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Fennel and Curd
Monday when I was on the cooking roll it was partly to use up some produce I’d bought when I shopped unwisely. It’s always unwise to make purchases when sleep-deprived, and I’ve had lots of experience with making tired and muddle-headed decisions.
Fennel: In this case I’d been shopping at Trader Joe’s and I was trying to make it the only stop, even though I needed some vegetables and don’t usually buy much produce at that store. The fennel bulbs seemed to be a good price, so I picked up a package of two medium-sized bulbs (20 oz.) for $1.99.
The wisdom I lacked was from being too tired to know that I was too tired to cook. I didn’t have a plan for using fennel, so I got along for a couple more days by raiding the freezer. But I didn’t want the vegetables to go bad so eventually I read recipes online and opted to make a simple soup.
I started by chopping and sauteeing the vegetable. Already I can’t remember if I used olive oil or butter, but some people liked to use a combination. I was looking for a caramelized or roasted effect, and I didn’t want to heat up the oven for such a small amount, so I used a cast-iron skillet. I sprinkled on salt and pepper and cooked the fennel slowly. Some of the pieces were too large to actually caramelize, but there was enough sweet roasty flavor coming from the licorice-flavored bulbs to make for a great taste in the resulting soup.
After all the fennel was at least tender, and some was very brown and some was even black, I blended it with water (I meant to use some chicken broth but forgot), then tasted and tested as I added small amounts of cream, sugar and lemon juice, more salt and pepper. I chopped up some of the unused ferny green top to sprinkle on top before serving….and Mr. Glad declared it fantastic. I didn’t take a picture of it, but it was brown and full of browner flecks. We ate the whole panful.
Curd: The big bag of lemons I bought even earlier would have lasted weeks more in the cold garage, but lemon curd was easy to put together, and it makes a prettier picture than brown soup, too.
Lemon Curd
1/2 cup butter
grated peel of 1 large lemon
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt if using unsalted butter
3 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
Beat the eggs and yolks together slightly. Melt the butter in the top of a double boiler and stir in all of the other ingredients.
Cook over boiling water, beating constantly with a wire whisk, until thick and smooth, about 20 minutes. Store the refrigerator up to 6 weeks.
Lemon curd makes a nice gift if you put it in a little canning jar with a flowered lid. Too bad for my friends, I just happened to have a pint jar that conveniently held my whole batch. But if you come by for tea really soon we can makes some toast together and slather it on.
Cozy and Baking
I got on a roll today in the kitchen, and made a huge happy mess. I really don’t mind cleaning up a kitchen – I especially like it when someone is cooking and I can just do the dishwashing for them. If I could be two people, I could cook up a storm as one GJ, and the other of me would gladly wash and dry and wipe counters. Doing all the jobs is complicated. I won’t get to bed early tonight!
And I won’t have time to tell you about everything I cooked. Just the bread, for which I give credit to Jody. I read her blog post about sourdough baking, and it stirred again in me the urge to bake some chewy loaf and fill the house with that amazing aroma.
I glanced at the clock and saw that I had just enough time to start and complete a bread project before bedtime, so I jumped up and opened the freezer, scooped some yeast into a bowl and started pulling out of my memory the beginnings of a batch that would make two loaves.
Eventually I ended up with a potato-rye sponge, and after it rose a few minutes I added enough wheat flour and other goodies to make a stretchy dough that rose further in front of the wood stove. I was using Giusto’s Pumpernickel Rye flour.
A couple of years ago Soldier son gave me a pizza stone and I remembered just in time to get it out of the cupboard and use it to give the loaves an even chewier crust. They turned out so big, I think three round loaves might have been even nicer.
Because of the kitchen mess I ran out of time to post the photos of everything I made, and I’m not even getting all the cleanup done. But I did take time to slice off the heel of one loaf and try it out. Success!
Tomorrow I’ll have to revisit the world of sourdough, too.
Bodega and Stories of Horror
This week we tripped over to the coast with Mr. and Mrs. C. A walk along the shore north of the town of Bodega Bay was first on the leisurely agenda. Schoolhouse Beach was closed, so we drove a little farther north to Portuguese Beach. It’s steep where the waves break on the sand, and signs warn you not to turn your back to the surf or to go on the down side of the slope, where an undertow can get you in its grip.
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| The View Landward |
We strolled the length of the beach and back, admiring the view landward and seaward, and then sat on a log. Mr. and Mrs. C didn’t have their frisky Yellow Lab with them, but we’ve seen how she loves to romp in the water at Lake Tahoe or at nearby Salmon Creek Lagoon.
As we were climbing back up the cliff to the car, we met a couple coming down with four dogs, no matter that pets are not allowed on that beach. A tall great dane, two medium dogs with long hair, a tiny dog, and their owner carrying colorful beach ball.
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| Drowning at Portuguese Beach in 2011 |
We stopped at the top for a while and watched the Dane canter around joyfully. The mid-sized dogs pushed the beach ball into the waves and along the ocean’s edge — all right at that steep part that is so dangerous. Mrs. C. commented about how many people go into the ocean to rescue their dogs; the people often drown, but if they only had known that dogs almost always manage to get back on their own….
When I was researching for this post I discovered a news story and photo depicting a case of that very thing: a dog owner having drowned when she went after her dog and got caught in the surf. That time the dog did drown also, and it was at just this time of year. These accidents, though not always involving dogs, happen so often on the Northern California coast that the multiplied effect has turned them into horror stories for me.
“Birds” children running downhill from schoolhouse.
A bit inland from Bodega Bay, we came to the town of Bodega. Confusing, isn’t it? Both are famous for the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds” being filmed here in the early 1960’s.
I saw it in my teens, and can still recall sitting on the living room floor, self-consciously and silently terrified. Ever since then, when I see crows looking down from telephone wires, I know from the experience of that movie that they have a sinister intent.
The schoolhouse today, a private residence.
Hitchcock mixed up scenes from the two towns for the film, and we checked out two of the landmarks that remain in Bodega: the schoolhouse and the church, which stand very close to one another on a hill. Within the last year we Glads and the C. couple watched “The Birds” together. It wasn’t as scary as I remembered, but I still don’t like it. I do like the buildings in Bodega.
On our way back from the beach we first stopped at a historic watering hole in the town; the Casino’s bar was built a hundred years ago by the bartender’s great-uncle. His grandmother still manages the place, opening the doors and closing up every day even in her 80’s.
The dining room (the sign said “Dinning Room”) was most appealing to me. It was fresh and clean and empty that afternoon, tables, chairs and floor of bare weathered wood as old as the bar. A dozen or more deer and elk heads decorated the walls around. I drank an Ace Peary Hard Cider, brewed locally.
After our refreshment we walked along a muddy little track through the grass along the bank above the road, to see the church and the school.
The church is St. Teresa of Avila. Services have been held there weekly since its dedication in 1861. From the church you can look down on the little artsy town of Bodega, as in the photo below.
When we had set out from our house that morning, I decided not to bother with a camera. Then of course I regretted it many times! I was lucky to find all of these pictures on the Web.
I’m happy to say there was nothing horrific about our meandering day. That’s a good thing about enjoying the present moment: one doesn’t have to be subject to artists’ imaginations, to old news articles, or to one’s own memories of bad things. “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof,” and as there wasn’t any of that sort of thing on our outing, it provided sufficient R&R for my weary soul. Thanks be to God!
Town of Bodega
