Kitchen Remodel, Week Thirty-One: Bella Cucina!

The kitchen is finally done! I haven't posted about this remodel for a couple of weeks because the final process slowed to a crawl waiting on a few punch list items and landscaping. Also, we were on vacation, so the kitchen was out of sight out of mind for me.

But now we are finally finished! Right down to the (removable) Italian tile backsplash that my sister designed and had made in Italy from her drawing. "Bella Cucina" translates to either Beautiful Kitchen or Beautiful Cooking.  I hope to do some beautiful cooking in this beautiful kitchen for years to come.

Since our summer weather has disappeared and we are in the midst of one heck of a rainstorm, all my nesting instincts are raging. I just want to light a fire in the fireplace and curl up with the Ngaio Marsh mystery I am close to finishing.  And I've been trying to add all seven of my winter pounds in one weekend, craving nothing but casserole and cookies.

I've got some kind of chuck roast in the oven I plan to serve with roasted potatoes and a salad tonight.  I say "some kind of" because it is part of the grass fed cow from my freezer and all the package said was "beef roast" with no information about the particular cut.  Until I unwrapped it, I didn't know if I would be cooking it in a hot oven for a short time, like an old fashioned roast beef,  of in a warm oven for a long time, like a pot roast.

I still can't really tell what cut it is -- maybe shank? But it looks like the low-and-slow kind.  I turned to Lynn Curry's Pure Beef: An Essential Guide to Artisan Meat with Recipes for Every Cut, which I reviewed here, and followed some of her basic suggestions.

Most important according to Curry, is to rub grass fed beef with salt and let it sit for a while before cooking, to improve the flavor and make it more tender.  The idea is that the salt pulls the moisture from the meat, but then the meat reabsorbs the moisture, drawing the salt back in with it to flavor the meat all the way through.

We'll see if it works.  In the meantime, maybe I have time to make a pan of bar cookies. Right after I find out who killed Lord Robert Gospell on the night of Lady Carrados' ball.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Kitchen Remodel, Week Twenty-Eight: Bricks and Mortar

The bricks finally got here! So we now have the proper brick foundation in the new kitchen bump-out. I was a long time to wait for a small part of the project.

Now we can get the ugly blue tarp out of there and work on getting the new landscaping in. Then it will look as good on the outside as it does on the in.

Next up on the food book list is The Whole Fromage: Adventures in the Delectable World of French Cheese by Kathe Lison. I look forward to reading it this weekend, although it makes me hungry just looking at the cover!

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Twenty-Six: Hard at Work

We are down to the last bits of kitchen remodeling. The brick we've waited for for months finally got here. Most impressively, the guys who came to put  the concrete cap on top of the bricks arrived at 8:00 a.m. and were still here a little before 10:00 p.m. when I took this picture.

 

Meanwhile, the four books I'm reading this week are all great but have nothing to do with food: 

• Letting Go by Philip Roth (his first novel):
• What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies;
• Because He Could by Dick Morris; and
• Tales From St. Austin by P. G. Wodehouse

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Twenty-Five: Eency Weency Water Spout

I have eency weency spiders on my mind because Portland has been invaded by them.  You can't walk between two trees, bushes, gateposts, or any other pair of things closer than eight feet apart without getting spider web stuck to you or, worse, one of the little critters scurrying on you. Ick!

The kitchen remodel is still waiting on exterior bricks.  The word is, the bricks are now in the state of Oregon -- not at my house, but within the borders of the state.

In the meantime, I was just pleased to see this little length of copper drain pipe finally get installed.  It meant we could finally say Bye Bye to the black PVC pipe that has been hanging from our eaves since January.

Inside the kitchen was busy because yesterday was Caponata Day at my house.  Every year, I take advantage of friends' garden bounty and our local farmers market and spend one day making a huge batch of caponata.  I freeze it in smaller packages to enjoy all winter.

Part of this tradition is to try to find a caponata recipe in my Cookbook Library, get frustrated, and make it up from versions I've seen on the internet or eaten myself. Despite the number of Italian cookbooks I have and enjoy (see list below), as far as I found before giving up, only one of them has a recipe for eggplant caponata and it is a hugely simplified version -- basically sauteed eggplant with some vinegar and garlic.  

MY CAPONATA RECIPE

eggplant, with peel, in 1 1/2" cubes
yellow and/or green zucchini. with peel, in 1 1/2" cubes
yellow onion, quartered or cut into eighths, separated
celery, in 1" pieces
tomatoes, in 1 1/2" pieces or, if cherry or pear, whole
garlic cloves, peeled
pitted green olives, with or without pimento
capers
oilve oil
red wine vinegar
salt & pepper to taste

Amounts depend on what you like and have, traditionally heavy on the eggplant.  In years where friends grew lots of red or yellow peppers, I've included those too.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Separately roast eggplant, zucchini, onion, and celery with olive oil, turning occasionally, until browned and soft, but not mushy.  Do the same with the tomatoes, but they will get mushy.  Roast the garlic cloves in olive oil either in the oven, on the stove top, or in the microwave.

Once cooked, combine the vegetables with the olives and capers and stir it all together. Add vinegar, salt, and pepper to taste.  Add more olive oil if desired.

Eat warm or at room temperature.  Add more vinegar right before serving to brighten it up.  Eat as is for a side dish. Chop it up a little and serve with crackers or bruschetta for an appetizer -- very good with goat cheese.  Or chop it up a lot and use as a sauce with polenta or pasta.

Many recipes call for canned tomato sauce or canned chopped tomatoes instead of fresh, but it turns out more sauce-like, which is good if you want sauce, but not as good as an appetizer.  You can always add tomato sauce later to use it as a sauce.

MY ITALIAN COOKBOOKS

(with no caponata recipes that I found)

The Classic Italian Cookbook by Marcella Hazan

Cucina Rustica by Viana La Place

A Fresh Taste of Italy: 250 Authentic Recipes, Undiscovered Dishes, and New Flavors for Every Day by Michele Scicolone

Italian Casserole Cooking by Angela Catanzaro

The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy's Farmhouse Kitchens by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio by Wanda Tornabene (with the simplified caponata recipe)

Marcella's Italian Kitchen by Marcella Hazan

Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania by Arthur Schwartz

Pasta Classica: the Art of Italian Pasta Cooking by Julia Della Croce

The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces by Diane Seed

A Tuscan in the Kitchen: Recipes and Tales from My Home by Pino Luongo

Veneto: Authentic Recipes from Venice and the Italian Northeast by Julia della Croce

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Twenty-Four: Where Are the Bricks?

This is what is making me glum:

The inside of our kitchen is all but done (still waiting on the decorative tile backsplash), but the outside still looks like a constructions zone.  No bricks, Tyvek paper, a PCV pipe instead of a downspout, blue plastic, and dirt instead of landscaping.  This shows the bump out, but we've got the same look going on the other side of the exterior door.

If this was the middle of winter, I wouldn't mind so much, but this construction zone is the view from the patio, which puts the kibosh on outside entertaining, including a kitchen warming celebration.

I'm losing patience.

Luckily, I'm reading a great little mystery set in Aix-en-Provence, where the characters enjoy good food and spend a lot of time describing the wondeful meals they eat and wine they drink. Maybe more wine would make me not mind my unfinished remodel.



-- Death at the Chateau Bremont by M. L. Longsworth.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Twenty-Three: Feathering the Nest

We are still waiting on brick to finish the outside of the new kitchen.  Apparently matching 100-year-old brick takes some doing. Ours is now on a train from Ohio, after baking in the brick oven for four weeks. 

In the lull, we have enjoyed using our new kitchen and are having fun filling the cupboards and adding a few festive touches.  Like the beautiful orange lantern we found at the annual arts and crafts show at the Portland Japanese Garden. 

The lanterns are made by Portland artist Margaret Gardner.  The red and green ones are going outside to use as the lanterns they are.  But we are keeping the orange on in the kitchen because, with its holes, it makes a perfect container for heads of garlic.

This is also pot luck season, so I have been making a ton of my potluck standby, Asian Cabbage Salad because it is fast, I usually have all the ingredients, and it stands up well to buffet table delays.  I made it up in my head, but there are no doubt recipes for it on line.

ASIAN CABBAGE SALAD

• 1/2 a medium green cabbage, shredded or chopped small
• 4 green onions, white and green parts, chopped small
• 1/2 or 1 whole sweet red pepper, sliced very thin
• 1 tablespoon black sesame seeds (or white or toasted)
• 1/2 cup slivered or chopped almonds (preferable roasted but not salted)

Combine all the ingredients in a big salad bowl. Add or delete at whim, depending on how much you need. Dress with:

• toasted or dark sesame oil
• rice wine vinegar
• soy sauce

I use a ratio of two to three parts oil to one part vinegar and go light on the soy because I don't like it to get too salty.  But mix to taste.  For the amounts listed above, I usually make about 1/3 cup of dressing, but I usually just pour the ingredients on the salad and toss without measuring, so it is hard to say for sure.

It is best, but not necessary, to dress the salad at least an hour before you plan to eat it, because it relaxes the cabbage a little.  The leftovers are still good the next day, so you can't really dress it too early.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Twenty-Two: Pots & Pans

We are down to the little, final details in the kitchen. This week, the pot rack went up, which makes my husband particularly pleased because his mother gave it to him decades ago. 

I finally read Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain. I read it with my ears because he reads it himself and I like audiobooks best when they are read by the author. It was a little name-droppy at times, but I got a kick out of it. He is so enthusiastic. Even when he complains about things, he has such enthusiasm for his gripes.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Twenty-One: A New Home for the Cookbook Library

Definitely one of my favorite things about our new kitchen is the bookcase under one bank of windows. I can finally keep all my cookbooks in the kitchen with me. They didn't all fit in these shelves, but 80 percent of them did. The rest are in one of the cupboards under the island, which is good enough. At least they are all in the same room.

Ella Fitzgerald, one of our two Jazz Cats, loves the new book case.  In the summer, she can smell the outside through the open windows and keep an eye on the crows.  In the winter, the steam radiator (hidden behind the black screen on the left) will warm up the soapstone counter she's sitting on. I suspect she will spend a lot of time there.

At a neighborhood potluck last night, I got a tip about a plum tree at a vacant house a couple of blocks away. So I went this morning with my next-door neighbor, the wildly creative interior designer Marketa Rogers, to do some urban gleaning.

I'm not quite sure what to do with these.  They are the little round kind, not much bigger than a Bing cherry.  They are deliciously sweet and tart and very juicy.  They would make a great pie, but I'm trying to shed a few pounds and pie won't help.  I think I'll either make a few jars of jam, or pit and freeze them to make a pie later when I have more calorie capacity for eating pie.

Any other plum ideas? For now or to use with frozen plums later.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel: Week Twenty, Cooking With Gas!

We are pretty much moved into the new kitchen.  There are some details and punch list items to go, and the outside is not finished yet.  But the cupboards are full, the pantry is stocked, and we are up and running.

The only trouble is that I don't feel moved in -- I am afraid to use anything in the new kitchen.  I don't want to hurt it or make it messy.  We have to force ourselves to put dirty dishes on the counter or cook on the stove.  It will get broken in eventually, but I am still white-gloving for a while.

Our first meal in the new kitchen was a favorite that we've missed -- Jalapeno Chicken.  I'll give the recipe below, but it is stupid easy.  It doesn't really count as a recipe since it is only one step more complicated than "apply heat to food."

JALAPENO CHICKEN

Pre-heat oven to 375. Pour a little olive oil in a roasting pan. Put chicken parts in a single layer.  Drumsticks work very well, but any parts will do.  Drain a can of whole jalapenos ("escabeche" style -- with the carrots) and evenly distribute the peppers and carrots in between the chicken pieces.  (Save the juice to marinate something else later.)  The ratio should be roughly one pepper for each piece of chicken. Cook until the chicken is really brown, one to two hours.  Turn the chicken once if you remember.

This is a yummy and super easy way to make chicken.  The chicken gets some spiciness from the jalapenos, but not a lot. The peppers themselves get all roasted and gooey and are delicious served on the side as a condiment to the chicken.  The leftover peppers are good on many things -- scrambled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburgers, etc.

Part of this kitchen remodel involved creating access from the kitchen door to the "terrace" on top of our garage.  That stage of the project also wrapped up this week and we were able to, at long last, put our patio table up there and use that outdoor space.  My parents and stepdaughter were the first to enjoy dinner with us out there.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Nineteen: Moving In!

The inside part of the kitchen remodel is almost finished.  Several details to go, like an Italian tile thing to hang behind the range, the pot rack above the island, and little punch list stuff.  But it is finished enough to move in.  Next week we can even start using it.

Of course, the cats wanted to help. Here is Ella Fitzgerald, posing as usual. She didn't like the plastic sandwich bags messing up the arrangement of canisters.  I agree.   

 

I still haven't read a food book in a long time. My plan had been to read either Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain or The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn for the Foodie Reading Challenge.

But my brain is a sieve so I forgot that plan and started reading Smiley's People by John le Carré, the third book in The Karla Trilogy that begins with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (reviewed) and The Honourable Schoolboy (reviewed).

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Eighteen: Tile Bravo

Finally! The white tile got here. Now the final kitchen dominoes can fall.  This week is was install tile, grout tile, caulk bottom of tile, and wax the soapstone counter tops.  This coming week will be seal the tile, finish the wood floors, and build the toe kicks.

There are other patches of white tile above other counter tops, but this is the largest patch.

There are still plenty of little things to finish inside, and some big things outside like stucco, bricks, patio stones, and plantings.  But getting the white tile in was a big deal to me because we couldn't wax the soapstone and make it black until the tile was in, so we couldn't see what the counters were really going to look like until today.

To make up for the lack  of food literature in my recent book diet, I've been reading about cookbooks. I have my heart set on getting a copy of the Toro Bravo cookbook by Liz Crain.  It doesn't come out until October, but it is generating a lot of foodie buzz already. The more I read about it, the more I want it!

The Toro Bravo restaurant is already a Portland legend.  I can't wait to try some of Chef John Gorham's recipes at home -- while reading his terrific stories as told by Liz Crain, one of the best up and coming food writers around. All good.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Seventeen: Starved for Foodie Books

The tile phase of the kitchen is finally underway.  We are still waiting on the subway tile for the kitchen backsplash, but the tile guy came this week to put the tile floor in the powder room.

The subway tile is supposed to get here this week.  Also, we are crossing our fingers that they can start putting up the stucco on the outside walls.  To mangle Churchill, I think we are well passed the end of the beginning and on to the beginning of the end.  Knock wood.

My weekly reading was again food-free.  I took a break from The Autobiography of Mark Twain to listen to the audio edition of Prince of Fire, a Gabriel Allon thriller by Daniel Silva.  My family loves the series, but I hadn't read any until this one.  It was really good. Now I want to go back and read the others.

If I can power through the rest of Mark Twain this week, I'm going to treat myself to a foodie book for the Foodie Reading Challenge.  Either Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain or The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week 16: Mirror in the Bathroom

Other than getting an English Beat song stuck in my head, hanging a mirror in the new powder room didn't pack much of a punch.

But besides the mirror, the only thing going on with our kitchen remodel last week was the installation of a screened panel to hide the old steam radiator. Wow. That is really lame.  It's the tile.  We are still waiting on the tile.

And I didn't read anything about food last week either.  The Autobiography of Mark Twain has no references to food at all.  Nor does Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis.  I may have to take a break from both -- not because they don't talk about food, but because they are both long and . . . I hesitate to say boring.  How about, attention absorbing and important, but not 100% entertaining.

Apart from books, we had a fun eating weekend.  We went to a DIY wedding Friday night where the young bride and groom recruited their relatives to bake desserts.  Right after the ceremony, the guests were treated to a vast buffet of sweet treats.  It was nostalgic of church basement receptions, bake sales, and all things delicious.  Congratulations to Scott and best wishes to Emily! #Freywed!

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week 15: Nothing Doing

Progress on our kitchen remodel was infinitesimal this week. We got doorknobs on the powder room and basement doors -- big whoop. We got screens on the windows that are to have screens, but they are all but invisible, so don't show in photographs.

The holdup is still the tile. The white subway tile for the backsplash is 2 x 6 instead of 3 x 6, so had to be special ordered. We finally gave up on the California company that was supposed to send the tile three weeks ago. We've ordered replacement tile from our local Pratt & Larson, which we should have done from the get-go.

So it will still be two weeks before the tile gets here, and another week or two to get it all installed. It's looking like our kitchen will be done mid-July, not mid-June as originally forecast.

At least the weather here in the Rose City is beautiful for Rose Festival. Being able to grill outside and eat dinner on the porch makes us forget we are still operating out of our "camp kitchen" in the dining room.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Fourteen: Let There Be Light!

We got light fixtures, knobs, and pulls this week.  With all those details in, it is hard to accept that we still have no tile, so are a long way from finishing.

I love the old fashioned "Edison" blubs in these Schoolhouse Electric fixtures.  One of Portland's oddest but best stores is Sunlan, home of "the light bulb lady," where you can buy any kind of light bulb ever made.  These look as much like the artisanal light bulbs on Portlandia as you can get.

Two books I read this week had a cooking theme.  The Hills of Tuscany by Ferenc Máté was a typical but still wonderful ex-pat memoir about a couple who moved to an old country house outside of the village of Montepulciano.  There are all kinds of descriptions of Tuscan food and wine that made me want to stomp grapes and smoke my own prosciutto.

Son of Holmes was an early effort by John Lescroart, who went on to write a successful mystery series, and spin offs, set in San Francisco and featuring lawyer and sometimes bartender Dismas Hardy. 

Son of Holmes is set in France in the early days of WWI, where a master spy rumored to be the son of Sherlock Holmes is under cover as a chef in a provincial town.  He drinks a lot of beer -- a LOT of beer -- and putters in the kitchen, but there isn't much discussion about the food he is supposedly cooking. 

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Thirteen: A Place to Sit

Another week has gone by with no visible progress on the kitchen.  Apparently the hold up is the tile.  Even though it is plain white subway tile, because we ordered a slightly less-ordinary dimension (2x6 instead of 3x6), it has to be custom made. But because we need very little of it, our order has been sitting there waiting to tag onto a larger order when it comes in.

So we wait.  In the meantime, the two kitchen stools we ordered for the island came in.  So we can sit in the kitchen and imagine it being finished and usable.

We saw these stools made out of old wine barrels at Syncline Winery in Lyle, WA (about an hour northeast of Portland).  I like them because they are unusual and made here in America.

By happenstance, because I had no idea what it was about until I read it, I read a book this week about cooking and the comfort of good food.  Rose Tremain won the Orange Prize for The Road Home, the story of an Eastern European immigrant to England who teaches himself to be a chef while working as the plongeur at a toney London restaurant.

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Twelve: The Great Wall

Nothing visible happened in our kitchen last week. Electricians and plumbers did invisible things, so our appliances turn on.  And Ella Fitzgerald found a new hiding place.

We did make progress on the outside part of this project.  There are now walls outlining where the stairs will be from the garage up to the kitchen door.  Still no stairs, but we can now at least envision where they will be.

I've been reading Blood From a Stone, one of Donna Leon's mysteries set in Venice.  Even in the middle of a murder investigation, Commissario Guido Brunetti always goes home for lunch, where his wife -- a college professor with an apparently light work load -- makes him incredible lunches.  They eat pasta or risotto every day.  It's making me crazy!  Since I try to avoid carbs, I go for months without eating pasta or rice.  The Brunettis' lunches have me fantasizing about noodles!

WEEKEND COOKING

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Kitchen Remodel, Week Eleven: Appliances!

The appliances are in! They aren't hooked up yet, but it is starting to look like a kitchen.

Better yet, now that the dusty work is finished, the door between the dining room and the kitchen has been unsealed, so we can get to the kitchen -- and more important, the basement -- from inside.  For the past months, we've had to go around the outside of the house to see progress on the kitchen or get downstairs.  Hauling baskets of laundry around the yard to the cellar door got tired fast.

The cats love exploring the new room. So many smells! Here is Ella Fitzgerald admiring the island before a leaping circuit of all the counters.


I haven't read any food books this week, but I did just buy one yesterday.  And, yes, I bought it because of the title: Spotted Dick, S'il Vous Plait: An English Restaurant in France by Tom Higgins.

WEEKEND COOKING

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