Vanessa Barrington

Wild Salmon-Potato Cakes

I'm turning into my mother. She used to "do things" with canned salmon. Namely a tasty but disturbingly cat-food textured dip served with Ritz crackers. I never have "done things" with canned salmon other than eating it on salads like tuna. In one of my ongoing battles with odd bits of leftovers and an overfull pantry, I came up with an elegant way to use leftover potatoes and canned wild salmon. Yep, I "did something" with canned salmon.

The impetus consisted of three steamed russet potatoes that never quite made it into Susan’s birthday potato salad with the Yukons, because it hadn’t seemed quite right to mix them.

Those potatoes had been taunting me from the vegetable drawer for a couple of days. Just daring me to use them. I kept thinking of eggs, and breakfast, and hash, but it just never happened. Suddenly it was Monday night and I was faced with a drawer full of fresh vegetables and a mean protein craving, with nary a speck of flesh defrosted.

Resourcefulness kicked in.

Makes 4 small patties

3 medium steamed russet potatoes, peeled
1-7.5 ounce can of wild salmon, skin and bones removed (I snack on them or feed them to the dog) and flaked
About 2 tablespoons freshly chopped herbs such as parsley, tarragon, chives, whatever you have
A dollop of mayonnaise
Harissa paste or a sprinkling of good paprika or Aleppo pepper
Salt and pepper to taste
2 to 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a medium bowl, mash the potatoes with a potato masher until they are broken down, but with some texture remaining.

Add the salmon, herbs, a small spoonful of mayonnaise, the harissa or other pepper, and salt and pepper. Mix and check for seasoning. Also check to see if the mixture holds together when you try to form it into a patty. If not, add a little more mayonnaise until it does.

Form the mixture into 4 patties, dividing it evenly. Heat the oil in a cast iron pan over medium high heat until it is shimmering but not smoking. Carefully lower the patties into the pan. Cook on the first side until crisp and brown (2 to 3 minutes) Turn and cook the other side for an additional 2 to 3 minutes until brown. Serve immediately accompanied by seasonal vegetables. In this case it was steamed then sautéed broccoli with red pepper flakes and garlic, along with roasted golden beet and arugula salad.

An unexpectedly great Monday night dinner, and easy too!

Turning Sunburned Persimmons into Persimmon Butter

Blackened organic persimmons for 75 cents a pound vs. around $3 a pound?

Sign me up because I’m making persimmon butter. Bought these from Kaki at the Berkeley Farmers' Market. They told me the alarming-looking sooty skin wouldn’t affect the fruit and they were right.

This and the galette I’m using it for are the last two recipes for the book. I really wanted both recipes in the book so I’m thankful that Chronicle let me go past deadline until the persimmons came into season. I wavered between using Hachiyas (the more obvious choice) or Fuyus. Fuyus are more readily available and I figured they would behave like apples when turned into butter. Whereas the Hachiyas are lovely to eat and put into puddings and cakes as long as they are gooey ripe, which can take forever. I think I made the right choice, but I’ll be trying this with Hachiyas as well just to be sure.

I was also going for an interesting flavor profile so I settled on cinnamon, cardamom, rum, vanilla beans, and lime. Wow. It’s really good. Visions of holiday gifts are now dancing in my head.

Here’s the method:
Peel and cut the fruit into chunks and put it in the food processor.

Process until smooth and then put it through a potato ricer or food mill if you have one. If you don’t, it won’t make that much difference. 

Put the pulp in a heavy enameled cast iron pot and add a whole cinnamon stick, a whole vanilla bean, split and scraped, and the crushed seeds from one cardamom pod. Cook it down over low heat for at least an hour until it darkens and thickens, stirring occasionally and watching carefully so it doesn’t stick and burn. 

 

Add two tablespoons of white rum and continue to cook for 10 minutes. Add the zest of one lime grated on a microplane. Stir and taste. Cool and refrigerate. I used about 2 1/2 pounds of persimmons and it yielded about 2 cups of persimmon butter.

For the galette, I used about 3/4 of a cup of persimmon butter. I simply spread it on thinly leaving a border and then laid the apples out on top. The dough for the galette was my usual dough from this recipe but instead of all butter, I used 4 tablespoons leaf lard bought from Prather and 3 tablespoons butter. That turned out to be a very good decision. I brushed the apples and crust with a little butter halfway through baking. 

This was served in the Headlands kitchen to Eduardo, his baking assistant Megan, and a few people who wandered in. It was a hit.

The rest of the butter is being eaten on toast. Yesterday, I spread a little on a piece of whole wheat toast and added thin slices of gruyere. What a sublime afternoon snack!

PS: I’m not sure that I want to think about why the persimmons are burning.

Brisket Success!

This was a difficult recipe for the book that I finally had great success with. If you’re thinking it sounds strange for someone who rarely cooks meat to make a big ‘ole brisket, you’re right. All I can say is the book has a recipe for killer ketchup. One makes barbecue sauce with ketchup and one needs some sort of smoky cooked flesh to put barbecue sauce on. Hence brisket.

I was going for an authentic tasting barbecue in the DIY spirit for people who don’t have fancy smokers and the like. To accomplish that I came up with a hybrid method for smoking and then baking the brisket to ensure a smoky flavored piece of meat that wasn’t dried out and tough. It worked. I ended up with a bit of a smoke line and a mildly smoky flavor and even though it’s lean, it wasn’t dried out. You have to slice it thinly though.

These lovely little sandwiches consist of brisket, sauce, and the delightful rolls from Neldam’s Bakery in Oakland. We took them to a 40th birthday party in Davis where they were promptly devoured by scientists and graduate students.

Here’s how to do it:

Make a rub with salt, pepper, cumin, cayenne, smoked paprika, Mexican oregano, New Mexico chili powder, and pounded garlic. Rub on the meat, wrap tightly and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours. Reserve a few tablespoons of rub to make a beer mop.

The day you plan to cook the meat, soak some wood chips in the morning and, 5 to 6 hours before dinner, build a low slow fire in the grill.

When you can hold your hand over the coals for several seconds, put the wood chips on a piece of foil on top of the coals and place the meat on the grill fat side up, away from the fire. Close the cover and smoke for one hour, turning and flipping one time halfway through. During the first half hour make a mop out of 1 cup of beer and the reserved rub. Baste both sides when you flip the meat.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F.

After smoking the brisket, wrap it in foil and place it in a baking dish or on a sheet pan and cook for 3 to 4 hours, depending on the size of the brisket. Remove from the oven and let rest before slicing thinly against the grain and serving.

Happy Glorious Delicious Fall!

Here's how I recovered from the Hunger Challenge. I went to the Berkeley Saturday Farmers' market. Wowie Zowie, so much to buy and cook and eat. I was so happy being there after a three week hiatus caused by various and sundry commitments. Pictured above is my haul. And below, my lunch: roasted River Dog delicata, County Line Farm Wild Arugula, Quetzal Farm Dry Farmed Tomatoes, Morell's Bread, Sierra Nevada Cream Cheese (from the store), and the last of the cheap eggs from the Hunger Challenge. This lunch illustrates how easy it is to eat healthy, high quality, veg-centric, local meals without spending hours and hours in the kitchen.

I also think the amount of food I got for my money was quite amazing. I was more aware than usual of how much money I was spending too and actually, it wasn't that bad. I think about $65. That's a lot of good quality food for $65. Why no eggs? Well, I joined the Soul Food Farm CSA and the first delivery was last night. 2 dozen gorgeous eggs (some of them huge!) and 1 chicken with it's head still wrapped around its body in a restful pose, and feet too! Wanna join? The CSA is still open. I got to meet farmer Alexis too and she's lovely and vivacious and seems to be recovering nicely from the devestating fire last month. Looking to support the farm? There's an event on Sunday the 11th at Pizzaiolo. Admission is $14 and you can support Soul Food Farm by buying raffle tickets. You may even win a fabulous prize!

One more good piece of fall news! We have a book title that everyone is happy with:

DIY Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food from Scratch.

Chronicle Books Fall 2010. Galleys arrive next month and the designer is terrific, so it's going to be beautiful!

Hunger Challenge Day Seven

It’s a workday and the last day and the good thing about work days is that it’s much easier to control your situation and eating opportunities. The Hunger Challenge food isn’t that bad so it’s just a matter of not exposing yourself to temptations, which is much easier on a weekday.

Breakfast is egg, toast, melon

Lunch is a small portion of the emergency soup and one tortilla with butter

Dinner brings the last two of what I’ve come to think of as the “Evil Enchiladas”.

I can’t wait to go to bed and get up again to a new day. My clothes are noticeably looser, which isn’t an unwelcome occurrence.

In conclusion, I feel changed by the experience. Never before have I paid so much attention to my emotions around food. Normally I look forward to the adventure of every meal and I love to cook with inspiring ingredients. The challenge put a huge crimp in that. Though I often do eat exactly the kind of food I made for the challenge and I know I can eat healthfully and cheaply, the pure joy of dining was completely gone and there was no room for errors or bad enchilada sauce.

I also have a clear realization of how much planning and preparation goes into eating this way. Not to mention food knowledge, equipment, time, and cooking skills. Eating well on $4 a day requires a predictable, chaos free life, something I don’t think most people have. I also feel that it’s likely that the more you are struggling, the less predictable your life is. Without the time to cook and the joy attached to cooking, I can completely understand why people fall back on the $1 fast food meals. And we’re not even talking about the issue of healthy food access, which is a huge one.

I wish I had the answers that would give people in need the resources they need to cook for themselves. Perhaps it would be community kitchens, similar to the Food Bank’s pantries. Kitchens equipped with stoves and pans and knives where people could come and share resources and work together to cook the food that will feed their families.

For me, I’m glad I can now go back to my self-indulgent ways. I’m eating more slowly, mindfully, and appreciatively than ever before. The Hunger Challenge has made me grateful for every bite and I aim to stay that way.

Here are links to all the other Hunger Challenge Bloggers. Make sure you check out their experiences too!

Agréable Dégustation - New!
Been There Ate That - 2nd year!
Beets and Biscuits - New!
Blog Appetit - 2nd year!
BroadSnark - New!
Budget Bytes - New!
Cooking Rut - New!
Cooking with Amy - 2nd year!
Heat Eat Review - New!
Hoos on First - New!
I Do Not Think That They Will Sing To Me - New!
Indoor Camping - New!
Line Storgaard-Conley - New!
Maria Niles - 2nd year!
Michael Dimock - Roots of Change - New!
Midtown Mark's Hunger Challenge - New!
Muse in Vivo - New!
My Life in Food - New!
Petit Appetit - 2nd year!
Poor Girl Eats Well - New!
Some Dreams Come True - New!
Stellajade by Sarah W - New!
Steve Sando - New!
The Guerilla Gourmet - New!
The Inadvertent Gardener - 2nd year!

Hunger Challenge Day Six

Another weekend day. Uggh. I eat breakfast (oatmeal with half a peach). Then I spend the morning making jam from the figs my friend had brought over the day before.

For lunch I have 1 cabbage roll with a scoop of beans and a 1/2 a pear with peanut butter. I eat with family members, who are all enjoying restaurant leftovers. I feel mad at my food. I’m sick of cabbage rolls.

We decide to head to the MOMA to see the Richard Avedon exhibit. I’m terrified everyone will want to go out to eat afterwards. I don’t want to forgo the exhibit so I put the other half of my lunch pear in a small container with a scoop of peanut butter and I tuck it in my bag. The exhibit is stunning. It marks the first time I don’t think about food for a long stretch of time throughout the Hunger Challenge.

Mercifully, my companions decide that they will go home and cook just to spare me (and save money). I eat the pear and peanut butter on the BART platform on the way home and don’t offer anyone a bite.

For dinner I eat another scoop of beans and a quesadilla made from the leftover chicken, sweet potato and cheese bits (pictured above) from the enchiladas. My companions enjoy oven-fried chicken, arugula-beet salad, and roasted carrots and potatoes. They also have several cookies during the evening. I write Hunger Challenge posts to keep my mind (and hands) off the cookies.

I’m excited for Monday because it’s the last day of the challenge.

Hunger Challenge Day Five

I wake up resigned. It’s Saturday and I feel a little depressed. I start thinking about all my friends the farmers’ market vendors. Will they wonder where I am? I sure miss them. The farmers’ market is my church, my favorite place in the world to be. I don’t know what to do with myself and keep wondering if there are persimmons in the market yet. I convince myself that they are making their debut today and I’m missing it. Then I feel like a baby.

When food is your one luxury, the only thing you spend money on and it’s also your entertainment, what do you have left?  What will I do with myself on Saturday with no shopping and cooking? I don’t feel like myself. I feel like I’m living in a world devoid of color and I start to fantasize about going shoe shopping. I snap myself out of that really quickly and make breakfast.

Breakfast: 1 egg; 1 piece of toast; 1 wedge of melon
I suddenly realize that the bread tastes really sweet. And it’s not even a really cheap brand, but it’s definitely got sugar in it. My taste buds are off or something. In Hunger Challenge land all foodstuffs contain sugar.

I spend the morning cleaning the house and then a friend comes over with some figs from her tree. I give her some cucumbers from my garden and some jam that I’ve made. I eat a couple of figs. It’s crazy to turn down free food. I’m trying to find the line between really challenging myself and being so contrived that it’s ridiculous. I’m feeling apprehensive again because it’s Saturday and there are family activities planned involving children and meals out. I’m really not sure how I will deal with it yet.

Lunch: A bowl of the emergency lentil/rice/bok choy soup and a tortilla with butter. Really good.  A lot better than those enchiladas. I also eat half of a pear with peanut butter.

In the afternoon we go bowling with family. Everybody gets popcorn. It’s easy for me to resist even though I’m hungry. Then, we go to a Mexican restaurant that I really like. Now I’m really hungry. I think about just giving in and then decide that that would definitely be crossing the line I mention above even if others pay for my dinner. I mean this is supposed to be a challenge. So I order water and sit there. And sit there. And sit there. I’m really hungry. After holding out for 30 minutes I eat some of the free chips with salsa. There’s that line again. I mean really. They are free. I’m sitting there. And I’m hungry. The bill comes and I start to automatically reach for my wallet. Then I realize I didn’t eat anything and I feel sort of crazily gleeful.

Dinner: I heat up two enchiladas and a scoop of beans. The beans taste good but I have to choke the enchiladas down. The cilantro doesn’t help. Do I really have to eat these one more time? I am relieved when dinner (and Saturday) is over.

Hunger Challenge Day Four

Woke up headachy and tired. Was told that I flailed in my sleep again. Wow, this is kind of intense. I took the dog for a walk and held off eating breakfast to avoid the mid-morning hunger, which tends to be the worst for me.

Luckily this is a work at home day so I can make my emergency soup and my enchiladas. I won’t have to cook any more meals for the duration of the challenge, which is a bright spot because I’m not enjoying cooking.

Breakfast:
Oatmeal with brown sugar and milk; half of a peach

Lunch:
The rice porridge appears again and I have it with an over easy egg served on top of it. This is delicious. Truly my favorite meal yet. I could eat this every day.

In the afternoon I cooked my emergency soup. I took some of the chicken broth from poaching the chicken and added half of a sliced onion, a tiny handful of rice from my bulk bin purchase and then an even tinier handful of lentils from my cupboard. I decide that my monetary cushion allows this. (I could have easily bought them and why go to the store again?) I also add a cut-up carrot, which my cushion allows or it could have been given to me at a food pantry. Is this cheating? Then I put in the rest of the bok choy. Ahhh Greens! And cook until everything is tender. Add salt and pepper and taste and here’s my missing two meals.

I also make enchiladas. First I peel and cut the sweet potatoes into small dices. I toss them in oil and salt and roast them at 400 degrees until tender. I grate the rest of the cheese (goodbye cheese!) and then I fry the tortillas in oil. To assemble, I roll up a little shredded chicken, cheese, and sweet potatoes in 12 tortillas (3 meals for 2 people). I’m pleased that there is enough chicken, cheese, and sweet potatoes to have a quesadilla as a snack or small meal.

I open the enchilada sauce and the smell assaults me. I have a flashback to barfing in Kindergarten class. Not a good sign. Why didn’t I buy dried chiles and make my own? What was I thinking? It would have been cheaper too. I look at the ingredient list and see that sugar is in the number 2 position. I think, “at least it’s not high fructose corn syrup.”

Meanwhile I’m feeling very apprehensive. It’s Friday night and we’re heading over to a friend’s house to play card games. I know there will be food.

Dinner:
2 enchiladas (they don’t taste as bad as the sauce smelled but they are awfully sweet; pretty gross really) a scoop of beans cooked the day before. Everything was made better by cilantro once again.

So we went to the friend’s house and there was indeed food. Chips and homemade dips made lovingly with care for us. I decided it was too contrived not to eat them and kind of rude too. It wasn’t like a party. It was just four of us. I mean who in their right mind living on food stamps would go to a friend’s house and refuse to eat the free food? So I ate just a few chips and dips.

Hunger Challenge Day Three

I wake up preoccupied and worried about bread. Very worried about bread. You see I’ve been relying on bread for my snacks and then I realize it’s a limited supply.  I count out the pieces I’ve had in my head and the remaining pieces in the loaf and realize that, since I can only eat half the loaf, my remaining allotment is 5 slices. I was going to have a sandwich for lunch and I wonder if that is wise. I’m also told that I was thrashing and hitting in my sleep. Wonder what that’s about.

Breakfast:
1 egg; 1 slice of toast; 1 wedge of melon

I think I’m just fine and then I realize I’m standing over the sink scraping the melon flesh off the rind with my teeth. This is not normal.

I’m hungry at 11:30.

Lunch:
I wait at least an hour after I become hungry to eat. I’m working at home so I make a grilled cheese sandwich (that leaves 2 slices of bread for the next 4 days!) and I enjoy half a pear with it. Gooey cheap cheese tastes good.

Since I’m working at home I am able to cook half a pound of beans to go with my enchiladas and maybe to serve as a stand-alone meal with tortillas. I’m glad I bought the family pack of tortillas.

Dinner:
I’m heading off to a panel discussion for the evening. I know there will be food there and it will be good food. I feel apprehensive about that. I eat two cabbage rolls before heading out.

While I’m waiting for the panel to begin, I start to write out how many portions of the cooked food I have allotted to me vs. how many more meals I will eat. I realize with horror that my batches of food made less than I planned and I would be short two meals (other than breakfasts, which I had covered). I decide that I’ll have to make an emergency soup from the rest of the chicken broth and rice and the other half bunch of $1 bok choy.

I also realize on this day that my Hunger Challenge partner isn’t really doing the challenge. I’d spent the amount of money for a household of two and now I was on my own. I feel badly about that but decide I will just be very careful to eat only half of the food in the house.

After the panel, everyone is eating. There’s cheese and crackers, really nice almonds, lots of fruit. I don’t take anything. Somebody hands me a strawberry. I eat it. I’m not crazy. Nor do I want to be rude. It’s all I can do to not dive on the food table. I make it home.

At home I eat the other half of the pear cut into wedges with peanut butter spread on them. This has now replaced bread as my snack of choice.

Hunger Challenge Day Two

I wake up ready to go. Day one wasn’t so bad. I’m working at home in the morning and going into the office late. I take that time to make Vietnamese rice porridge. This is a brilliant dish involving a very small amount of white, long grain rice, a lot of chicken broth, a few coins of ginger, and two green onions. So few ingredients to make a magical dish that is intensely satisfying. It’s like alchemy with rice. I learned this dish from Andrea Nguyen’s Book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.
It’s one of my favorite cookbooks and I’m deeply appreciative that I have the time to make this at home before heading off to work.

Breakfast:
Oatmeal with a little brown sugar and milk; 2 slices of melon

I’m noticing that I’m eating my breakfast with great concentration. Seems I’ve banished mindless eating in one day.

Lunch:
A bowl of the above porridge with a little cilantro and sliced green onion. I also threw in just a bit of the shredded chicken I’d cooked a few days before.

I was really hungry after work so I had a piece of bread with peanut butter and went off to yoga class. I felt a bit weak during the class and came home famished and ready to throw together a quick rice noodle pasta dish.

Dinner: I used half the bok choy that I bought for $1 and some rice noodles from my Food Bank pantry list. In addition, I sauteéd the other half of the onion from the soup broth, a bit of ginger, and a bit of garlic. I also used just a few shreds of chicken and some soy sauce from the pantry. I garnished the pasta with cilantro and green onion (I’m now thinking these two items are some of my smartest purchases).

I notice that I’m taking no pleasure in cooking. I just want to get it done and into my mouth. I usually take my time and listen to music and relax. I just want to eat. I find this interesting. I eat really fast and somewhat resentfully. I realize that I’m only about 80% full. Funny, this is a habit I’d been trying to master and finally I’m doing it. There's a bottle of wine in the house so I decide to have a glass. My cushion right? I'm also drinking one cup of coffee a day. I tell myself my cushion allows that too and it actually does, depending on what else I need the cushion for.

I’m hungry again before bed so I have a piece of toast with butter.