Baby Bok Choy

point & shoot pretties

Bowl o'Red

Texas chili is not an arcane art. I'm always amazed to hear of the elaborate secretive hijinx of competitive chili teams. Yes, it is a team sport in Texas. If you ever see it, Chile Pepper Magazine is an entertaining read even if you only read the ads. Good photography, too.

Your average Texan isn't looking for the ultimate cook-off chili. What a Texan wants is a bowl o' red. It's meaty, it's smooth, and it is completely, utterly, free of beans. It doesn't take 10 hours to make or a special cut of meat. If you use hamburger, the clattering, wan ghosts of chuck wagons past will not circle your bed in the night.

Texas Chili:
1 1/2 lbs. Hamburger
1 fat clove Garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground Cumin
1 teaspoon Chili powder
1 teaspoon Chipotle powder
1/2 teaspoon Oregano
1 teaspoon Bacon grease ( no substitutes!)
1/3 can tomato paste
water & salt
cornmeal or masa to thicken

1. In a big skillet, brown the hamburger and leave it lumpy. Drain the grease if you want to.
2. In a pot, gently fry the garlic in the bacon grease till it's soft. Add about a cup of water to stop it frying if you need to. Then stir in the tomato paste till it's smooth.
3. Add all the meat and all the spices (not the thickener). Add water to cover, and stir well.
4. Simmer gently for about 20 min. and add the salt. How much salt? More if it will go over rice, Cajun style, and less if it will go over corn chips. If you use canned tomato sauce or diced tomatoes, you'll need a lot less than if you use paste, with is unsalted (and cheaper).

At this point, it's perfectly okay to eat. But it will taste better if you turn off the heat and let it rest a few hours.

About 10 min. before serving, mix up your thickener to avoid lumps and stir it in to simmer about 10 minutes. I use ordinary yellow cornmeal; if you have masa it tastes fine. I've seen a recipe suggest using a big spoonful of Jiffy brand cornbread mix, which makes sense if you're making it, but it's very sweet by Texas standards.

Serve it plain or over corn chips. If you're just dying for that Friday night football stadium taste, squirt processed cheese over it all. (I never touch the stuff.)

And no beans. Anathema sit!
*******
Austinites of a certain age will remember Hill's, a steakhouse owned by the Goodnight ranching family, serving their beef. What amazing chili they had! (And sourdough dinner rolls I never equalled at the height of my bread-god powers.) The Goodnight ranch tried a cross breeding experiment decades ago between cows and buffalo (American bison). The experiment failed, but if you substitute ground buffalo for some of the beef, the chili will taste absolutely fabulous. Hill's was a casualty of the recession of '86-'87, but reopened in 2001; I haven't been there.

Thai Chicken Coconut Soup: Ka Tom Gai

There are loads of recipes out there for this soup: it's cheap, it's easy, and a beginner cook can get restaurant results on the first try. And it doesn't have to be spicy hot if you don't want it to be--it tastes perfectly fine without any chile at all. It's a myth that all Thai food is hot.

After shoveling way too much sidewalk and driveway in -1F, I had this and then a second bowl.

A Soft Crust Surprise

Okay, this bread began as breakfast gone awry. But it turned out really well, and it achieved something difficult: a soft crust without adding any fat, egg, or other sneaky trick. It's not the right recipe if you're a complete beginner, but you don't need to be a gluten goddess, either.

There is one sneaky trick, with the salt, but I'll explain at the end.

The Gruel:
3/4 c. rolled oats (the 5 min. cook kind)
3 c. water

Boil the oats in the water till it's thickened, the oats are hardly distinct, and the volume somewhat reduced. When you think of Charles Dickens, you're there. Take it off the heat to cool to a yeast-friendly temperature.

The Poolish:
1/2 t. dry yeast (I like Red Star)
1 c. flour

Pour the warm gruel into your bread bowl. Scrape any papery film on the sides of the pot in, too; that's soluble fibre and will dissolve again easily. Add about half a teaspoon of dry yeast (NOT quick rise yeast, which is evil) and about a cup of flour. Mix together well, cover, and let it ferment all day and overnight.

In the morning, you will have an unlovely bowl of stinky, bubbly, swamp juice.

The Dough:
Flour
Salt

Add flour till it starts to come together well. Then add salt to the desired taste, and finish it to a soft, but not sticky, dough. (The sneaky salt trick is below.)

Yes, I ought to have quantities, but I hardly ever use them myself. The salt was about half a tablespoon, which is a bit more than I'd use for a French dough. A bland addition, like oatmeal, and sourness from a long poolish both need a bit more salt.

Oil your bread bowl, drop the dough in and then flip it to coat with oil. Cover and let double in bulk. In my winter kitchen (temp. mid-50s) that took about 3 hrs.--it's like having a fancy bread retarder for free several months of the year! The top picture is the doubled dough in an ordinary bread bowl.

Gently turn it out of the bowl and press out all the air bubbles. Divide it in half & shape each half into a boule; set on the baking pan. I use cornmeal on mine, but whatever you ordinarily use. Cover it, because it will dry easily.

Ideally, they would then double and be docked. But I didn't do that. After an hour, I docked them and put them in the 400F oven 'cause another couple of hours' rise was not in my schedule. I baked them for 40 minutes, which is about the minimum for that size. That's an electric oven, no steam.

The Surprise
The crust was soft when it came out of the oven. The crust was still soft after it cooled. The crust was still soft the next day! No oil, no egg, just a soft crust with pure grain taste.

The crumb was even throughout: no big bubbles saying,"Look at me! I'm so artisan!"

My kids think this is the perfect bread. It doesn't have any little oatmeal lumps in the crumb or crust, which happens if you make it with normal cooked oatmeal. It has a soft, dense crumb with the short second rise. The kids hate those big holes the jam falls through. And the crust is good for the weird little aliens who don't want a nice European crunchy crust. It's pretty much perfect with honey.

The Salt Trick
How to get the salt right when you're working without a recipe: know the taste of the dough. When I used to bake all the time, the bread I made most was a French poolish and we had tweaked the recipe till it was consistently just what we wanted. First step was to pour the measured salt into my palm, so I'd get an idea what a certain amount looked like in my hand. That way, I learned to get the right amount of salt for that recipe by eye. And I tasted the raw dough. That way I knew what the right amount of salt tasted like. Day after day, I measured by eye in my hand and tasted the dough.

Making bread at home, I'm usually working with approximately the same amount of dough, so I know roughly how much salt I need to begin with. But working without a recipe, like here, I always begin with a little less than I'll think I need. When it's well mixed but not yet kneaded, I pop a raisin-sized piece in my mouth. If it tastes right, I knead just a minute or two (kneading is vastly overrated if your flour's good quality). If the salt is lacking, I add a bit of salt as I start to knead and then check again.

Only you know what the right taste is for you. I prefer less salt than many recipes call for, but I'll try to describe it. When I put the bit of dough in my mouth, I should taste a little bit of salt immediately. After a few seconds, I should taste more salt as it dissolves. If I don't taste it till it's had time to dissolve, it's not enough. If it's so salty I notice it over the flour or it's sharp, that's too much salt and it needs more flour.

Once you've mastered the salt trick, you can experiment easily. If a dough has a sweetener, you might need a tiny bit more salt. If the dough has something more bland than wheat flour, like oatmeal or potato, it will need more salt. Fresh herbs and sun dried tomatoes need only a tiny bit extra. It'll give you a lot of confidence to play.

Thai Eggplant

So what's so special about Thai eggplant? It's very mild, the skin is tender, and the seeds are soft. Cut off the tops, quarter them, and you're ready to go. They are about the size of golf balls. And they look really cool.

Farmer Boy, Tiger Mothers, and me

Of all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Farmer Boy was my favorite as a kid. I know now that much of the appeal of Farmer Boy was how closely it mirrored my own Montessori education in important ways.

I can't briefly sketch the whole philosophy! But for our purposes: Montessori education intentionally honors a child's natural curiosity, initiative, and desire for competence. Students are responsible for their own learning, and allowed to pursue their own interests and manage their time, at a very early age. It's important for a child to develop the ability to evaluate their own work. Montessori directors (teachers) won't praise a child, because it's considered demeaning to the child if they come to work for others' praise; or in more recent pop psychobabble, their natural internal rewards must not be replaced by social or external rewards. More controversially, students are seldom required to do a project individually or in group work; it's a choice they negotiate with other students. The goal is to become competent in their own environment, by exploration, instruction, and real responsibilities.

So Farmer Boy appealed to me very much: Almanzo's a child with real responsibilities, becoming competent in his environment, well on his way to acquiring the skills he needs as an adult. His interest in horses is respected by his father. Almanzo is learning the skills and the virtues when he's 8 yrs. old that will make him an independent adult. Very Montessori.

Which brings me to the current controversy surrounding "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." No, I haven't read it, but it's hard to avoid the interviews, summaries, and the backlash online. And I've known several people who were raised that way, Eastern European and Japanese. Several were young professional musicians having international careers; one was a roommate we had a suicide watch for because she was failing a class. This doesn't make me an expert by any means, but I've seen extreme positive and negative results of Tiger Mothering up close and personal.

And I admire one thing about Tiger Mothering: at least the things the child makes steep sacrifices for are things of lasting value. Diligent study habits have long term positive benefits. Playing piano or violin well is a lifetime skill--and the grown child can make that as social or private, festive or meditative, as they choose. It might not justify the rigor of this form of child rearing -that's certainly debatable- but I admire that the goals are not trivial nor transient. The musicians I've known who were forced to practice for hours from the time they were 3 (and sometimes beaten for failure) have international careers, are extraordinary musicians, and did not resent or regret the cost of their proficiency.

What upsets me a lot more is the pseudo-Chinese Mothers. They are the mothers who are shocked and puzzled that I didn't automatically put my 4 yr. old in soccer. Then when I tell them he wasn't interested, they are shocked and puzzled I didn't sign him up anyway. I've had mothers tell me point blank I am wrong not to force him into soccer (and sometimes other sports as well), and that respecting his wishes is no way to raise him. And to be clear, this is soccer 10+ hrs. a week for 4 yr. olds; they're "behind" and need remedial tutoring if they start at age 6. To me, this is worse than "Battle Hymn", because these kids make most of the same sacrifices but gain something trivial. They work harder than Almanzo did at harvest, and gain no skills that make them adults or competent in any meaningful way.

When women have told me I'm crazy not to force my kids into the sports mania and it's inevitable (yes, women have told me this to my face), I don't whack them with Montessori's theory. I tell them, as politely and gently as I can, that leadership and service are central to my family, and to develop my son's initiative and judgement I have to honor them first. That's usually the end of the conversation.

Doughnut Muffins

Recipe from Jenna here, thanks to Ree at The Pioneer Woman. The kids love'em!

Montessori & tech

Dr. Maria Montessori's writings were the basis of my education till I was twelve and a half. Montessori isn't the right approach for every kid, but it was certainly the right one for me.

And it's the right approach for my son. One of the guiding principles of Montessori is competence in one's own environment. For example, Dr. Montessori introduced children's furniture, believe it or not--it was a huge innovation to have desks and chairs for small bodies a hundred years ago. Similarly, small pitchers and toaster ovens for food prep are standard as a temporary aid. But the goal is always an adult level of competence, not cuteness. Age 4-5 is the right time to start kids cooking, and we have.

But my kitchen is a lot different than that of late 19th cent. Italy. For one thing, there's this woman with a camera in it. And my boy, naturally enough, wants to take pictures, wants his own blog (he's been online since he was 4), and just read my book on food styling. And his 5 yr. old sister is reading and learning to cook now.

So our latest project is that while I'm cooking with my daughter, my son gets to learn some food photography. He holds the camera over carpet in the dining room ('cause my kitchen's too small for 2 people, much less 3), I get pictures of stuff that takes both my hands, and my daughter doesn't have to share the whisk with him. Of course, that means I'm teaching 2 completely different things at the same time, but so far, my head hasn't exploded. I'm also starting slow, only having him shoot one or two steps.

This isn't homeschooling, btw. I fully support the homeschooling movement, but my kids are in an alternative school (Montessori's not available). Their school is based on a theory of the human person very similar to Montessori's, so they don't get theoretical whiplash. I'm not sure how a Montessori purist would react to this use of technology, frankly--electric toys are a big no-no. But it is competence in his environment. That's his photo on top, SOOC.

Asian grocery: white fungus & incense

Asian grocery: bamboo shoots

Asian grocery: peppers & eggs

Asian grocery: lemongrass

a foodstyling resource

So two weeks ago, the New Books section of the library had Food Styling: The Art of Preparing Food for the Camera by Delores Custer, 2010. I grabbed it, and I recommend it.

I notice good photography on the food blogs I read, and my blogroll reflects this. But I've shied from food styling. It's pretentious in person-- I hate desserts that have architectural elements. Fancy plating doesn't impress me at all. But shouldn't a picture of food look good?

I recently googled the wonderful, not-pretentious bakery that did our wedding cake. I'm a fan for life. They do beautiful French pastry and beautiful cakes, and their website is just terrible! By terrible I mean that my December shot of finished baklava was better than any picture on their site. It's a thousand+ miles away and I'd gladly shoot their whole bakery free just for the joy of it. Well made food deserves to be well represented.

And when I made Tom's Chicken Under a Brick, the kitchen shots were, um, barely tolerable. But when I did the whole menu with the leftovers, I felt bad that the chicken didn't look good. Not only did it not look delicious, but it looked greasy even though it wasn't. So I flipped through the book to the right chapter and tried again. It's not professional quality, but still a zillion times better.(see below)

The book is well worth reading even if you don't want to take nice food pictures--my 7 year old thinks it's cool to know all the sneaky tricks used to get some of the pictures you see. But nice food pictures are the whole point of Custer's Food Styling. She taught food styling for decades, and her teaching experience really shows. It's very well organized, clear, and mostly jargon-free (glossary in the back, too).

The immediate target readers are aspiring professional food stylists. It's very practical--what tools to have with you, what skills can diversify your income, etc. She doesn't cover photography, color, or formal elements of composition. But just about everything else you can imagine IS covered. The effects of different lighting and different props are excellent. Contrasting photos illustrate her points very well throughout the book. And there are great sections for "challenges"--meaning stuff that's hard to shoot. Everything is about getting it right at the time of the shoot, not fixing it later in a digital editing program. There's also a good bit of business advice.

The part most valuable to me so far has been all her practical tips for emphasizing certain ingredients or characteristics. For a blatant example:

Hot off the pan--looks greasy!

Slightly warm, from the same batch of chicken.

A nicer example of what I've learned is this:

This shot doesn't stress one element of the soup, and the olive oil on top is nicely visible. The lighting needs work, and a bit of cropping. But this is basically the sort of shot you'd see at the beginning of a recipe.


This shot stresses the artichoke hearts' unique texture and minimizes the olive oil. The strong symmetry of the vegetables and the bowl are at odds with the lemons & stripes at the top. In both shots, a piece of artichoke heart has wandered and some thyme has scooted up the bowl; for a more professional look, both of those would have to be fixed.


A very casual reading of the book has improved my photos a lot (given my limitations in lighting and equipment, I need all the help I can get). I've also learned how they could be further improved toward a professional standard. I don't aspire to a career in food styling or food photography. But if I were an ambitious food blogger or aspiring to do my own cookbook, this book would be extremely valuable for getting the quality of photo AND the right type of styling for the target audience.

The author, who has never heard of me, has her own professional web site here.

man bread

When I lived in California, there was a great big fair for three adjacent counties. Lots of agricultural competition! And the baking competitions were fierce.

I grew up urban and took some persuading to enter the Tri-County Fair. Aren't county fairs strictly for shitkickers? There was no resisting the Farmer's wife's relentless good cheer on this point, especially when I was already disappointing her by not reproducing. But the first time I read the rules, I was shocked to find the category "Baked By a Man" ! It could be crackers to tiramisu, so long as the baker had the Y chromosome. Hilarious. One of the Deep Springs students smoked'em with his tiramisu my 3rd year.

Anyway, the bread in the photos was made by my husband, start to finish. It's an olive oil bread from poolish; the dark flecks are flax seed meal. The round loaf was baked the same day it was mixed. The rectangular loaf was refrigerated for the second rise and baked, cold, in the morning. Note the tiny blisters freckling the crust on the rectangular loaf--that was done without steam.

contestant

So, there's a food photography contest at the Pioneer Woman's site. I'm not aspiring to win, but I signed up, and am I ever glad! Because if you join the photo pool, you can see all the submissions.

A wise friend gave me a good piece of advice a couple of years ago about a peculiar community I'll be part of for the rest of my life. (yeah, peculiar communities are kinda a habit with me.) She said if you make a habit of thanking people and telling them when they do a good job, people are always glad to see you coming. So when I scoped out the photo submissions, I complimented the ones I liked. None of these folks know me from Adam's house cat, but who cares? Complimenting the photographers only takes a minute & made my viewing more pleasant.

More Chicken Under a Brick

Lemon Artichoke Heart Soup

Olive Oil Bread

Chicken Under a Brick

Chocolate Coconut pots de creme

I really wanted the chicken to be the focus of the meal, and the menu reflected that.

The soup is Greek avgolemnos with imported artichoke hearts. Early January isn't the time for fresh produce and the artichoke went well in the lemony soup. I put thyme in mine, to echo the chicken's marinade. If you put the artichoke in early and let it sit, the flavor infuses the soup without any labor by the cook.

Olive oil bread because the table looks naked without it. And my kids gobbled it down while I cooked the chicken and our guest regaled us with tales of his very successful hunting trip, complete with large caliber rifles, large caliber handguns, trucks, and barbecue. Oh, and he's a priest. One of the things I love about Iowa is that almost all the clergy are avid hunters.

The chicken was the star, and turned out really well, as I wrote yesterday. Tomato sauce would have been overbearing with it, so...

I served this with bowtie pasta in a mild picata sauce. Picata (piquant) sauce is a versatile clear pasta sauce made with lemon juice, chicken stock, and white wine. Sauteed garlic, capers, green olives, or other little flavor bombs can be added. The cook has a lot of freedom to set the tone, and I used garlic, nonpareil (very small) capers and omitted the wine. I think small pieces of green olives would be better. White wine would have clashed with the bacon, and leaving it out was fine. It's the right taste, but doesn't make for an interesting photograph. If it's new to you, grated cheese is not ever appropriate with picata sauce.

The Belgian dark chocolate coconut pudding was a huge success. It's obviously not Italian, but it's so good no one cares. My son plaintively suggested we buy larger cans of coconut.

I know diddley about wine and seldom drink it. But for what it's worth, we decided all this tangy food needed a table wine on the sweet side and not too heavy. We drank an '09 Alice White (Australian) red lexia. I've never even heard of red lexia before. But it was good, went well with the food, and wasn't expensive. Since I like Greek food and can't get Rhoditis here, we'll certainly get it again; not too many wines play well with lemon and bacon both.

And yes, I confess to a tiny bit of food styling.

Chicken Under a Brick

I'm always a little worried when trying a new recipe I haven't been served: "how do I know if I got it right?" Since I was fortunate to eat Tom's cooking for 3 years, I felt confident making his Chicken Under a Brick from the cookbook for a guest who regularly goes to Italy. But if you're unfamiliar with the dish, have no worries when you follow his instruction. Just do what he says, and you'll nail it.

The Recipe...
is fine. Really, just do what he says. I was very happy he includes a variation for skinless, boneless chicken thighs, because that was all we could get in the all-natural chicken.

I fiddled with the recipe in two ways. I marinaded it for about 5 hours, far longer than suggested, and it wasn't overwhelmingly garlicky. In my house, time flexibility is a plus! And I didn't wrap it in bacon strips, but fried it in bacon grease & fond. It didn't crackle as it would have with bacon, but it still had a flavorful, crusty exterior.

It's pretty subtle. The meat is moist but not greasy. The bacon flavor from the hot grease doesn't penetrate, but the marinade does, so it still tastes like chicken, rather than bland hunk o' white stuff holding up bacon. I'll post the rest of the menu next.


The Method...
is classic, and I well remember Tom's collection of bricks in an out of the way corner of the Boarding House. My kitchen, alas, has no out of the way corners, being the size of a lentil. And I wanted to make a lot because leftovers make splendid spinach salad.

So, I improvised with the biggest, heaviest thing in my kitchen, a cast iron griddle that's as wide as my nonstick griddle but twice as long, so there's plenty of space for me to grab it. Serendipitous, no? It worked like a charm.




BUT, please notice I have a flat stove top, so there's no place for the grease to puddle. Since the bottom griddle didn't catch splatters, and they could just drip off the larger top griddle, a thin layer of hot grease surrounded the operation. I carefully mopped this up a couple of times and it wasn't a big deal. But if your stove isn't flat, doing what I did would be very dangerous. Use a brick or something smaller than the bottom pan. Tradition's smart on this one. If you're brickless but have nesting cast iron frying pans I think that would work well, too.

If you have a flat top stove, it's great. Be sure to use oven mitts to handle the iron griddle. It doesn't warm much itself, but the splattering grease and steam underneath could burn you. I did this twice with no trouble at all. The taste is worth it.

coming soon

Company's coming for dinner, so I hope to have some big posts in the next couple of days. The big story: cooking Italian Chicken Under a Brick from Tom Hudgens' new cookbook. See the link on the right!

shopping

Given my choice of buying a pair of jeans or going to the dentist, I'd always choose the dentist. Any novel where a woman's shoe-buying hobby is considered character development is not worth reading further. One summer, by a series of unlikely circumstances, I ended up selling women's clothes in a nice department store and it was Kafka vs. Nietzsche. I watched a lot of "Xena the Warrior Princess" that summer, let me tell you.

So I hardly ever shop other than pillaging grocers. If sizes actually were standardized, I'd probably buy everything online. The next best thing is Goodwill stores. I still try to go only a couple of times a year, but the odd treasure outweighs the existential anguish.

I'm going to a wedding soon and this prompted a trip yesterday. I distracted myself from the clothes by scoping the household stuff. I resisted the very nice white gravy boat for $3. I'm the last cook in America who denies the microwave, so I could have justified the $1 doubleboiler for melting chocolate. But do I need to melt more chocolate? No.

But my husband found the duck picture and bought it for me. A label on the back, undated, explains that it's an imitation of a 19th cent. style, printed and then watercolored. I was nonplussed at first--what duck looks like that?? It's like a mallard in the worst pit of Van Gogh's yellow period.

But I searched the Internet for the duck, whose genus and species is part of the print. Lo and behold, that's a real duck in Australia! The Australian Shelduck. And the picture is quite a good likeness. The Internet being what it is, I readily found videos, zoo info. on its life cycle, its original classification in 1828, and a company that will sell me a live pair for $650.

Sorry the photo isn't better. To get a good picture, I'd need to remove it from the frame, which is going to be a significant operation and I don't yet have the frame that will be its new home. It's the first piece of art I've bought since moving here in '06.

atsa ragu to you

A true ragu is a big hunk of meat seared and then simmered slowly in tomato sauce (usually on a rack, so it doesn't scorch on the bottom). When the meat reaches the stage of being tender but not yet falling apart, it's fished out, sliced, and served with pasta. The meat-infused sauce is then poured by each diner from a gravy boat. It takes a long time, and you have to hover over the pot a bit to make sure the meat doesn't cook past the point it can be sliced.

For special occasions, a ragu might be made with mixed meats. If you peek in the freezer of a Sicilian cook, there's often a bag of leftovers, that one extra pork chop or a marrow bone, hoarded away for just this purpose. I've never seen sea food mixed with meats or poultry in Italian cooking, but just about everything else can go into a ragu.

For my husband, it's not a special occasion ragu without some lamb. The bad news is that lamb is expensive. The good news is that the flavor really travels--other meats pick up the flavor readily. But there's a trick to this, and it works well if your life doesn't allow you to hover over the pot all day.

The trick is to control the fat. The traveling lamb flavor is in the fat, so you don't want to give it much competition. You'll need a frying pan, a simmering pot, and a crock pot.

The hunks of meat will go in the crock pot. If you actually read the instructions (does anyone but me?) they say to carefully trim all the fat off meat going into your slow cooker. It's important! The steam at the top of the slow cooker can become very hot and give oil floating on top a very unpleasant taste. When you trim the hunk of lamb, cut the fat and bone out but save them both. Discard the fat trimmed from other meats. I find it works well to have a layer of sliced raw onions on the bottom, then the meat, then sprinkle with dried herbs, and then lightly fried garlic on top. Lid on, and let it cook.

Meanwhile, mix up a plain tomato sauce in the simmering pot. I like to use tomato paste and add liquid to the desired consistency, because it's cheaper and gives me complete control over the saltiness. Because most meat and poultry has been brined before you buy it, and canned tomatoes are very salty (even the organic ones) a ragu is easily too salty. Too much salt will ruin your palate, make your Romano cheese seems bland (if you use it), and it's not good for you.

Then make plain meatballs and fry them in a non-stick frying pan. Any ground meat will do; the meatballs in the picture are ground beef mixed with an onion grated on a cheese grater and a little oregano. The whole point is for the meat to taste like meat, so don't fuss with eggs, bread crumbs, etc. Discard the grease from the pan. For once, you're not after the fond, which won't be very good because of the grated onions anyway, because they scorch very easily.

Put the meatballs, lamb bone and fat, and one bay leaf into the tomato sauce. Simmer gently a while, then let it rest. That's the picture of the sauce, with the bay leaf and a lamb bone poking out for the photo. The meatballs (no matter what kind) will pick up a lot of the lamb flavor.

When the meat in the slow cooker is almost as tender as you'd like it to be, scoop it out and add the meat (but not the pot liquid) to the tomato sauce. Simmer a while longer, and make your pasta. If all goes well, you'll have tender meat that still has distinctly different tastes, but meatballs and sauce that taste like lamb. Discard the bay leaf and lamb bone, slice the meat, and you're ready to arrange it on a platter.

If you've eaten with an Italian family at a special occasion, you understand completely why there's no photo of the final platter.

Notes:
In the slow cooker photo I didn't sear the meat first, as with smaller pieces it doesn't make much difference. Life is short.

Doesn't it need more spice? No. This is better with a light touch on the spices: oregano and basil are shown. Some folks would put rosemary in since the lamb dominates, but I don't like rosemary with beef at all, and if you use sausage it can clash badly.

Why not just put it all in a slow cooker? You can't control the fat, and hence the flavor that way. And tomato sauce is usually ruined in a slow cooker. Again, the steam between the liquid and the lid gets very hot and it will scorch the tomato sugars at the top, giving your sauce a bitter taste. Also the bones of any baby animal such as lamb are too soft for a slow cooker anyway: it's possible for a soft bone to begin dissolving in a crock pot and that's a catastrophe.

Wilder Wolves 2

Continued from yesterday's post on the Little House Books.

Did she fictionalize some of it? Did Pa fictionalize some of this to her, which is passed on as she heard it? The account of the Indian in the store predicting a terrible winter (ch.7), which she could have heard from both Pa and Almanzo, is really suspicious. The stilted English and inscrutable, nature-savvy Indian were familiar stereotypes at the time these were published. The skilled White hunter/trapper who understands the Indian dialect and sign language was familiar, too.

The wolf story (ch. 7) in Little House on the Prairie raises the same suspicion. Wolf stories are very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And if I were to reread the whole series, I expect I'd find at least one big example of an incident like the Indian prediction or the ride with the wolves that directly met reader expectations. The West was already heavily mythologized when she started publishing these, the family needed the money, and Rose knew a lot about marketing. Means, motive, and opportunity.

What gets left out? A great deal! Not just practical things like how they used the bathroom while snowed in or how all those animals got made into meat throughout these books. It makes sense that this would be left out in the 1930's and 1940's, because even most juvenile readers would already know.

But let's take the end of The Long Winter. We hear that no one got lost in a storm, and the family made it through. But we don't hear that everyone in town made it through; it implies that no one developed rickets or lost their minds, or that no one got drunk and beat his wife. These stories presage John Wayne's West (without a sheriff), not Clint Eastwood's.

And reading Iowa history raises a lot more questions. We hear of Ma's contempt for foreign women, but we don't meet them. How often did Ma assist at a birth or wash the dead for burial, and when did she start taking Laura along? Where's the whiskey? Where are the Catholics?

What would have happened to them had Pa died in one of the many instances he risked his life? Iowa had several orphanages, secular and religious, and the mothers were alive for a lot of those kids. But for a lot of this story, ending up in an orphanage would have been a best case scenario.

The books present themselves as an ordinary autobiographical "contract" of truthful exposition by the author as Derrida excruciatingly outlines. They arguably have a deliberate political and cultural agenda, as my African teacher would point out. And the narrator alternately conceals facts and interprets others for effect as Wolfe taught me to notice.

I'm not trying to ruin anyone's reading! But there's literary artifice and cultural agenda here beyond the necessary limit of one person's perspective. Of course, I don't lay that on my kids. I'm taking care, as my boy reads them, that he gets a wider perspective than the mythologizing going on here. That's not too hard to do while living here, and it's a good opportunity to teach him, gently, to ask questions as he reads. Most juvenile literature is far too simplistic to be a good teaching opportunity.

more soon, a different take on Farmer Boy