wednesday in November if you want to have good dressing for the fourth Thursday. However, each step is very simple and I promise will yield good results. First, start by making your turkey stock. One of the many shortcuts you can take is to use prepackaged/canned chicken broth. I’ve done it and there is no shame in it. But, if you go to the supermarket right now, you will see turkey necks, wings and backs on sale so cheap you’ll think they’re giving them away. Buy two or three of each and go home and lightly coat them with a neutrally-flavored vegetable oil and put them in a roasting pan and set that in an oven set at 350. Roast your turkey bits, turning them over occasionally, until they’re golden and look like something you’d want to eat. Take them out of the oven and put them in a stockpot. If your roasting pan isn’t made of glass, deglaze it with a little dry vermouth (or just water) and pour all of that in the stockpot as well (if your roasting pan is glass or Pyrex, wait for it to cool down and do the best you can at deglazing it without putting it over direct heat). 

Now, take a yellow onion and cut off and throw away the root end. Chop the remainder of the onion, peel and all (the peel will help give a nice color to the stock) and throw it into the pot with a few sprigs of parsley, a few peppercorns, a couple of peeled and chopped carrots and a couple of washed and chopped stalks of celery. Cover this with cold water and slowly bring it to a simmer and skim off any scum that floats to the surface. Let it simmer a few hours until the turkey parts are literally falling apart. Scoop out everything from the pot and feed it to your dog (I am one of those guys who doesn’t typically give people food to my pets, but the vet says this is okay because all the fat had pretty much come out of the turkey and the bones, protein and vegetable matter is good for ‘em. If you disagree, throw it away.) Now, simmer down the stock until it is very rich tasting and a nice brown color. At this point you can add salt to make it taste right (if you add salt too early and then boil it down, you will concentrate the salt and that will throw everything out of whack). Let your stock cool and then strain it and refrigerate it for later use. 

Now we go to the dried fruit. I don’t know when or where it was first suggested to me that fruit had a place in stuffing. It wasn’t something my mother did when I was a kid. But one year I decided to add some raisins and, I gotta tell you, it was fantastic. Since then I have come to the realization that plain raisins, while nice, are falling short of a great opportunity to add even more flavor to your dressing. Instead, what I do now is get a big handful of raisins, another handful of golden raisins, a handful of dried cranberries and, if I’m feeling like it, a handful of dried blueberries. Mix them all up in a plastic container and barely cover them with brandy. If you’re feeling extra-fancy, Armagnac is really nice here, but I find cheap California brandy is 99.9% as good at 1/10th the price. Set the dried fruit aside for a week or two, stirring every so often if you think about it and if all the brandy gets absorbed, add a little more. 

Now, onto the bread. I am not a southerner. I love cornbread, but it may be my Free State roots that dictate that I really prefer a yeast-risen bread to cornbread. Fortunately, in the world of yeast breads, the choices are myriad. It seems that every year I go with something different, but my favorite is sourdough. Sometimes it’s fun to try two different loaves, like a sourdough and a whole wheat or a baguette. I usually go with two loaves and you should choose whatever you like. As I mentioned, I grew up eating dressing made with supermarket sandwich bread and there is nothing wrong with that. Still, I typically go for an artisan-style bread that has a good texture and a nice crumb. One advantage if you buy your bread at a place like Whole Foods is that they will cube your bread for you. They’ll take whatever loaf you buy and run it through the slicer and then run it through again cross-wise so that you get bread strips. You can work with those directly or, if you’re anal retentive about this sort of thing (like, ahem, someone who has already devoted 20,956 words on this subject), you can tear or cut those pieces into more aesthetically pleasing cube. Dump the bread in a bowl or on a cookie sheet at least a week before the big day and let it get stale. Again, this is a step you can skip, but stuffing was more than just a frugal way of using old bread. By letting the bread lose its natural moisture, you are creating a kind of vacuum where your more flavorful turkey tock can settle in. Fresh bread will hold less stock than will stale bread. 

Alright, if you’re still with me, not too much longer to go. I’m probably already one-quarter through. I kid, I kid!! Anyway, on Wednesday (one of the best things about dressing is that you can prep it a day ahead and relax on the big day, if you want) melt a stick of butter (relax, one stick over two loaves of bread isn’t going to do anything that would lead your cardiologist into paroxysms of rage) in a frying pan and dump in one diced largish yellow or white onion and 2-3 stalks (depending on the volume of your bread) of chopped/diced celery. Stir to get everything coated with the oil and sprinkle over a fat pinch of salt and let that gently sweat over medium heat until the veg is translucent. Over the top of the veg, sprinkle on some Scarborough Fair (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme). I like using both fresh and dried sage and thyme. Chop the fresh finely and rub the dried between your hands, about tablespoon of each or to your taste. Add a similar amount of chopped fresh thyme and about twice as much parsley. As for the rosemary, well, it has a very strong flavor, so I go light on it, but, then again, you know your palate better than I do. While that veg is sweating, peel, core and chop two apples. You want the apple pieces to be about the same size as the diced onion. I once did this with pears instead of apples and it was fantastic, but you need to use pears that are a bit underripe because ripe pears will turn to mush. Now, dump everything, the bread, the sweated veg, the apple/pear and the dried fruit, EVERYTHING into your largest bowl. One other thing you can add if no one has any nut allergies is some pecan halves or pieces. My wife loves this and she loves it even more if I lightly toast the pecans in the oven on a cookie sheet. Again, leave out what you don’t like and keep what you do. Gently stir everything just to get it evenly mixed (I use my clean hands rather than a spoon). 

Once it’s all mixed, start ladling on your turkey broth. Some people like their dressing really wet. Some people don’t. You don’t want it gloppy but you also don’t want it so dry that it’s falling apart (any leftover broth can be used for gravy or frozen for another purpose entirely). Once you get everything uniformly mixed, give it a taste. If it needs salt or pepper, go ahead but make sure you stir gently to get it incorporated. If you want to add more herbs, you can do so now, but remember, those flavors will be stronger when the dressing is piping hot. You are now finished. Some people like stirring in a beaten egg or two as a binder and you can do that. I’ve done it before, but I never found it to be all that important an addition. 

From here, spoon everything into a casserole or roasting pan and put it in the oven until it’s hot all the way through. I like to take off the lid to the pan fifteen minutes or so before I pull it from the oven because it like the top to get a bit crunchy, but you can, again, do as you like. I guess I should at least mention the fact that this week's challenge seems to be geared more toward exotic Thanksgiving fare, the stuff that falls outside the mainstream. I suppose I could talk about how my stepmother's Italian-American family spend every weekend in November leading up to Thanksgiving preparing small pasta purses that they call cappilletti. Certainly that would be more exotic than humble dressing; the stuff that will be on at least 80% of Thanksgiving tables later this month. Still, I like to think that good, not-from-a-box dressing is pretty exotic in its own right. Maybe everyone will have it, but will it be any good? I know this was long but I hope I made an oft-overlooked dish gain a little appreciation. If you’re one of those traditionalists who serve dressing because you have to and not because you want to, try some of the things I’ve outlined here and I think you might end up wanting to too.

I Hope My Daughter Becomes a Debater

This week the National Speech and Debate Association (formerly known as, and still called by some die-hards, the National Forensics League or NFL) is hosting its national tournament in the sleepy Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Kansas. I’ve been lucky in that I was asked to judge in the event now known as “Congressional Debate” formerly called “Student Congress” (again, still called that in certain quarters. Speech and debate is chock full of traditionalists, you see.)

While I am admittedly a nostalgic person and watching these high school students at this tournament almost by necessity reminded me of my own time at the NFL national tournament in San Antonio in the summer of 1984, I didn’t really get all misty thinking of my own alleged glory days. I mean I did, sort of. But what I really did was think of all the great things debate and speech brought to my life and all I could think was how much I hope that my own daughter, a bright ten year old, will one day choose to be a debater. God knows she’s got the bloodlines for it. I was a pretty good debater, winning my share of tournaments, oftentimes with luck and a partner who wasn’t necessarily great with argument but was a great orator and could charm the hell out of any mom or grandmother in our way, and moms and grandmothers are a staple of Kansas high school debate judging. And my wife was a state champion debater. (Although I often tease her that state champion of any state with “Dakota” in it doesn’t count or counts for less, but the fact is, she won a state championship and I never did, whether there was a “Dakota” in there or not.) So there’s plenty of reason to think that my daughter, if such things are genetic, would have a predisposition to getting up in a room full of strangers and arguing non-stop for eight minutes, pausing only to take a breath, about any topic a faceless committee might choose to select. God knows she can already talk for an ungodly length of time without pause. All she needs is some coaching to focus and make her points a bit more cogent. 

As I was watching these kids debate this week, all of them at pinnacle of competition, the national level, I kept thinking of the odd circumstances that led me to debate, what I got out of it and how I owe debate much more than I can ever repay it. While I won’t force my daughter into it, it would be fitting that she goes into it because it’s entirely possible that without debate, she wouldn’t be here. The reason I got into debate was for the same reason teenage boys do pretty much everything: a girl. There was a girl I’d long had a crush on and she was on the debate team and she asked me if I would do her a favor and agree to be a timekeeper for our school’s debate tournament that weekend. Unable to say no to her, I agreed and as soon as I saw what a debate was, I knew it was something I wanted to do. It was too late in the academic year to take the class and join the team, but I was only a freshman and I knew that the following year I was going to join. That may have been the first ever goal I set for myself a full year in advance but it never left my mind and I stayed true to it. (A brief coda about the girl, her name was Joanie and I never so much as asked her out. However, later that year she moved to Canada and when I invented my imaginary Canadian girlfriend, I always mentally pictured her.)

 Until I started debating, I was always a pretty smart kid who lacked confidence and didn’t really know what to do with myself. I had no real direction and no aspirations. I was no athlete and I wasn’t one of the popular kids. I didn’t have much of anything, really. I had friends, good friends, but I was a tabula so rasa that I didn’t have any idea what I was or what I was going to be except a kid who shambled from one class to the next, hoping not to get noticed because nothing good ever came from getting noticed. I wasn’t a troublemaker and I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t much of anything really. But debate focused me. My coach, a man I credit for shaping me more than anyone else other than my parents, saw talent in me and he worked with me, helped me learn to think critically, helped me learn to sharpen my brain and learn to spot weaknesses and learn to create strengths. I’ve told him before how grateful I am, but I still don’t think he fully understands just how big an influence he had on me. Or maybe he just isn’t all that sappy and doesn’t want to hear it, which is understandable. (All this is to say nothing of my college coach, a brilliantly funny, wry and sarcastic grad student who taught me as much about rock music as about debate and that knowledge as helped me as much as anything else he ever imparted to me.)

 Aside from greater confidence and a sharper mind, debate gave me skills I still use today. I got mad skills in research, public speaking (duh.) and it helped my grades because no debater wants to be the debater with bad grades. And you would think that would all be enough. And you would be right to think that. But debate gave me so much more.

Where to begin? Let’s see…Well, debate gave me a nemesis. How many high school kids do you know that have a nemesis? Not a person you don’t like or even a person you dislike intensely, but a real, honest to god person that was placed there by the gods as divine retribution for the sins you committed? And for that matter, how many of you were someone else’s nemesis in high school? Well, I had Skip. Skip was another debater and damn he was good. He was much, MUCH better than me. He was better than pretty much everybody. He knew it too. And he let you know it. I had a special enmity in my heart for Skip but so did a lot of other people. People liked beating him but they didn’t do it very often because he was able to back up the smack he threw around (also he had one of the best coaches in the country, a true hall of famer, and he always seemed to have an amazingly talented partner right there with him. Sometimes things just aren’t fair.). Still, Skip and I seemed to take a special delight in needling each other, although I can only speak for myself. I can only remember debating Skip two times (although we surely met more often than that) and we each won one. The thing is, the debate that I won was not only the far more important debate, it was also the far more controversial decision. Let me put it this way: If I had been a judge, I would not have voted for us. Now, I never once got an apology for a debate I unreasonably lost so I am not going to offer once now, but debate not only gave me a nemesis, (which, again, is a pretty cool thing for a high school kid to have) it gave me a chance to get pretty deeply under the skin of said nemesis.

The really cool part is that now that we are 30 years past high school, skip and I have developed what I think is actually a genuinely warm friendship (via Facebook, natch, as we no longer live in the same state). We still occasionally argue politics (he calls me a liberal moonbat, but he’s right), but we’re both well past the need to flex those muscles , our mutual respect having been long ago earned. I look forward to one day shaking his hand and buying him a cold beer and not feeling like I’m choking back bile as I drink with him.

“Oh, sure,” my daughter will say. “Debate gave you confidence, speaking skills, a sharper mind and a nemesis who turned out to be a friend but what else did it give you, huh, Dad? What else?” “Well, sweetheart,” I could tell her “How about a first kiss or a first girlfriend?” except that those things would probably send her into paroxysms of either laughter or vomiting because who wants to think of their parents in such a fashion (although both of those possibilities for HERSELF would still doubtless be very intriguing)? I could tell her about the fact that one of the competitors in my Congressional Debate chamber at the national tournament is the son of Anne Gorsuch Burford, former administrator of the EPA and that he is now a Tenth Circuit Federal Court Judge. I could tell her that in my time in debate I went against such luminaries as author Thomas Frank and famous political hack and demagogue, Kris Kobach. I could tell her that she will form friendships that will last a lifetime (seriously, I am friends with so many debaters I'm not sure I can count them. Then again, debaters aren't typically very good at math), that she will be challenged by these friends but always nurtured by the shared experience and that she will be part of a long line of great thinkers and smart people who share their time with the people who come after them because they understand that the people who came before them learned from the people who came before THEM. It’s her life and I’m not going to push her into it, but I really, REALLY hope my daughter becomes a debater. Too much good stuff for her and I don't want her to miss it.