M.C. Austin's Pancake Dinner

Every once in a while my grandma, the one, the only, Marie C. Austin, used to make my brother and I pancakes for dinner. It was a real ritual. They had to be served pipping hot and she would make them only a couple at a time. No making up a big batch and putting them in the oven for her. She also used this amazing old electric griddle that seemed to be capable of evenly applying the perfect amount of heat.

So at Zoe's request (once again introducing the idea that she really is Marie come back for seconds) last night I whupped up some pancakes for dinner. Living in Espanya means many things, including no access to Aunt Jemima. Nope it's pancakes from scratch or nada. And considering how easy "from scratch" is I wonder how Aunt Jemima stays in business.

It's "falling off a log simple". Beat one egg with one teaspoon of vegetable oil and a cup of milk.

Sift twice 1 and 1/2 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of salt and and 1 tablespoon of baking powder. You can leave out the sugar if you want to.

Using a whisk or a hand mixer (hey, a whisk is easier, there is little clean up and it is good exersize) gradually combine the dry ingredients with the liquids.

You have now completed the batter phase of this project.

Preheat a griddle or a skillet to medium low. Melt a tiny bit of butter in the pan and coat it as evenly as possible.

Using a ladle or a 1/2 cup measuring cup pour the batter into the pan. Use one ladle or measuring cup per pancake. When bubbles form on the surface of the pancakes it's time to flip 'em. So flip 'em. I have a nice commercial spatula. Peek at the other side and when
it's nice and golden brown that's it. Serve with butter and heated maple syrup.

I sometimes add frozen berries to the uncooked pancakes right after I ladle them on to the skillet. Small berries work better than big fist sized strawberries.

Also last night, in place of maple syrup I tried a some of my brother-in-law's liquidy blackberry jam that didn't set (obviously he is not reading the valuable information about making jam that is presented in this blog). Oh man, I love maple syrup but Francois' runny great tasting mistake won hands down.

Arroz Griego a la Saharawi

OK another adventure in leftovers. Thanks to the Saharawi Diet, I am always hungry. And for whatever reason at this moment in time I can eat, and eat and eat and have no physical consequences like a spare tire, a big butt or god forbid, a double chin. The end result is that I raid the refridgerator frequently. So amongst the jelly jars and pickles I sound some leftover rice, eggs, feta cheese, big fat acitunas verde and a hankerin' to chow down.

I started by frying the green olive pieces over fairly high heat in a little olive oil. Olive whacking secret: 1. Place olive on cutting board. 2. Take big knife and place flat side against the olive. 3. Take your fist and pound once or twice on the knife which smashes the olive into either pieces or mush, depending on the variety. It works even better for garlic.

Then I added maybe a cup of pre-cooked white rice. "Pre-cooked"... very important. Whilst this was transpiring I took an egg and whisked it with a little water (why water and not milk? Well milk just didn't seem very Greek to me) until it was nice and yellow and foamy, french omelete style. I lowered the heat to low and tossed this in with the rice and the olives and moved them all vigorously around the pan.

Finally I added some feta that I had previously chopped into 1/2" cubes. I covered the pan for a couple of minutes to soften but not melt the cheese. A little salt, a little pepper, OPAH! Lunch is served!

I tried it on Zoe a couple of nights later subsituting black olives for the green ones, adding some chopped up Jamon and leaving out the feta. She no like feta. Let's call that one Arroz Andaluz a la Frigador. She loved it. What a girl!

Quintessential: Scissors

So, sometimes I am astounded by really good thinking in a lot of day to day things. Scissors for example. What a cool and elegant tool. Using the magic of leverage and a bunch of other physical properties the names of which I can't think of 2 pieces of sort of sharpened metal, more or less joined at the middle can cut through cloth, paper, metal, tree branches and yes, meat.

I use them in the kitchen all the time. You wanna half an apple turn over? Snip. There you go. Zoe needs her steak chopped up. Snip, snip, snip. Open the milk carton. Yep. What else can do this without a potential loss of blood. Cuts though squid like butter. Cuts through butter like squid.

God bless who ever invented these things!

An education in humility

My friend Agustin has been educating me on the wonderful world of the harmonica in Spain. This week I saw a young guy named Antonio Serrano at this terrific jazz club called Jamboree. It was like seeing John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard in the early 60's. This guy is absolutely one of the greats on the chromatic harmonica. Ripping through everything from straight ahead bebop to nailing the neuvo tango of Astor Piazzola, I was completely beside my self watching this unassuming chico. It was also a pretty good review of how my progress on this instrument is going. Perhaps like the night when Bill Frissell saw John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia at the Hollywood Bowl and decided that he would need to take a different direction on his chosen instrument or hang it up, I too got sort of a wake up call. I probably won't be playing "Flight of the Bumble Bee" anytime soon (and to be honest I can't imagine why I would want to) but I maybe able to develop a nice, round tone and make the few notes I can manage to get out count.

I'm 3/4 of the way though "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." It 's interesting how just taking a little time to focus on just one thing can create other opportunities in seemingly unrelated areas. I was pretty much stuck a quarter of the way though after getting the first few bars pretty quickly. After getting way too frustrated I decided that I needed to:

1. Listen to the piece very carefully, over and over and over.

2. Get the score and...

3. Figure out a way to translate the notation to harmonica tabs (squiggly lines and arrows that tell you when and where to blow and suck).

Well amazingly I realized that I didn't have a copy of Mingus' original version. so off to I Tunes I went to contributed 99 cents to Mr. Job's king of the world campaign. Listening to the tune I realized that somehow I had taught myself the first few bars in the right key. Hmmmm... How do da brain do such things? It was great playing along with Mr. Mingus and the boys for the first part of the tune but as soon as the notes started going up I had to sit down and shut up.

OK time to invoke part 2. Except that for this tune I couldn't find any sheet music for free or other wise on the Internet. Hmmmm... I put a call out to my cyber harmonica buddies. Boom! A file and a chord chart. Thanks guys! Anyway to make a long story short I found another program made by these crazy French brothers that automatically spits out tabs for wierdo harmonicas like mine as well as Latvian Spike fiddle, and Ullean Hose Clamp. 20 bucks! Amazing what's out there!

So now I have a path for the last indecipherable bars of "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." Now I am on the way to refreshing my ability to read music. Now I have a program that makes anything, including "Flight of the Bumble Bee", a tab. Now I know where to focus my attention, it's not speed and virtuosity, it's heart and soul. Or is that sole?

Fava beans, Chianti and an old friend for dinner...

Pal, confidant, hermano verdad... Mr. Glenn Miccalef came a visiting and inspired by the local mercado came up with this recipe for fresh fava beans which are as common as dirt here in Espanya. Hey if you ain't got no favas try it with limas or even green beans cut into something like 2 inch pieces. Remember favas can have many names; broad beans, horse beans, pigeon beans... they are all fava beans.

Over medium heat saute (AKA fry) a handful of 1/2" chunks of bacon. Add another handful of slightly larger chunks of spicy spanish chorizo (as opposed to Mexican chorizo which is not cured and is more finely ground). If can't find chorizo try any medium hard cured sausage. As open as I am I still would not consider canned vienna sausages, weenies or little smokies... well maybe little smokies. When thoroughly browned reduce heat to low and add cup and a half or so of shelled favas and a few (like maybe 6) whole peeled garlic cloves. Do not let the garlic burn. Here's a trick. On one side of the pan mound the cooked chorizo and bacon on top of the garlic. This holds in the heat and kind of makes a little oven and roasts the garlic. Move the favas around a bit. When the garlic is tender cover the pan for 10 minutes or so and let the favas steam there way home. When the favas are soft, eat.

Quintessential: The White Cotton T Shirt

Let's face it how much clothing do we really need? I've always dreamed of having a simple rack with 3 pairs of jeans and a drawer with 7 pairs of white cotton socks, 7 indentical pairs of boxer shorts and 7 pressed white shirts. Now T shirt wise up until recently wearing anything other than a garment only slightly smaller than a pup tent would have been out of the question but thanks to the Saharawi diet I can wear a medium with out people turning thier heads. Hence I have fallen in love with the idea of a clothing article that is a distillation of the essence of the notion of what we wear. Is this a "habit" like monks and nuns wear? A modern robe for a modern aestic who is just trying to learn to play the chromatic harmonica? I dunno but it feels great. Here's to a fresh shirt everyday.