Early Weekend Cat Blogging

So you get an early dose of weekend cat blogging this week, because we are heading out of town for a long-awaited and anticipated family wedding, so I won’t be here to regale you with my further adventures in cat-herding and culinary exploration until we get back on Sunday. And by then, I may be so tired that you won’t hear from me until Monday.

So, here is Princess Minnaloushe, who, yes, was named after the cat in the W. B. Yeat’s poem, “The Cat and the Moon.” And yes, I know that the cat in the poem was male, but it is not a masculine name, as Minna-hime will tell you herself. I know that you cannot really see all of her in this shot, which Zak captured, but it captured every bit of her very playful, flirty personality. She was playing hide and go pounce underneath Zak’s kimono when this was taken.

So you can see all of her most beautific wonderfulness, I included the second photograph–also taken by Zak–where Minna decided during one of our last moves that the newly emptied centerpiece basket was just her size.

And here are some links to other food-blogger’s cats here in the catosphere, I mean, blogosphere: Kiri and Taffy do what cats do best–eat and sleep–at Clare’s Eatstuff, Boo, the cat who named herself, at Masak-Masak, and Patchy Cat doing sheep guard duty at Farmgirl Fare.

Anyway, now that you have adored the most fetching cat in the universe, (she has me well-trained) I can tell you what you can look forward to when I get back.

A return to posts on Chinese cuisine: yes, I am still cooking Chinese food, I just haven’t been writing much about it. I would have had a post on Cantonese minced chicken in lettuce cups, complete with photographs today, but something went awry between blogger and my computer, and it blipped into the netherverse, never to be seen or heard from again. No amount of hitting the “recover post” button could bring it back, so I will recreate it when I come home again. Also, look out for a recipe and discussion of scallion pancakes, a specialty of either Shanghai or Beijing, depending upon which source you believe.

I may also do another post on the status of The Chinese Cookbook Project, which is still ongoing, but hasn’t been written upon.

And there will be a return of the general book reviews, as I have been a naughty Barbara, reading good stuff and not sharing. I know–wicked, wicked me.

In addition, I have a little rantlet planned on the perils of following recipes instead of one’s instinctive inner voice which says, “waitaminute–won’t that make it too tough?” It includes pictures, which if they were to be believed, the recipe was a stunning success, for the tart was magnificent to behold.

Finally, I will run an announcement of my intention to participate in the Locavores’s August Local Eating Challenge. Check out Jen’s blog, Life Begins at 30 for more information.

So, until Sunday evening or Monday at some point–hasta la vacca grande.

Or, as the hip hillbillies say, “Later, y’all.”

Summer Berry Baking

It is high summer, and there has been no appreciable rain here in Athens since sometime around the beginning of June. This is very odd; the weather around Athens is usually humid, wet, and rainy, with only a bit of a dry spell starting around the middle of July that only lasts until the end of August, when the autumnal rains begin.

This unseasonal lack of rain has forced the local farmers to irrigate their crops more than usual, and has taken a toll on the local wild foods. While I generally prefer the smaller wild blackberries to their gigantic, somewhat swollen domesticated cousins, this year, there is no real choice between them. The wild ones are quite seedy, small and juiceless, due to the lack of rain. Though my yard is surrounded by hedgerow on three sides that is mainly composed of wild grapes and blackberries, I am leaving the entire harvest of the latter to the birds who seem to be enjoying them a great deal.

Instead of the wild berries, on my last trip to the farmer’s market, I picked up a pint of domesticated blackberries, along with a pint of raspberries and my usual quart of blueberries. Zak saw the bounty as I set my purchases down on the counter and begged me to make “Purple Muffins.”

I cannot bear to see anyone beg, so of course, I complied with his most sincere wish.

However, the original recipe for “Purple Muffins” had been eaten in a catastrophic computer accident that happened about three years ago, so I had to improvise, and the resulting recipe turned out to make muffins that were definately not purple, but certainly tasted quite good.

Which means that I have to go back to the drawing board on the “Purple Muffin” recreation project.

A word about the technicolor muffins in question–they were born out of a huge harvest of wild blackberries, and some fresh and frozen raspberries and blueberries I had on hand way, way, way back in the day when Zak and I lived in Athens the first time. We had gone to a local park and had come back with quart upon quart of wild blackberries, and since I was terrified of pie crust at the time, I decided to make muffins.

I discovered while stirring the berries into the batter, that fresh blackberries are very fragile–most of them broke and left great gouts of purple juice which stained the batter a brilliant reddish violet. When they baked, the muffins retained the vibrant hue, and so, were named, quite aptly, “Purple Muffins.”

Everyone loved them, not only because they tasted good, but because of the purple color. In a town like Athens, where people still make and sell tie-dye, and vibrantly colored hair is quite the norm, one can see why muffins that were roughly the color of one of Jimi Hendrix’s flashier shirts would be popular.

So, while the resulting muffins were not purple, even though I was quite rough with mixing the berries into the dough, they did taste good. I based them in large part upon Cook’s Illustrated “Best Blueberry Muffin” recipe, though I changed it up a good bit. For one thing, the directions for mixing the things were so anal-retentive, one would think that they were mixing up rocket fuel or something delicate like a souffle, not a simple quick bread like muffins. For another thing, most of the CI recipes are too bland for my taste. Thier version eschewed vanilla, which I think is an utter mistake in most baking endeavors. They also ignored lemon as a flavoring, which I think is even more of a mistake in anything involving berries.

A word about vanilla extract, and lemon.

First the vanilla–I really like to use Penzey’s double-strength vanilla extract. It has twice the amount of vanilla flavor as most regular extracts, which means one of two things. Either you can use half as much as you normally use, or you can use as much and end up with a double punch of vanilla in your recipe.

Guess which venue I choose? Yep, double the flavor, double the fun. Less is sometimes more, but in my book, more is almost always better.

As for the lemon, I generally prefer to use lemon zest to get a good, pure lemon essence in most of my baking recipes. The oil of lemon, which is where the quintessential flavor of lemon resides, is found in the yellow part of the lemon peel. The same is true of all citrus fruit–if you want the true flavor of the fruit and not the acidity–use the zest. And as everyone who reads this blog regularly knows, Chef of Southpark and I favor the microplane grater for zesting all sorts of citrusy goodness for my recipes.

But, sometimes, things go awry, and there is nary a lemon to be found in my refrigerator. That doesn’t happen often, but it happened yesterday when I went to bake these muffins.

So, what do I do as a backup plan? Use lemon extract?

Nope. I generally don’t use lemon extract–it tastes too–medicinal, or like furniture polish or something, to me. I use it for a very few things.

Nope, instead, I reach for the tiny bottle Boyajian Pure Lemon Oil which lives next to my extracts in the spice cabinet. This is nothing but the oil, pure and simple, that lives in the zest, squeezed out and put into a little bottle. The price is somewhat high, but so little of it is used, that it lasts a long time. I have a larger bottle of their lime oil which has lasted me years. Just keep it in a cool dark place and bring it out and use it by the drop, or at the most, by the 1/8 of a teaspoonful.

Back to the muffins. The CI recipe also called for frozen berries (in order to avoid staining the dough, as I recall) and not nearly as many as I would like. Since I had so many berries, I decided to use a full two cups, and to hell with the consequences.

The batter suffered no ill effects. The only issue was that it made more batter than I needed to make a dozen muffins, so I ended up baking two more muffins worth in a tiny loaf pan, thus making a cute little quick bread that I am going to take with me when we pick up Morganna tomorrow, so she can have a snack while we drive.

Summer Berry Muffins

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup sour cream (use a fluid measuring cup)
1/4 cup half and half or milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
zest of one lemon or scant 1/8 teaspoon lemon oil
2 cups fresh mixed berries, picked over, rinsed and dried
about 1-2 tablespoons turbinado or demararra sugar for sprinkling

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix together flour, baking powder, salt and spices in a smallish bowl.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk egg until thick and uniformly yellow. Whisk in sugar and beat until thick and lemon-colored. Whisk in butter, and continue beating until completely combined.

Whisk together sour cream, vanilla and half and half. Whisk into the egg, sugar and butter mixture.

Mix together flour mixture and berries, then combine with the wet ingredients, folding with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Make sure to mix thoroughly, and don’t worry about mashing the berries a little. It will make streaks of color in your dough, but who cares, really? It will taste fine.

Either spray your muffin tins with baking spray or line with paper muffin cups. Using a large ice cream scoop (the kind with the ratchety thing that scrapes the scoop out of of the scooper), or a spoon, portion out the dough, which will be thick and heavy, into the muffin cups. If you don’t have an ice cream scoop, run out and get one for this recipe–this is the best and easiest way to portion out muffin dough without making a godawful mess.

Sprinkle the tops with a bit of turbinado or demarerra sugar for crunch and sparkle. (Sparkle is always good, don’t you think?)

Bake for 10-15 minutes, then turn the pans back to front in order to get them to brown evenly. Bake for another 10-15 minutes, for total of 20-30 minutes. (If you have a convection oven as I do, the baking time will be closer to 20 minutes. For a regular oven, it will be more like 25-30 minutes.)

Remove from oven and cool for a couple of minutes in the pan, then remove from the pan and allow to cool on a rack. These are good warm, but even better after they cool completely–then, they are irresistible, as the flavors have really melded together and the berries are no longer molten nuggets of hot death for your tongue.

Makes 12-14 muffins, depending on how large your muffins are.

Meat Comes from Animals: Deal with It, or Eat Vegetables

A week or so ago, I posted a comment on my blog entry entitled “Alice Waters Goes to Washington,” where I noted that people who whine that they “can’t eat meat that looks like it came from an animal” were a hot button for me.

It is an issue for many reasons, one of which is quite simply this: if you cannot deal with the fact that an animal has to die so you can eat its flesh, then, you shouldn’t be eating that animal in the first place. It isn’t necessary for most humans to eat meat anymore–human knowledge of nutrition and the global marketplace have made vegetarian diets more pleasant, palatable and nutritionally sound than ever before.

So, if you don’t -need- to eat meat for its nutritive value, and it squicks you out to think of eating an animal, then why not just stop eating meat, and while you are at it, stop whining about it?

Doesn’t that make sense? Isn’t that a sound bit of reasoning? Isn’t it nice, tidy and logical?

Ah, yes, but there is a problem with that–humans are not nice, tidy and logical beings, and that is where the issue becomes thorny, sticky and problematic.

The answer I often get from people who say, “I don’t like to eat meat that looks like it comes from an animal,” when I retort, “So don’t eat meat,” is the following sentence, usually stated in a plaintive wail:

“But I like the way meat tastes.”

This always works my very last nerve.

Why are people like this? Why do people insist on eating meat, but complain if it looks like it came from the carcass of an animal–which, even if it is minced and turned into sausage or trimmed into boneless cutlets, or cooked, shredded, ground and pressed into the shape of cartoon characters, is whence all meat comes? Why is it so hard to wrap one’s head around the fact that meat is the product of slaughtering an animal for the purpose of human consumption?

There are a lot of reasons, but I think the main problem, particularly here in the United States, lies with the way in which food is produced and distributed.

It used to be that local farmers produced most of the food of a given locale, and local butchers, grocers and small markets sold that food to the public. At the turn of the century up until the 1950’s most meat animals were raised reasonably close to the marketplace. Small to medium-sized local slaughterhouses and meat markets were common in all cities and towns and in every neighborhood, there was a local butcher shop.

At these businesses, the public could see animals in various states of preparation on their journey to comestibility. Herds of cattle were sometimes driven through town on their way to the slaughterhouse; in my home town of Charleston, West Virginia, they were offloaded from barges on the river and driven to the slaughterhouse owned by my great-grandparents.

The public didn’t exactly go through the Fisher and Fruth slaughterhouse, but once the animals became skinned, eviscerated and headless carcasses, they were sent next door to our meat market. There, one could go in, look at whole sides of hanging beef or whole hogs and either buy the entire carcass, or order a specific primal cut to be delivered to their home, or just pick up some frenched lamb chops for dinner.

My mother and father have photographs of my great-grandfather and his sons and business partners in the butcher shop, with carcasses in various states of being cut hanging from the ceiling and being displayed in cases.

People thought nothing of walking into a butcher’s shop and seeing the carcasses of cattle, calves, sheep, lambs, hogs, piglets, chickens, geese and ducks. Rabbit, deer, goat and turkey carcasses were common as well.

It was the way of things.

People at that time were closer to the source of meat; in fact, people at that time were closer to death in general. When someone died back then, the person was laid out and the funeral took place at home. And often, the relatives of the departed did the job of washing, dressing and laying the person in the casket in the parlor.

And no one thought anything of it–because that is how things were done.

With the coming of the supermarket–(and the funeral home) the public became estranged from death and the its relationship to meat. Meat is now cut far from the eyes of the meat buying public–it happens behind closed doors in the meat department in the supermarket–or, as is often the case now–farther away at a centralized slaughterhouse. Meat is neatly wrapped in tidy plastic and presented in styrofoam trays, which is all so sanitary, cleanly and neat. These plastic-encased, vacuum-packed boneless bits of meat are far removed from the bloody truth that meat is the product of death.

People have forgotten, that in order for us to eat a hamburger, a cow dies. Most Americans live sheltered lives where the fact that in order for us to celebrate Independance Day with fried chicken and barbequed ribs, chickens and hogs must die.

This is utterly alien to my experience. I grew up with those aformentioned pictures of the meat market, framed and displayed proudly in our livingroom. Furthermore, with my own hands, I helped butcher steers, hogs and chickens, and have cleaned countless fish. From the time that I was strong enough, I helped my grandparents produce the meat our entire family ate. And I never thought that there was anything odd about it.

We named our hogs and cows. The chickens–well, when you have fifty of them and many of them look much alike, they are harder, but I still had some that I named every year, because they had distinct personalities or looks, and I could recognize them. We named the steers were were going to eat, and my cousins and I, when we marked the wrapped packages of meat, would put the name on the package, along with the cut and the date.

For example, we had an Angus-Hereford cross steer we named Raisin. So, when we butchered him, we put on the package of a chuck blade roast, “Raisin, chuck blade roast, 11/74, 2 lbs.”

And when we sat down to eat that chuck blade roast, Grandma would say, “This is from Raisin.” And whoever said grace would say at the end, “and thank you, Raisin, for being such a nice steer and making such good meat for us to eat, amen.”

I remember telling that story to some kids at culinary school, when we took a meat-cutting class. Some of them were horrified, and they look at me as if my people were a bunch of barbarians for naming a steer, petting it and feeding it treats through its life, and then killing it swiftly and painlessly, without frightening him, then butchering him, and then thanking his spirit after he was dead for letting us eat him.

These were the same students who objected to learning how to cut up an already plucked, bled, eviscerated, beheaded chicken into cooking parts, “because it is gross.”

Only a couple of other students got what I was saying.

Of course, they had grown up on farms as well.

I tried to point out that the really awful parts were done, but most of them wouldn’t listen. To make matters worse, several of them said at lunch, when we were served beef ribs, “Oh, I hate to eat meat that looks like it comes from an animal. It just makes my stomach hurt.”

I mostly kept my tongue behind my teeth, and my lips clamped shut.

The only students I felt bad for in that class were the two vegetarians. They didn’t even eat meat, yet, they diligently worked to learn how to cut it up and cook it, even though they found it to be distasteful. I had a lot of respect for them, and I found myself volunteering to work with them for the remainder of the class. Compared to the whining meat-eaters in the class, the vegetarians were models of ethical adult behavior.

It isn’t just young people who are confronted by a full side of beef in a culinary class who will make stupid remarks about meat. I have heard idiotic statements at the dinner table as well, by persons old enough to know better.

Once, I was at Zak’s cousin’s house for Thanksgiving, and we were in the middle of dinner, when the rather twitchy lady next to me eyed the turkey platter that was near her, and sniffed as another guest took up the drumstick and tucked in. “I cannot stand to see meat that looks obviously like it is from the animal. It upsets me so.”

She then speared a piece of breast meat from her plate and ate it.

The irony didn’t seem to bother her, but it nearly made me choke.

I swallowed, blinked, stared at the woman, and blinked again. Determined not to make a scene, I opened my mouth and closed it, and looked across the table at Zak’s cousin’s brothers and mother.

Let me explain to you about this family–for several generations they have been involved in the food industry in Baltimore. They had owned and run a restaurant, and at the time of this Thanksgiving, one brother was working as a meat cutter, while the other was a caterer. Their mother, who was sitting directly across from the lady who was still wrinkling her nose at the turkey platter, had grown up in the Jewish community of Baltimore, and had a lot of experience in the food industry.

Her name was Selma. Selma, a lovely older woman, looked down her elegant nose at the other woman, and raised one eyebrow. The corner of her mouth quirked up and she took a sip of wine then said, “Oh, that is so strange to me, because you know, I grew up buying live chickens at the market and carrying them home by their feet. And then my mother or father would butcher them out in the backyard in the summer, or down in the basement in the winter, and I always helped pluck them. They were lively birds, you know–the livelier, the better, my mother always said, and she would wring its neck and then we would bleed it–you know, you have to bleed it all out to make it kosher.”

I glanced at the woman next to me whose face was turning a whiter shade of pale than her shining silver hair. I couldn’t look at Selma too long, because her eyes were twinkling with wicked glee, as she watched the woman squirm, so I glanced at her sons, who had barely disguised contempt written on their faces. But, like me, they stayed quiet, and let thier mother speak.

Selma continued to describe the process of going from live chicken to matzoh ball soup, and then shrugged and said, “And they were the best tasting chickens I have ever eaten. Really, until you eat such a fresh bird, you do not know what you are missing.”

The woman next to me opened her mouth and shivered. “I just couldn’t do that. I don’t know how you could. Just seeing the meat on the bone bothers me.”

Selma fixed her with a strong stare and said, “So then, eat vegetables. There are plenty around to eat–I bet Barbara over there could tell you how to go about eating the right kinds of vegetables to stay healthy.” She gave a barely perceptable wink, and then went back to eating her turkey.

I took the hint and carried the conversation forward to a discussion of vegetarian cuisine and cookery, which then evolved into a discussion of dessert–always a safe topic.

That happened years ago, but it was not the last time I heard someone whine about eating meat that looked as if it had once been alive.

I suspect that I will never stop hearing that particular complaint, at least until humans figure out how to safely clone and culture animal muscle cells in vats, like they do in some of Lois McMaster Bujold’s science fiction novels. I jokingly made reference to that last week, and then this week, was surprised to see a news story on the issue at Sustainable Table.

Until the time that humanity starts growing meat in laboratories, I hope that several things happen.

One, I would like to see more people come to terms with the fact that when they eat meat, they are eating a bit of dead animal. In facing this truth, I would very much like to see more consumers looking into how meat is produced in our country, and asking some very simple questions about the factory farming system, which I believe is harmful to the ecosystem, to the animals it produces, and to human health.

Two, in asking these questions about factory farming, I would like to see consumers seeking alternatives to the meats produced in this manner. Some will likely choose to become vegetarians, and that is fine–I believe that is a very ethical choice for many people, and I support the right of anyone to choose to eat a vegetarian diet. Others will still want to eat meat, but will decide to find other sources besides factory farmed meats.

Finding alternative sources of meat is still difficult in some places, but due to rising consumer demand for organic, grass-fed, free-range meats, more farmers are beginning to step forward to satisfy this growing market. And while prices on some of these meats are higher than the national grocery store average, prices will likely begin to drop as more farmers begin offering sustainably-raised meat.

For information on how to find alternatives, visit The Meatrix, which includes a great Flash animation parody of the film, “The Matrix.” In addition to the film, there are a large number of links on the site to help consumers find and connect with local farmers whose animals are treated in an ethical fashion.

Third, I would like to see consumers just think a little bit more about where our food comes from in general. Not just meat, but everything we eat. Where does it come from? What goes into its production? Why does processed food cost less than fresh food? What are farm subsidies, and who gets them? How does the global economy affect small farms, both in the US and abroad? For a list of books on the subject, check out my previous post, “The Empire Strikes Back”.

Another source of news on all things having to do with the United States food systems and the economy, check out Parke Wilde’s excellent blog, US Food Policy.

Finally, I would like to see recognition of the fact that all of life feeds on life in an endless cycle that has been in existence for as long as our planet has been habitable. In understanding this, I hope that one day, all humans can learn to respect the animals who die so that we can eat meat, and demand that while those animals live, that they be treated ethically and humanely, and that they be killed in as painless and least frightening way possible.

Because, to me, one of the best measures a civilized society is not in how we treat our greatest citizens, but in how we treat the least powerful among us.

There are no beings on earth with less power to resist humanity than domestic animals.

I hope that one day, humanity realizes this, and rises to the challenge of treating domestic food animals with the respect and honor that they deserve.

Seasonal Dance: Lebanese-Inspired String Bean Saute

Peeling back the layers of influences on my styles of cookery is difficult; while it is true that for the most part, my childhood was filled with typical southern Appalachian farm food, I was also exposed to the culinary wonders of the Mediterranean world early on.

My mother’s best friends when I was very young was Pete, an older man from Greece, and his much younger (and I thought, completely elegant) wife, Claudia. They owned a tiny diner in downtown Charleston where they served typical American diner fare, but they also cooked Greek foods as well. And my first taste of Greek food was a bite of baklava that Claudia gave me while I was sitting on her lap. My next taste was a dolmathe–grape leaf roll, which was popped into my mouth by Pete in a similar circumstance. It got to the point with those two that I was like a little bird–popping my mouth open whenever I sat on one of their laps at the counter of their diner.

And like a baby bird, I was always fed.

My Aunt Nancy, as I mentioned previously in “The Cook Next Door,” also introduced me to the glories of Italian, Syrian and Portuguese foods. She not only cooked delicious foods that I always felt priviledged to eat, but she also took me to the fundraising dinners that the Greek Orthodox Church held annually.

By the time I had my first restaurant job at the age of seventeen, I had already developed a taste for the foods of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

I ended up working however, not at a Greek restaurant, but at a place that was changing its concept from regional Italian to Texas barbeque. Which is a hell of a change, and the clientele didn’t much care for it, either, but it was surmised that the purpose of the place was to lose money to give the owner a tax break. Besides, he owned four other restaurants, all of which were quite successful.

The owner and his wife were a middle-aged Lebanese couple, and while I was always somewhat wary of the owner, his wife, Claudette, was another matter entirely. She was very like my beloved Claudia of childhood–lovely and elegant, funny, sweet-tempered and friendly.

And she liked to cook, besides.

She would come in once a week or so, in the lull between the lunch rush and the madness of dinner, and would “mess around in the kitchen” as she liked to call it. She’d cook the employees wonderful meals, and then would present them self-depricatingly as, “nothing, just something I felt like cooking.”

Though she touted these dishes as “nothing,” my tastebuds told me they were something, and I told her quite earnestly that she shouldn’t bad-mouth her cooking so–it was fantastic. She blushed and shrugged–it turned out that she missed cooking. All of their sons were grown, and so she and her husband ate out every night–usually at one of thier own restaurants–because he thought that now that they had the money, she shouldn’t have to cook again.

What he didn’t seem to understand was that she wanted to cook. And in fact, I think she needed to cook. And when he was out making deals and building a new segement of his empire, she was sneaking off to his restaurants in order to satisfy that need to cook and feed others.

I understood, and I became her co-conspirator in the kitchen. I’d finish my sidework as a waitress quickly, so I could help her in the kitchen instead of sitting around gossipping with the waiters and bartenders.

I remember in particular, a dish of green beans she made one afternoon. It was high summer, and string beans and tomatoes were in season, and she came dashing in the kitchen door laden with parcels from the farmer’s market. She pinned up her hair and tied on an apron, then grabbed me and dragged me behind the line with her, putting a cook’s apron on over my waitress uniform.

“Come, come–we are cooking loobia today,” she said, dumping a grocery bag full of pencil thin Blue Lake bush beans into a strainer. I rinsed them, and at her direction, stringed and snapped the ends off of them, while she peeled and minced garlic, and sliced a pile of onions.

From another bag came plum tomatoes, and a handful of fresh herbs. She directed me to core and cut the tomatoes in half longways and then into chunks, and then to take the leaves of the thyme and rosemary from the stems, and mince them.

All of the prep work was done quite fast, especially with a couple of line cooks helping. They all treated Claudette with deference, not only because she was the owner’s wife, but because she was a lady who also was a wizard in front of the stove. All of the rough sexual horseplay and tough talk vanished when she swept into the kitchen and the most unshaven, swaggering, sexist pigs would smooth their hair, keep their eyes lowered and call her nothing but “Ma’am,” or “Miz Claudette.”

She had me watch closely while she cooked the beans–she heated a lot of olive oil up in a skillet and added the onions, and cooked them until they were a medium golden brown. At that point, she added the garlic and herbs, and cooked them all until the garlic was just turning golden. At that point, she added the green beans, salt and enough water to barely cover them and, keeping the heat on high, let the beans cook until they were tender and a deep velvety green. By this time, most of the water was cooked away, and she added the tomato chunks and a good lashing of black pepper. She let the rest of the water cook out, and the beans and tomatoes cook down until the tomatoes started to fall into a sauce and the green beans released a bit of their own juices.

We ate it hot that day, with some simple rice pilaf, and shredded chicken from the smoker. It was amazingly good, and when I told her so, she answered me, “And you can eat it cold, too. Either way, it is good–when it is hot out, it is really nice straight from the refrigerator.”

Over the years, I have cooked many pansful of Claudette’s loobia, and have made many variations on it. While one can use canned tomatoes in the winter to make the dish, it is best to use fresh tomatoes in season. Roma tomatoes are still preferred for thier ability to fall completely apart in a sauce, but really, any good vine-ripened tomato will taste good with the beans.

I have since created my own version of Claudette’s beans, one in which the beans are cooked until tender-crisp, which is how Zak prefers to eat them. The flavorings are all the same basic idea, however, and while the texture is completely different, I have found that the crispness of the beans really adds to the refreshing quality of them, particularly if they are served cold.

Lebanese Summer Beans

Ingredients:

2 pounds fresh string beans, strung, with ends snapped off
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and sliced thinly
4 large cloves garlic, minced
1 large sprig fresh thyme, stemmed
2 large sprigs fresh rosemary, stemmed and minced
10-12 fresh cherry tomatoes, halved (I used red cherry and yellow pear tomatoes for color and flavor contrast)
3 tablespoons minced fresh basil (I used Greek columnar basil which has a sharper flavor than regular Italian lettuce leaf basil)

Method:

Bring salted water to boil in a large dutch oven or stockpot. Add beans and cook at a boil until they are a brilliant emerald green and are tender crisp. Drain immediately into a colander and rinse in cold tap water to stop cooking. The blanching softens the skin of the beans to allow more flavor to penetrate the beans and cuts down on the amount of olive oil you will need to cook the beans.

Allow beans to become mostly dry–if a few drops of water continue to cling to the beans, don’t worry. You just don’t want them to be soaking wet when you throw them into the pan with the olive oil.

Heat up olive oil in a heavy pan on medium heat. When oil shimmers, add onion and cook until medium golden brown. Add garlic and thyme and rosemary and continue cooking, stirring until garlic is pale gold in color.

Add beans and toss and stir to mix beans completely with flavored olive oil. Allow to cook for about two or three minutes, then add halved tomatoes, and continue tossing and cooking until tomatoes wilt slightly and release some of their juices, the beans are tender crisp and the onions, garlic and herbs cling to the tomatoes and beans. Sprinkle with basil in the last minute of cooking.

Notes:

You can serve it hot, immediately, or let it cool to room temperature and serve it. Or, you can chill it and serve it as a cold salad.

You can add a great quality feta or goat cheese to this right before taking it off the fire. I prefer Mt. Vikos sheep and goat milk feta. It is, quite simply, the freshest tasting feta I have ever eaten–it has a clean, milky flavor with just the right balance of salt and acid, and the texture is soft–not chalky and harsh like most feta I have had. Adding the cheese can make it an outstanding part of a simple vegetarian meal.

Instead of basil, add chopped fresh mint at the end of cooking.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Springheel Jack and Gummitch

Little did I know that other food bloggers besides myself posted pictures of their feline companions once a week–a practice I had gotten out of and was going to return to this weekend anyway.

So, I am joining Clare Eats (Taffy and Kiri), Indira (Kittaya) and Farmgirl (Molly Doodlebug) in posting pictures of my wee beasties in a tradition called Weekend Cat Blogging.

This week’s featured photograph is of Springheel Jack and Gummitch, cuddled up on our bed. The boys looked so contented that I almost hated to photograph them as the flash often causes them to leap away and hide.

But they were really cosy, and I got several shots and neither of them ran off. Instead, they just put their heads down, cheek to cheek and went to sleep.

Jack is the larger of the two tigers and Gummi is the smaller one–he is technically fully grown but he still a small cat in every respect.