Image by: Carla Porter
The tree is on the brush pile and the snow is still coming down
Christmas has come and gone. I am slowly and sparingly working my way through the books that came wrapped in paper and bows. One of them,
An Alphabet for Gourmets, has given me small readings that I have enjoyed before bed or first thing in the morning with my hot coffee. Its author, MFK Fisher, led such an interesting life. Fisher, the daughter of a newspaper editor, came to writing early in life and despite forays into writing for her father's paper and trying to write novels, it was her frank, witty, and sometimes sensuous descriptions of food and food culture that brought her fame and a very distinguished circle of culinary friends.
And speaking of culinary friends ....
The Random Recipe challenge this month was to open one of the food-oriented books one received at Christmas and make what one finds. Well, I happened on MFK Fisher's discussion on 'Quantity' - a lesson in discretion. Here, Fisher admonishes cooks to learn the rules before you break them. She pokes fun at her childish attempt to make Hindu Eggs, a warm variation on Deviled Eggs that have the yolk filling flavoured with curry powder. They were perfectly flavoured when she had them made by her mother. When she made them, however, her love of curry powder caused her to think 'more is better'. The lesson here is ... more (curry powder:quantity) is not necessarily better when it comes to spices, sauces, herbs, et cetera. Learning that favorite flavours become 'favorite' because of their nuanced presence in different dishes was a key experience for MFK. Later in life, though, she also learned that once one has made the recipe and perfected technique, one can experiment and she uses the old peasant dish called Roasted Kasha as an example. Her love of the grain and its subtle nuttiness leads her to heighten that flavour by roasting it longer to a nutty brown before adding broth and simmering it to slowly soften it. She loves the combination of nuttiness and butter flavours, so she added far more butter than the traditional preparation recommends. In this case, 'more is better' as far as MFK's concerned.
See the whole groats vs the mid-grind groats? MFK swears by whole groats
