Crazy Rich Asian Chicken Satay

The February/March reading selection for the Cook the Books Club is Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians, described by its publishers as "a fun, over-the-top romp through the unbelievable world of the Asian jet set, where anything from this season is already passe and one's pedigree is everything."

That pretty well describes it!  I found it to be a lot of fun and a lot flabbergasting (these are the rich people so rich that the rich people barely know they exist).

Into this world comes the main character, Rachel Chu - a Chinese American academic who discovers (as one does in wealth-fantasy novels) that her unassuming fellow-academic boyfriend just happens to be the son of one of the most crazy-rich families in Singapore.   She finds this out while on a plane to go meet his family and from there, hijinks ensue.

I enjoyed the book a lot and whipped my way through the entire trilogy shortly before the movie came out.  The intrigues and drama are the sort that clearly matter a lot to the characters involved, and for the most part were so far removed from my own life that the whole thing was just fun escapism.

Crazy Rich Asians (the movie) captures a lot of what happens in the book and keeps the frothy tone of it with a few significant modifications.  The biggest one is the way Akwafina's character takes on her sparkling over-the-top-ness, making her quite different from the book version, who is actually one of the most grounded secondary characters involved.

I liked both versions just fine, but don't read the book expecting to see the same character.

By luck, the movie is also this month's Food n' Flix choice, hosted by Eliot Eats (and typical of me, I'm getting this in right under the wire).

Seeing so many of my favorite actors (Constance Wu!  Michelle Yeoh! Lisa Lu!) and enjoying the beautiful sets and fun, not too challenging plot made for a really enjoyable movie night.

The recipe I was inspired to make was chicken satay.  This is what Rachel's boyfriend shares with her when they first land in Singapore, and she's still reeling a bit at the discovery of who he is.

Rather than whisk her off to a fancy restaurant, he takes her down to a popular outdoor street market area, where she meets a few of his friends and they introduce her to the best street food choices in Singapore - especially the Chicken Satay.

Now, I'm not even going  to try to claim mine is as good as theirs was described, but we really enjoyed it!  This version has a spicy peanut sauce to go with it - and I used some extra sauce to mix into some zucchini noodles sprinkled with peanuts.

The recipe I used is based on Milk Street's Singapore Chicken Satay, cooked in the oven rather than a grill.  Other than the time it takes to marinate the chicken, this made for an easy and simple dinner that would also be wonderful as a part of a buffet table.

Chicken Satay
serves 4

2 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1" wide strips

Marinade
2 Tblsp freshly grated ginger + 2 tsp. (reserve)
6 garlic cloves, finely minced + 1  clove (reserve)
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tblsp oil
1 Tblsp sesame oil
2 Tblsp turmeric powder
1 Tblsp ground cumin
1 Tblsp salt

Peanut Sauce
1/4 cup boiling water
2 Tblsp creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1 Tblsp sugar
2 Tblsp oil
reserved 2 tsp. grated ginger
reserved clove garlic, minced
2 Tblsp. chile garlic sauce
1/2 tsp. ground turmeric
1/2 cup finely chopped roasted peanuts

Prepare the marinade:
Combine all and stir until sugar is dissolved.  Add chicken and marinade for 2-3 hours in refrigerator. (Don't marinate any longer than that - it will get too salty.)

Prepare the sauce:
In a medium bowl, whisk together peanut butter and boiling water until smooth.  Add soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and sugar, whisking to combine. Set aside.

In a small skillet, heat oil and add ginger and garlic. Cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant (about 1 minute).  Add the chile garlic sauce and turmeric, and cook another 30 seconds, until fragrant.

Whisk the garlic-ginger sauce into the bowl of peanut butter and soy.  Remove 1/4 cup for basting the chicken, and set aside the rest in the refrigerator for serving.  Let come to room temperature about 30 minutes before cooking the chicken, and stir in 1/4 cup of the peanuts.

Prepare the chicken:
Cover a sheet pan with foil or parchment paper, setting a wire rack on top of it.

Drain chicken in a colander in the sink.  Using wooden or metal skewers (I used wood but would have preferred metal), thread 2-3 pieces of the chicken onto the skewers, and set on the rack in the sheet pan.  Continue with remaining chicken, making sure not to crowd them on the rack.

Broil chicken for 5-7 minutes, then flip them and broil another 4-6 minutes.

Brush the chicken with half the sauce reserved for basting, and broil until nicely charred, another 2-4 minutes.  Then flip the chicken and brush with sauce again, then broiling for 2-4 minutes, until well charred.

Serve with peanut sauce.

To serve I made a cold zucchini noodle salad by spiralizing some zucchini and tossing it with part of the peanut sauce and sprinkled with chopped peanuts.  Delicious!

Check out the Food n' Flix Round Up to see the other delicious treats inspired by Crazy Rich Asians!

Cook the Books: The Cooking Gene (Persimmon Quick Bread)

The current Cook the Books selection, hosted this time by Simona of Briciole, is The Cooking Gene, by Michael W. Twitty.

I've known of Michael W. Twitty for several years.  He is an African-American, Jewish food historian and chef who hails from the DC area where I live, and who has been doing truly interesting work recreating the experiences of early American cooks in authentic kitchens located at various historical landmarks. As a researcher and teller of stories, he has focused a lot of his attention on tracing the path of foods as they have migrated over the centuries with the people who ate them, particularly those whose journeys were against their will as slaves or refugees.  Those stories are the hardest to research, because the chain of ancestral storyteller to listener is so often forcibly broken. Through the path of food as it travels from one area to the next, Michael Twitty's work seeks to reconnect those broken links.

Sticky notes of possible recipe inspiration!

The Cooking Gene is equal parts history, food writing that will make you curious to try things you never have, nostalgia for the foods of your own childhood, along with a good peek at history and science.

You'll find yourself learning about DNA testing's role in helping solve the complexities of tracing roots as a black American.

You'll be caught up in reading a personal memoir and family history that is at times funny and heartwarming and at times absolutely heartbreaking, and then seeing it set against a well researched explanation of how focus on "King Cotton" led to a legacy of malnutrition that still impacts poor black families in the south.

These ingredients all come together in a book that was both riveting and very difficult to read without flinching.

Go ahead and flinch - our history is extremely uncomfortable - and then keep reading. You will know much more when you finish this book than you knew before you started, and you'll find yourself thinking about it long after you've put it down.

I am so beyond impressed by work that went into The Cooking Gene.  But I was totally overwhelmed when it came to choosing what to cook as my inspiration from it. SO. MANY. POSSIBILITIES.  There are a few recipes included, but there were also numerous mentions of foods from the American South, Europe, Africa, Asia... name it.

I decided to take my inspiration from a passage about time spent visiting his Southern relatives as a young man.  In The Cooking Gene, this story includes a passage about persimmons, and it occurred to me that I had never had a persimmon, never much thought about persimmons or had any idea of what they tasted like. 

That same week, to my surprise, persimmons showed up in my produce box, and suddenly, I had to figure out something to do with them.

'Hours later, we would tumble into my paternal grandmother's home. "Ma, you're never going to believe this," he said, peeling back the layer of the bag. My grandmother happily said, "Oh, 'simmons!!"  I took half and, under my father's instruction, made the same persimmon beer that Elijah and George toasted their freedom with in 1865.  My grandmother, who used to use the unripe astringent ones in place of pimple cream, turned her 'simmons into a spicy, molasses-laced persimmon bread, drawing on a recipe from the newspaper to back up her memory of a treat that had been eaten for at least three generations.'  ~ The Cooking Gene, pg 228.

The recipe for persimmon beer is included at the end of the chapter but calls for 10 cups of persimmons and several weeks to ferment, so I wisely decided to try Persimmon Bread instead.

The American variety of persimmon is Diospyros virginiana.

Gee, it would have been great if I'd taken a picture of the persimmons before I cut them!

What came in my box was the more commercially available Fuyu persimmon, which doesn't have the astringent qualities of other varieties, and so can be eaten while still firm.

This time of year is just an excellent time for sweet quickbreads, so that's what I've done here - I have no idea if this is anything at all like Michael Twitty's grandmother's, but we enjoyed it quite a bit.

The gingerbread loaf is a basic quickbread that uses molasses and buttermilk, along with roasted persimmon where I might otherwise use raisins or other dried fruits.

(Oh... persimmons taste like mild apricots to me, with a bit of honey and a bit of a tropical fruit taste.  I think that Persimmon Beer must tasted a good bit like mead.)

Persimmon Molasses Gingerbread
Makes 1 large loaf or 2 small loaves

3-4 persimmons
2 cups flour, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup dark molasses
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 375F.  If desired, peel the persimmons (I didn't and didn't notice an issue with it) Wash persimmons, cut in quarters and de-seed them, then chop into small, dice-sized cubes.  Spread persimmons on a parchment-covered cookie sheet, drizzle with oil, and roast for about 20 minutes, until they are soft and slightly caramelized.

Let persimmons cool for several minutes and lower oven temperature to 350F.

In a large mixing bowl, combine butter and sugar, creaming together thoroughly, then add molasses and vanilla, stirring to blend well.  Add the eggs one at a time, mixing between each addition so that the batter is well mixed.

In a second mixing bowl, combine flour, soda, and spices.

Add the dry ingredients, alternating with some of the buttermilk, a little at a time to the wet mixture, mixing well between each addition.

Add the roasted persimmons and pecans to the batter, again mixing well to coat the fruit and nuts.

Spoon batter into greased loaf pans (I used two smaller pans so I'd have one loaf to freeze for later), leaving about an inch of room below the rim.

Bake at 350F for 45-50 minutes.

Let cool on a rack for several minutes before removing them from pans, then let cool completely before serving.

A loaf of a good quick bread like this is just right for keeping on hand for visitors, and is equally good as a fast breakfast, an afterschool snack, or a simple dessert.

I hope you'll check in with Cook the Books to see the round up of what other inspiration bloggers have found inside the pages of The Cooking Gene!

The next four book selections have been announced - maybe one will tempt you to join in!

The Cooking Gene Website
Afroculinaria - Michael J. Twitty

Simple Sauerkraut Inspired by #cookthebooksclub Selection "Sourdough"

The August/September Cook the Books Club reading selection was "Sourdough" by Robin Sloan, and as usual, I am squeaking in at the very end.

I actually read the book about three months ago - based on the name, I pictured this might be a cozy little novel about some wholesome baker experiencing the joys of breadbaking.  Well, it was...and wasn't and I'm not sure it can really be put into any sort of genre box.

It has strong magical realism elements, a bit of Old Country fable, a lot of Silicon Valley weirdness of both the high-tech variety and the obsessive foodie variety.  There are robots.  There's a whiff of Little Shop of Horrors. It's fun in parts, strange in others, and I'm not sure the story ever really pulled itself together in any cohesive way.

I'm not sure I'm exactly recommending it, but I'm not warning anyone away either - it was an easy read and if it was a bit frothy, it wasn't unpleasant froth.

The key character is a woman who is very good at programming robotic arms, but isn't particularly enjoying the work.  She, like many of her colleagues, subsists on some nutrient ooze that comes in squeeze packs, along with the occasional soup and sourdough from an underground food delivery service near her apartment.  When the brothers that deliver for her leave the country, they leave her with their sourdough starter, a wonderful batch that has come down to them from their ancestors for generations.

This is where it gets weird - the starter, like all starters, is alive, but this one is really, really alive.  It occasionally glows with life, it responds to music, it has moods.  The main character learns the care and feeding of it and learns to bake bread, eventually connecting with an exclusive experimental food market where high tech and fermentation come together to create innovative foodstuffs, from her sourdough bread (made by robotic arm) to cheeses to 'lembas' - a fermented mass intended to end world hunger.

Fermentation and the art and science of working with living organisms is the wider theme here. Just as humans come together in communities that have their own dynamics, micro-organisms create communities that transform themselves in living, interacting and dying into something amazing.

I knew I wouldn't be making sourdough for this - I am the Sourdough Starter Murderer, and had no interest in destroying yet another micro-galaxy in trying again.

Then I tried and failed to make some apple cider vinegar - it got away from me due to my own neglect and I created mold. Yay, me! (Fementables getting away from you and doing their own thing is definitely an aspect of the novel.)

So I fell back on the one fermentable I know I can do - homemade sauerkraut.  This is it at its simplest - cabbage and salt.  I find it pretty foolproof. I like to use purple cabbage for its color and while many variations can be had by adding spices or other vegetables, this simple version is an easy and relatively foolproof introduction to fermenting.

This is a really simple way of getting some fermented veggies on hand, and it takes so much more delicious than store-bought kraut.

I think the big key to the process is using Fido jars.  I have a couple Bormioli Rocco blue lidded jars that I just love - they have a great solid seal, and the blue glass lid is so pretty.  The thing about Fido jars is that they let excess pressure leak out, but they let no oxygen in - no oxygen means no molding.

I like not having to worry about things like that.  The other thing that ensures it, of course, is making sure your containers, utensils and work surface are all clean and sanitary.   So, with that out of the way, here's all it takes:

Author: Lynda Hardy

Purple Sauerkraut

Ingredients

• 1 head green cabbage
• 1 head red cabbage
• 4 T. salt

Equipment

• Cutting board
• Large sharp knife
• Large mixing bowl
• Food processor
• Potato masher 
• Large serving spoon 
• Fido jar (50oz or larger)

Instructions

1. Wash and dry your cabbage, removing any worn outer leaves.  Cut the cabbage into chunks, removing the cores.  Feed the chunks through your food processor set to grate coarsely.  As processor gets full, turn the grated cabbage into the large mixing bowl, and sprinkle with some of the salt.  Continue to process and salt the cabbage until done.
2. Cover the bowl loosely and let it sit about 1/2 hour - the salt will start releasing liquid from the cabbage.  Using a potato masher, pound the cabbage for a couple minutes to more completely release the liquid.
3. Scoop cabbage into Fido jar, mashing it down as you go to fit more cabbage.  Make sure all liquid from the bowl ends up in the jar - the cabbage should be covered with liquid.
   
   
4. Seal the jar and set it aside in a dark place with a moderate temperature (70-80F) for 4-6 weeks, then refrigerate.

Here's the full round up of Sourdough inspired posts!

The Cook the Books Club selection for October/November is Michael J. Twitty's "The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South."  If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it!

Garlic & Sapphires - A Simple Celebration Meal (Cook the Books)

The June/July Cook the Books Challenge (hosted by Claudia of Honey From Rock) was to read and prepare a dish inspired by Ruth Reichl's memoir, Garlic & Sapphires.  By far the hardest part of this challenge was trying to narrow down what to make, as almost every recipe and a great many of the passing references to food stirred a longing to make that... and that... and that!

For me, that is what a food memoir should do - it should create a sense of desire and longing to commune with food and the many ways of relating to one another through the preparation and eating of food.

Garlic and Sapphires centers on Ms. Reichl's tenure as the New York Times Food Critic, and it not only peeks into the world of the New York gourmet food scene, it also offers a peek into the highly competitive world of journalism at the Paper of Record.

And somehow... she handles all this without sounding pretentious and certainly without coming across as overly serious about it all.  You see, the famous restaurants of NYC are on the lookout for the NYT food critic and she wasn't having that!  She knew that the service and food she would get as a VIP would not be what you or I would get if we visited.   So, she began to create a series of disguises and the personae to go with them - upper middle class mom who comes to the city a couple times a year to shop; rather lonely catlady type woman who has saved all year for a nice dinner out; a femme fatale she's shocked to discover she can pull off; even her own flamboyant, somewhat problematic mother who will be very familiar to anyone who has read her other memoirs.

Now, this would not normally be the sort of book I'd recommend to my husband, but as I read about what she had to do to get her story, I knew he'd love it.  His career in journalism spanned decades, and this read like the best sort of investigative reporting... only about meals instead of politics. Or maybe this is the politics of meals? In any event, I urged him to read it, he did, and he loved it.

Nice side effect - now I had a willing accomplice to help me decide what  we should make from it.  He was no more able to pick just one thing than I was, so we wound up choosing based on what we had in our freezer.

There was a good boneless leg of lamb in there I'd had no particular plan for, and there, at the end of the book, there is a final menu - a Simple Celebration Meal intended just for her family.  Roast Leg of Lamb with Garlic & Rosemary, Scalloped Potatoes, and Roasted Brussels Sprouts.  (There was also an amazing Chocolate Cake I can't wait to make - for the two of us, that all just seemed like too much food!)

I'm going to leave you to find the recipe for Scalloped Potatoes - if you don't already have one, I promise you, hers is simple, unfussy, and really good.  The Roasted Brussels are packed with bacon and is another very easy and highly flavorful dish.

Here, I'll share the lamb with you.  It's not a cut we have often, but when we do, we really want to get it right, yes?  This will help do that.  We dined on slices of lamb the first night, and then turned the leftover roast into a curry for the next couple of nights, and it was tender and delicious throughout.

Note: a theme of Ms. Reichl's is how often people change recipes and then wonder why it didn't work - she actually applauds making a recipe your own, while being a bit rueful when the changes are clearly not going to end well.

I confess to being one of those people - although the changes I made still made for a fine roast, it's likely slightly less perfect than hers. First, my lamb was boneless. I didn't trim all the fat as instructed, and I used a bit of dry rosemary rather than go to the store just for a sprig of rosemary.  I think the real key to this recipe is the way the garlic is buried into the meat - it gave it an amazing and succulent flavor and a trick I'll be repeating often.  I cooked this for just about 2 hours.  Below is the recipe as written.

Ruth Reichl's Roast Leg of Lamb with Garlic & Rosemary
Serves 6-8

"The butcher called this a family dinner, but I think leg of lamb is perfect for guests.  It's the most forgiving meat you can cook.  Unlike beef or pork, wich is ruined when overcooked, lambis good in every state: it's wonderful rare and well done, so if your guests are late or you're forgetful, dinner will be just fine.  This recipe is for rare meat; if you like your meat well done, cook it longer." ~ Ruth Reichl

1 small leg of lamb, 6-7 lbs, trimmed of all visible fat
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut into 6 slivers each
1 bunch rosemary
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Remove the lamb from the refrigerator 1 hour before starting.

Preheat the over to 350F.

Make 8 small slits in the lamb on each side, and place a sliver of garlic and a leaf of rosemary in each slit.  Massage the olive oil into the meat and season with salt and pepper.

If you have a rack, place the lamb on the rack on top of the remaining rosemary and garlic. If you don't, simple put the meat on top of the rosemary and garlic in a roasting pan.

Cook uncovered for about 1 1/2 hours, or until an instant read thermometer inserted away from the bone registers 125F.

Remove the lamb from the oven and let it rest for 20 minutes before carving.

Check in Cook the Books and see what other bloggers are inspired to create from Garlic & Sapphires!

Happy eating!

The Discovery of Chocolate: Slow-Cooker Chicken Mole

The February/March book for the Cook the Books Club was The Discovery of  Chocolate, by James Runcie.  This round is being hosted by Simone at Briciole, and the whole collection can be seen here - I'm very interested in seeing how others handled the food challenge - it is full of lush food descriptions from the Americas and Europe.

Without doubt its biggest strength is the history and descriptions of innovations in chocolate.  The story itself concerns a Conquistador named Diego who meets and falls in love with a woman who makes a marvelous chocolate drink that changes his life before the two are separated by the chaotic events of Spanish colonialization in the area.  Diego has reason to believe she's dead and travels throughout South America and then Europe, realizing as time passes that the final cacao drink she gave him apparently has made him immortal.

I love magical realism, and found the premise very interesting, while being a good bit less enamoured of Diego, who - in spite of spending centuries brooding and feeling the loss of her love while apparently being a Forrest Gump-like catalyst for every chocolate innovation from bon bons to Sachertorte to bar chocolate to Hersey's Kisses - is, himself, a profoundly uninteresting man.

Whether on purpose or not, he acts as an observer of his life rather than a participant in it and by the end of the book, the 'big reveal' left me thinking that he spent 500 years learning absolutely nothing and the whole thing was apparently a build up to a version of the Good Witch of the North declaring he could have gone home anytime he wanted.

Peppered throughout the story are brushes with famous people who Diego influences in ways that affect the development of chocolate, or simply are bit parts in his story.  These were fun to hunt for, although by the time I got to the tale of how Kisses came to be, I actually said out loud, "Oh come ON" and had to put it away for a couple days.

(Side note that is relevant if you read this book: Do not feed chocolate to dogs, Diego!  It's very bad for them!)

 All that aside, I enjoyed reading it, once I decided that it is the Discover of CHOCOLATE, not Diego's Adventures Through Time.  It made for a fun puzzle to figure out how he might have been a part of various chocolate obsessions over the centuries, and it definitely appealed to me as foodie fiction.

It helped a lot to know that James Runcie originally intended to write this as a series of short stories, and I am sorry he chose not to handle it that way, as a more episodic approach would have solved the weaknesses it had as a novel. In a short story series, you have lower expectations for actual character development and growth, and can focus more on shorter term events.

There was no shortage at all of potential dishes to work with.  I settled on a savory dish rather than sweet, as I wanted to do something more rooted in chocolate's origins than in Europe's use of it.

I've wanted to make Chicken Mole for a long time - it's one of those things I can rarely resist ordering when it's on the menu, but most recipes have an intimidatingly long list of ingredients.  Then I came across this recipe from Foraged Dish, and knew I had my starting point!

The result was very flavorful, not overly spicy (Mole is more about the play of flavors than about pure heat), and quite fast to put together with the help of a food processor and slow cooker.

Slow Cooker Chicken Mole (Paleo/Whole30)
serves 4

2-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 large onion, chopped
2 T. olive oil
---
1/3 cup cocoa
2 Tblsp. ancho chile  powder
1 tsp. ground coriandor
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. anise seed powder
1 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup tahini
1/4 cup raisins
1 28 oz can fire roasted tomatoes
3 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce (about 1/2 a small can)

In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil, and saute the onions for a few minutes.  Add the chicken, turning a couple times, to sear the outside (you don't need to cook it entirely).

Put the chicken and onions into a slow-cooker and set aside.

Combine all of the remaining ingredients in a food processor, and puree for a couple minutes until smooth.

Dump the mole sauce on top of the chicken, coating everything.  It will seem like a lot of sauce.  It's not - there's no such thing as too much mole!

Let cook on LOW for 6-8 hours.  The chicken will be very tender, and the sauce will have cooked down some.

Serve with rice (or cauliflower rice as we did), along with a salad, guacamole or avocado slices, and a tortilla, if desired, to sop up all the mole goodness.

Check out the other food inspiration from The Discovery of Chocolate!

Because of the magical realism that infuses this book, I am also sharing this with this month's Fandom Foodie Challenge hosted by The Hungry Bookworm - #MagicalRealFood!

Feast of Sorrow: Whole30 Chicken Apicius #cookthebooks

Every couple of months, a few bloggers get together for the Cook the Books Club to read a book, and make a dish inspired by it. The book for Dec-Jan. was Feast of Sorrow, by Crystal King.

I'd never read this before, but I happily tucked a copy of it into my Kindle just before we took a two week vacation to Germany, and I found it very compelling.

The book is a novel set across a span of years in the household of Apicius, a wealthy epicurean whose obsession is food prepared in the most interesting an exotic ways possible. The story centers on Thracius, a slave Apicius purchases because he has a reputation for being a highly skilled cook. Over time, the two work together to write a series of recipes - a cookbook - that would come to us today as one of the most comprehensive explanations of an ancient culture's foods we have available.

Apicius is portrayed as temperamental and inconsistent, by turns punitive and friendly to his closest slaves, and Thracius is portrayed as the voice of reason and the skill and brains behind the lavish meals that are bringing Apicius renown while he tries to hold the household together in the midst of external and internal intrigue.

Familial and political crises abound, and the result is a book that is both very compelling and highly disturbing, ending on a dark (but historically accurate) note.

While it is fictionalized (there is no Thracius mentioned in the annals of history), there are a lot of details 'ripped from the headlines' of the Roman Empire.

Apicius likely did exist, although it is also likely that over time his name was used by other epicureans to lend credence to their own recipes.  The surrounding characters and many of the events are historical.

Reading it while traveling through Germany, including to the Roman city of Trier (my friend and co-writer Lauren recently shared her own trip to Trier here) really helped me feel a sense of place about the story.

The food inspiration runs all through the book - too much to keep up with, actually!  Each chapter begins with one of Apicius' recipes.  I tried to keep notes and found my Kindle copy was chock full of highlights and notes.

When we returned home, I put together a few ideas, planning to create a Roman 'feast' for our New Year's Eve meal... and then we decided to go to Florida for a couple weeks for the holidays and there was simply no time to shop or plan for that feast, so I went back to the drawing board.

I had a half thought out idea for some sort of cute 'dormice' thing made out of chocolate - but then we started a month of Whole30.

WHAAAAT??? CAN YOU EVEN ROMAN ON THE WHOLE30?????

The definitive answer is: Not happily!  Apicius would have been shocked and appalled.  The Stoics would have been horrified.

Roman cuisine relied heavily on grains, wine, dairy and honey - all disallowed on Whole30. Meat was a luxury food - so Apicius enjoyed it frequently, but for most Romans the only meat they had came from the shared meat made available at civil sacrifices.

Vegetables were used as they could be had - but that meant only what was available locally and in season.

So what to do?  I grazed everything I could find about Apicius, his recipes, modern interpretations of his recipes and there was just very little to work with that felt inspirational.

There were a few things I knew I could include - dates, figs, olives, olive oil, fish sauce.

So - because I really needed to sort out my menu plan, I decided to lean hard on the 'inspired by' portion of this challenge, and started with Chicken Marbella, a Silver Palate faux-Spanish recipe born in the 1970s.

First, I had to make it Whole30 compliant, and then I had to make it 'Roman'.

(By the way, faux-foods would have totally appealed to Crystal King's Apicius, I think!  So a faux-Spanish recipe going faux-Roman? Served with faux-pasta?  On it!)

My modifications involved switching the wine for wine vinegar, getting rid of the brown sugar entirely, and switching out the prunes for dried dates (why? Because I have dates in the house, love them, and dates and figs feel more Roman to me).

Finally, in an homage to the never-ending fish sauce, which seemed to go into everything, I added a bit of Red Boat fish sauce, too.

The result was quick, easy and delicious!

My husband and I agreed that this was going straight onto regular menu rotation (with wine and some honey once I can cook with those again).

Even without the wine, the vinegars mellowed, and the flavor was really intriguing and delicious.

Chicken Apicius (Whole30)
(serves 4)

3-4 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1 Tblsp. Red Boat fish sauce
1 cup dried dates, pitted
1/2 cup green olives, pitted
1/3 cup capers
3 bay leaves
1 Tblsp dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1-2 zucchinis
olive oil

Combine all but the chicken in a baking dish, mixing well to combine.

Nestle the chicken into the pan, among the olives and prunes, flipping a couple times to coat with the sauce.

At this point, if desired, cover and put the pan into the refrigerator to marinate for awhile.

When ready to cook, preheat the over to 350F and bake for 25-30 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, spiralize one or two zucchinis (or use store-bought spiralized zucchini, which is a thing now!), and saute for about 4-5 minutes in a pan along with a bit of olive oil or ghee and season to taste.

When the chicken is done, remove the chicken, olives and dates from the pan and serve along with the zucchini noodles.

This is where this really veers from the Silver Palate version - that recipe calls for wine and brown sugar to be added to the vinegar sauce in the pan and thickened into a sauce to be poured over the chicken. Which sounds awesome, but also impossible to modify for Whole30 and honestly, the chicken did not notice the lack at all.

Either way, this meal was a winner!

At the end of the month, the full round up of #cookthebooks Feast of Sorrow posts will be compiled by Debra of Eliot's Eats. I can't wait to see what others have done!

Pork with Apples, Onions & Potatoes (#cookthebooksclub)

The Cook the Books theme for August / September is Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Several bloggers read this children's classic and cooked a dish inspired by it.

There is certainly no shortage of food inspiration in Farmer Boy!  It is basically an homage to abundant food (and hard work, and the joys of farming - but mostly food and vast quantities of it).

I have to say, I do think the food descriptions, especially regarding how much was at the table every day, is an idealized vision in several ways.  Farmer Boy describes a year or so of Almanzo Wilder's life - later in the series, we meet Almanzo out in Dakota Territory when Laura does, and eventually they marry.  But in Farmer Boy, his family has a prosperous farm in upstate New York.

So the descriptions of all this food is the memory of a boy of a time in which he no longer lives.  The availability of foods, both grown and acquired, would have been far more available in NY than in pioneer country.

It is also the memory of a boy recounting his mother's cooking - and we know how often that can be idealized by children (especially sons).

It is also Laura's description and vision of her husband's youth - which was very different from her roving pioneer life that often included a lack of food  and few choices, and the need to be very creative with what one had.

If it sounds like Thanksgiving every day, I have to imagine that that is how she saw it as Almanzo regaled her with long lists of dishes served up multiple times a day, or told her about the time he and his sisters used all the sugar making ice cream several times while their parents were away.

Lastly, though, Farmer Boy (and many of Laura Ingalls Wilder's series) was published during the Great Depression.  This book was food porn for children growing up in very difficult times - and it came with a message that promoted self sufficiency and hard work and a willingness to go without treats and baubles in order to invest in one's future as the path to overcoming the Depression and getting all that food.

So - I don't think they actually ate quite that abundantly every single day, but I do think the story well describes the types of foods that would be available on an upstate New York farm and eaten often.

I grew up in Nebraska, and was much more interested in the Ingalls' pioneer adventures - I think I only read Farmer Boy once for completeness' sake, and never put it back on the rotation.  The book passes through a year seasonally, and each season has its own foods and its own tasks, and it was very pleasant to have a chance to revisit it.

For my dish, I decided to go with Almanzo's self-identified favorite dish - Fried Apples & Onions.

'"What would you like best to eat?"
They talked about spareribs, and turkey with dressing, and baked beans, and crackling cornbread, and other good things. But Almanzo said that what he liked most in the world was fried apples ’n’ onions. When, at last, they went in to dinner, there on the table was a big dish of them! Mother knew what he liked best, and she had cooked it for him.'

For our table, I served it along with Pork Tenderloin (they would have had pork, although I don't know that tenderloin was a cut used at the time - chops or a small roast would also work here), and I added potatoes to the saute, mainly because I had a few potatoes that needed to be used.

Now, there is no description of how this was prepared other than 'fried'.  I think a bit of maple syrup
would have been used at least sometimes, but I decided to let the sweetness of the apples and cooked onions be the only sweetener.

Pork Tenderloin with Sauteed Apples, Onions & Potatoes

Serves 6

1 package pork tenderloin (these usually come with 2 tenderloins)
3-4 medium apples, cored and diced (no need to remove skins)
1 large onion, diced
3-4 medium small potatoes, diced (no need to remove skins)
fat for cooking - I used olive oil and butter. Try bacon fat if you've got it)
Salt and pepper
Seasoning for pork as desired (I used a Penzey's blend - there are several that are good with pork)
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup chicken broth

Season pork tenderloins with salt, pepper and other seasonings as desired.  In a skillet, add 1-2 tablespoons of oil or fat, and sear pork on medium high until it is browned (the inside will not be cooked yet).

Remove pork from heat and set aside.

Splash vinegar in the pan and deglaze, scraping up any stuck on pork bits.

Add about a tablespoon of butter or other fat.

Add apples, onions and potatoes to pan and stir to blend in the vinegar in the pan.  Let cook on medium high for about 10 minutes without stirring so they brown.  Then turn and brown other side for about the same time (watch for burning).

Stir and return pork tenderloins to the pan, nestling them down into the apple mixture.  Add broth to pan and cover to cook on medium for about 15-20 minutes or until the apple mixture is tender and the pork is cooked through.

Remove pork to a platter and let rest for at least 5 minutes before slicing into medallions.  Serve alongside the sauteed apples, onions and pork.

Or, if you're Almanzo, alongside "creamed carrots and boiled turnips, and countless slices of buttered bread with crab-apple jelly", at least three different varieties of pickle, a half dozen various types of pie, some cornbread, and maybe a doughnut or three to hold off the hunger pangs while this is cooking.

I look forward to seeing what deliciousness other bloggers pulled out of Farmer Boy! Check out the full round up here.

Cook the Books

Mom's Almond Puff Danish #CooktheBooksClub

I am participating in the Cook the Books Club, where bloggers collectively read a book that is food based in some manner, and then prepare a dish inspired by the book.

The April/May book selection was Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family and Forgiveness, by Sasha Martin.  The invitation for this round's challenge,hosted by Eliot's Eats is here.

Sasha Martin is also the blogger behind the extensive blog Global Table Adventure, a truly fascinating collection of essays and recipes from around the world.  Sasha, her husband and her young daughter took on a project to eat a meal from every country, and learning not only about food and other places (and in the case of her husband, working to overcome a lot of food pickiness), but about themselves as well.

The result was Life from Scratch - initially intended to tell the story of the project, it instead lead Sasha to turn toward her own childhood and past, as she realized that for her, cooking had always been a connection to otherwise very difficult relationships, as well as a solace through periods of life that were painful and often harsh.

Through it all is her uneasy connection with her mother, who seems to be a free spirited artistic woman who, due to both circumstance and temperament, was not well suited to be a mother.

At times, this memoir was very painful to read, but I appreciated  the ambivalence that didn't attempt to make her mother's choices sound better than they were, or to write her off as merely the villain of the story. Others in her life are also depicted fairly - the pain they caused is described, but through her words, those that might be offered compassion are granted it.

Primarily, it is a story set in the real world of very flawed human beings often making very poor and selfish choices - and this makes it both an uncomfortable read as well as a compelling one.

Through it all are a few recipes, but I'd recommend visiting the website if your main interest is food (and do visit - it is sure to cost a few hours of riveting browsing) and read the book if you like memoir.

One of the more evocative passages had to do with her mother's specialty dessert, German Tree Cake (Baumtorten).  This led me to think about my own mother's culinary signature recipes for my own inspiration.

My mother was a woman I admire greatly as a person, but our relationship as mother and daughter was complex and difficult, and ultimately unresolved as she passed away last year after a long decline due to Alzheimers.  For this reason one of the things that spoke to me about Life From Scratch is the relationship that developed between mother and daughter later in the mother's life.

By the standards of her era (and I sometimes think we children soaked up our ideas of 'right' parenting mainly from idealized fiction), she was not very domestic at all all, and that was regarded as a failing regardless of whatever else she did.

My mother's way of navigating expectations was to perfect a few signature recipes for necessary occasions - a couple terrific entrees for dinner guests, as well as a side or two for holiday feasts we shared with other families.  She even learned to make bread and butter pickles and happily passed out jars to others as needed.

But her main signature recipe was this Almond Puff Danish - this went to potlucks, office gatherings, tea parties and bake sales.  If she'd even wanted to try something new (and she rarely did), people asked for this - it was her recipe, her thing.

I suspect it was also half the country's thing, because the recipe itself came from a set of Better Homes & Gardens subscription cards.  Anyone remember those? Each month, you'd get a packet of about 24 cards on a given theme, to be collected in a special, deep recipe box big enough for the whole set.  I think mom only ever used 3-4 of those recipes, but this one she made her own.

Mom's Almond Puff Danish

makes approx 16 slices
Preheat oven to 350F.

Bottom Layer:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup flour
2 Tblsp. water

Top Layer:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1 cup flour
1 tsp. almond extract
3 eggs

Glaze:
1 cup powered sugar
2 Tblsp. butter, softened
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 Tblsp. milk
sliced almonds

Prepare bottom layer:
Combine flour and butter in a large bowl, and cut together with a pair of table knives or a pastry cutter, until it is grainy and well combined.

Sprinkle with water, and work with hands to form a dough (don't overwork).

Divide dough in half and shape into to rectangles on an ungreased cookie sheet. Pat down so that each rectangle is about 1/5" thick.  These needn't be shaped perfectly, but should be about the same thickness for even baking.   Set pan aside.

Prepare Top Layer:
In a medium saucepan, combine water and butter and bring to a boil, stirring to melt the butter.  Remove from heat, add extract, and then add flour all at once.  Stir vigorously until dough leaves the pot's sides, forming a ball (should take about a minute).  Add eggs all at once, and continue beating until eggs are incorporated and dough is smooth.

Pile topping on each triangle, spreading to cover.  It will be thick and high, and if you leave soft peaks in, the texture will be more interesting once baked.

Bake for one hour at 350F.  Cool completely on a wire rack on pan.

Glaze:
Cream softened butter, powdered sugar and almond extract thoroughly. Add water a bit at a time until desired thinness is achieved.  I prefer mine on the thinner side, but this can be made thicker if you like.

Remove pastries from pan and set directly on wire rack (they should be firm enough to move as long as you're careful).

Place rack on top of the pan.

Spoon glaze over the top - excess will drizzle through the rack to the pan.

Sprinkle with almonds, and pat down lightly.  Let sit about a half hour, until all glaze is set.

Slice into long bars and enjoy!

Head over to Eliot's Eats to see the entire round up and see how other bloggers were inspired by Life from Scratch here!