Dandelions: An Inspiration

For someone wanting to forage wild foods, dandelion greens aren’t a bad place to start.  For one, they’re everywhere.  Some might even call them invasive.  You don’t have to go far to find them and they’re easily identifiable.  You’re looking for the young, tender leaves, best picked before the plant flowers.

They’re super easy to prepare.  While some foraged foods require repeated soaking or boiling with multiple changes of water, dandelion greens cook just like any other green.   Although they taste totally different, they can be substituted for spinach in any recipe.  I’ve seen dandelion green salad, sauteed with bacon and red onions.  I’ve never made it, but dandelion green pesto seems intriguing.  And perhaps you’ll notice my dandelion green calzone in the attached image.  I made it with Italian sausage and feta. The crust was sourdough.  You can make dandelion wine from the flowers.   Just about ready to bottle, I have a batch aging in the cellar.  With some imagination, the possibilities are endless.

Making no absolute health claims myself, dandelions are also reputed to have some medicinal benefits.  Tonics made from dandelions and burdock are made by some in the spring and are said to aid in detoxifying and promoting healthy liver function.  Again, I make no health claims.  Nutritionally, they are full of vitamin A and hold a fair amount of vitamin C.  Respectively, one cup will give you 100% and 30% of your recommended daily allowance.  In his books on Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved,  Sandor Ellix Katz mentions dandelions a few times.  Living with AIDS, he holds food and diet as an important part in maintaining his health.  At the very least, they’re a fresh, green vegetable.  They’re something we’d all do well to eat more of.

As an Anarchist, dandelions can’t help but give you some inspiration.  People hate dandelions.  They want them gone.  They want them out of their yards.  Yet they persist.    A multitude of products have been created and marketed to try and eradicate them.  In some homeowner’s associations and in some municipalities, you will be in violation if dandelions aren’t kept in control on your property.  You will risk fines, sanctions, and could possibly lose your home.  The powers that be don’t want dandelions.  They want them gone, yet they’re still here.

It’s all because they’re so prolific.  You’ll probably remember blowing the white, puffy seeds when you were a kid, dispersing them all in one breath to obtain a wish.  You may furthermore recall how many there were, hundreds of them on each plant.  Actually blowing them all took a some lung capacity.  Now, think about it.  Each plant held the seeds for hundreds more just like it.  Their growth was literally exponential.  Hate them all you want.  Pass every law and ordinance you can think of.  Punish people as collaborators for letting them exist.  Use the full force of government to try and eradicate them.  But they’re still here.  They’re just too good at doing their thing.

Ben Stone, The Bad Quaker, talked a little about this.  He’s retired now, but some of his old podcasts are available on iTunes and on badquaker.com.  Talking about marijuana legalization, he once proposed that a strain of marijuana should be engineered that proliferated just like dandelions.  If we could accomplish that, if every pot plant put out hundreds of seeds that scattered with the wind, and if each plant in the next generation did likewise, there would be absolutely no way it could be effectively outlawed.  There just aren’t enough jails.  The drug war, already widely regarded as a failure, would effectively be done.  How can you stop something so widespread and common?

And the real value here is that this particular freedom would then be achieved completely independent of authority.  It’s not begging for freedom.  It’s achieving it.  You see, making no judgement about whether or not it’s wise to consume or smoke it, the fact that marijuana is illegal is an absolute affront to our self ownership.  If we don’t have autonomy in what we consume, we are not free.  Some do advocate going through the legal system to change this.  They say that we should be writing our congressmen and speaking up at town meetings.  We should be petitioning those in authority to reverse their unjust decision.  My lord, please reconsider.  The problem with that is that doing so acknowledges that authority.  It concedes that those in power have the right to make that decision.  People can rightly tell us what to do.  Hogwash.  Malarky.  Nuh uh.

And please don’t get hung up on pot.  How many other nonviolent and victimless crimes could this apply to?  In my state of Maine, switchblades have only recently been legalized.  In the 1950s, after seeing West Side Story and with apparent concern for the horrifying gang violence it depicted, legislators forbid possession of any knife that could be opened one handed.  The law was only repealed last year.  Really, most people didn’t even know it was a crime.  Any number of knives having knobs on the blade or other mechanisms facilitating quick opening were readily available at Walmart.  I had one and so did a lot of my friends.  Actual switchblades could occasionally be found at junk shops.  They were so widespread and innocuous that people just kinda forgot that they were illegal.  Police didn’t waste time on enforcement.  Formally legalizing them was an unnecessary afterthought.

The real way, the only ethical way, to bring about a peaceful and nonviolent society is to just live your life.  Be an example.  Demonstrate that your way is better and more fulfilling.  Be free, and maybe, just maybe, that will catch on.  Maybe others will start being free themselves.  Maybe they’ll inspire still more.  Soon enough, the people who choose violence will be powerless against this freedom.  There’ll just be too much of it.  Stamping it out just won’t be possible.  And maybe the people who fancy themselves in charge will change as well.  Maybe freedom will come, just like dandelion seeds in the wind.

Squirrels

To anyone troubled by the image, relax.  They’re sleeping.  They’re laying there, perfectly content, and are going to wake up soon to do cute little squirrel things.  They’re fine.  It’d be best though if you could just click away, moving onto something else.

Squirrel hunting’s a blast.  With a little more action and much lower stakes, it’s a lot less stressful than big game.  Outside of a survival situation, if you blow a squirrel hunt, it’s no big deal.  But you still get that thrill of hearing the leaves rustle, that quick shot of alertness, and that charge knowing game is afoot.  Kids enjoy it, and it’s probably one of the best introductions to hunting.

I’m saying that with the knowledge that the skills needed for squirrel hunting are directly applicable to deer.  If you can hunt squirrels, deer are next up.  Still hunting works in both contexts, tiptoeing from cover to cover, all the while thoroughly examining your surroundings.  The only difference is that you won’t look for deer in a tree.  Stand hunting is also productive, sitting quiet and motionless in an opportune place, patiently waiting in ambush for quarry to amble along.  Oak groves, apple orchards, and the edges of corn fields are ideal, all good habitats for both.  Summing it up, squirrels make excellent practice animals.  They’re great for building up toward bigger and better things.

My weapon of choice is usually a shotgun, a pump action 20 gauge using #6 shot.  While you mostly read about people sniping them, using either a .22 or a .17HMR, they’re mostly looking for the challenge.  Popping a squirrel’s head at a distance takes skill.  But I just want the meat.  The only drawback is that I have to spend some time while cleaning picking out the pellets.  You’ll never get them all, so be careful when you eat.

Through a technique called barking, it’s even apparently possible to hunt them with a large caliber rifle.  I’ve heard about it, but admittedly never seen it done.  As the squirrel climbs, the trick is to hit a spot on the tree within four inches of it’s heart.  You want a bullet that will produce some shock, and I’ve heard common .30-’06 works.  That shock will supposedly stop the squirrel’s heart.  It will fall to the ground, dead, dead, dead.  The obvious advantage being that you don’t obliterate a small animal with a large bullet.  This seems very applicable to a survival situation.  Perhaps you’re stuck out and you only have your deer gun.  In any event, it’s a thing to try on a slow day in your deer stand.  Some day, tell me if it works.

You may see a bunch of them at your local town center or park.  Most of them are pretty fat too.  There are specific laws against hunting them in populated areas, but to an anarchist, that shouldn’t matter.  Since parks are government land, illegitimately obtained through extortion and theft, the animals in them are morally unowned and are therefore ripe for homesteading.  Just don’t get caught.  And be sure to practice good wildlife management.  I would however caution that a city squirrel has likely eaten garbage, perhaps not tasting the best  While a squirrel of the woods may have a hint of apples or acorns, it’s urban cousin will be more akin to rotten meat, coffee grounds, and cheeto dust.  Personally, I’d have to be pretty hard up to eat one.  But it’s all entirely all up to your judgement.

I hear different things on cooking them, and my experience seems different.  Commonly, I see people either breaking them down to bread and pan fry, like chicken, or roasting them whole over a campfire.  It looks delicious, but every squirrel I’ve ever cooked as such has been tough and chewy, coming out like rubber.  Squirrels didn’t live life crammed in a cage.  They’re wild animals, and have muscle tone.  I’m told that you can tenderize them. An acidic marinade does a lot.  But I’ve never even found that to work real well.  The best results I get involve a slow braise in a dutch oven with either red or white wine.  A mirpoix adds some depth.  I thicken the juices for gravy.  I’ve also made a simple soup along the lines of a Vietnamese pho.  That turned out okay, but the flavor seemed lost, indistinguishable from common chicken.  On recipes, I’m happy to hear more thoughts.  Pass them along, if you would.

When you hunt, you are keenly aware of your interconnectedness to the world.  You shot it yourself, you watched it die, and you turned it into a meal.  There’s no getting around that fact that you live at another’s expense.  I therefore know very few hunters unaware of life’s value.  Every living thing evolved to live and pass on its genes, and everything that lives takes that away from something else.  There’s no getting out of that web.  The trick then is to honor all life, knowing that some things must die so that you can carry on.

 

Dutch Oven Pizza

Switching gears from yesterday, a guy had posted not long ago to inquire about making my dutch oven pizza.  It’s featured prominently on the blog’s Facebook page and I count it as one of my highest achievements.  Cooking it is complicated.  It requires some forethought and planning.  But, if you give it a try, I swear that you won’t be disappointed.

I first got interested in trying it when I was going through my bread baking phase.  Toward the end, I had set out to make the process as primitive and as basic as possible, forsaking all modern conveniences, cooking it on a fire.  I did some research on building a cob oven, but found the project a little overwhelming.  It seemed a lot of work for something that might not turn out.  I also wasn’t sure about building something permanent in my back yard.  Seeing those drawbacks, I turned my attention to cooking it with a dutch oven.

While complicated, I swear that the results will be the best you’ve ever tasted.  My crust, made with sourdough, achieved an absolutely perfect, bubbly, crispy chewy brown.  It was akin to a fine french loaf, picked up at a decent bakery.  It’s something like you’d get at a good brick oven pizzeria, only better since it’s homemade.  I assure you, though managing the fire and the oven certainly take some doing, the results will be well worth it.

In general, the secret to a good pizza is high heat.  In my home oven, I usually cook mine at 500F.  Commercial pizza ovens are usually set to 600.  While there’s no way to accurately gauge a campfire’s exact temperature, a hand held over it for no more than three Mississippis is a good test.  You’ll want an armload of a hot, slow burning wood.  Oak works well.  You’ll also want your fire pit lined with rocks to retain heat.  Notice in the picture how my pit is surrounded with simple a ring of rocks, flat rocks forming the floor.  As a lot of heat is absorbed into the dirt walls, I plan on lining those come spring.

Using the oven itself can be tricky.  I doubt they had pizza in mind when they designed it.  You’ll first notice that the legs are only an inch or two long.  This being the case, your pizza may sit too close to the coals and be prone to scorching.  The fix for this is either to used fewer coals or to lift the oven a few more inches with a tripod.  The top is the real issue.  Filled itself with more coals, the idea is that your food will be heated as well from the top, effectively baking it.  It works great for a loaf of bread or some biscuits, but since a pizza lays flat on the oven’s floor, the heat is a little too far away to properly do its job.  The danger is that the top won’t quite be done, and I’ve admittedly never been able to brown my cheese and toppings as I’d like.  Someone with some ingenuity could rig up something so the pizza sits in the oven’s center.  I’ve never tried it.  Lodge also makes a very short and wide dutch oven, seemingly more appropriate for the task.  But, as a standard dutch oven is more versatile, I’ve just chosen to make due.  I view any imperfections as a simple quirk of the process.

Before you cook, you’ll want to properly arrange the fire and your oven.  You want it hot and even.  Rather than lapping flames, your fire should burn down to embers.  They give off a more even heat.  You’ll also want your oven hot the moment you start cooking, so let it warm right next to the fire as it becomes ready.  Once you get your coals, use a shovel to spread them in a thin later on the fire pit’s floor.  Then place more on the oven’s lid.  As that’s the weak point, you’ll want a lot.  But remember that too many will smother and go out.  Fire needs air.  The idea is that you want a certain amount of heat from the bottom, and as much heat from the top as you can get.

And remember that actually cooking the pizza is a hands on process.  It’s not something you can just put on the fire and leave.   Ballpark, your pizza will take about ten minutes to cook.  The challenge is that your coals will never burn evenly, creating some spots that are hotter than others.  To manage that, you’ll want to turn both your dutch oven and your lid a quarter turn every three minutes or so.  That way no one spot on the pizza is in one place for too long.  Even then, a few black spots are unavoidable.  I just figure it adds to the character.

And taking the pizza out definitely deserves some foresight and planning.  Being extremely hot and without a lot of room, you can’t just lift it out.  My process requires two people, some welding gloves, a spatula, and a pizza peel.  With one person slowly and gently tipping the oven, another wiggle and finesse the spatula underneath.  I always cook my pizza on parchment, making it slide just a little easier.  Achieving that, it’s just a matter of quickly lifting the pizza and tugging it onto the peel.  If someone finds an easier method, I’m happy to hear it.  From here though, you’re ready to serve.

Talking about food and cooking is so much more pleasant than arguing about what ails the world.  Considering himself an anarchist, JRR Tolkien once noted that the world would be a better place if more people valued food and song over hoarded gold.  This is a meal that you’ll want to share with others.  Have some beer available and play some Grateful Dead.  Life is too beautiful to spend arguing and bossing others around.  Good food and good people will solve all the world’s problems.

My Thoughts on Jerky

In this installment, I’m going to pass on everything I’ve learned with regards to making beef jerky.  I’m going to talk a little about my thoughts on preparation.  Then I’m going to move on to recipes for marinades and seasoning.  If you’re a hiker or backpacker, a hunter or other outdoor enthusiast, or maybe just looking for a tasty, low carb snack, you might find something here of value.  Beef jerky done well is a very special thing, indeed.

When you read most recipes for jerky, a whole lot seems to be sacrificed to food safety.  I get it.  It’s raw meat, and raw meat harbors bacteria.  With some research, you’ll see that E coli dies at 160F and salmonella dies at 150F.  That being the case, the recommendation across the board on every recipe I’ve seen is to crank the heat on whatever you’re using to at least 180F.  You might notice that that’s as high as most jerky makers and dehydrators go.  The thought is to kill the germs, all of them.  Die bugs, die.

Forgiving anyone who would err on the side of caution, to me, that advice brings up a few problem.  As it dries, high heat like that tends to cook the meat, turning it hard and brittle.  To my mind, jerky is better when it’s chewy and flexible.  Additionally, heat destroys nutrients.  Really, it’s not much different than when you’d cook normally, or even what would happen naturally as your food digests in your stomach.  But, since it’s a food that may be eaten in an extreme situation, common in backpacking trips or stored for survival situations, I’d think that any nutrients would be worth preserving.  Seeing those two drawbacks, alternate methods are at least worth looking at.

And while most recipes advocate for high heat, it’s important to remember that heat itself isn’t really necessary for the actual process of drying.  Some Tibetans dry yak meat.  All they do is cut their’s into strips and hang them out at night.  The cool, dry Himalayan air does the rest.  In my experience, it’s the circulation of air that really does the trick.  Cranking up the heat isn’t necessary for that purpose.

Which leaves the challenge of the bacteria.  The thing working in your favor here is that bacteria can’t penetrate beef past the surface.  It can’t get into the flesh.  That’s why it’s perfectly safe to eat a rare steak, the outside having been properly seared.  Knowing that, the solution when working with beef, not ground beef mind you, is to somehow sanitize the surface.  That’s all you need.  Do that, and your jerky is safe to eat.  I try to accomplish this with the marinade.

You’ll want to use something acidic, alcoholic, and or salty.  I routinely use a teriyaki lime marinade, consisting of equal amounts of tamari, lime juice, and sugar.  Fresh ginger and garlic round it out nicely.  Another hit in the household was simple kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, coriander, and apple cider vinegar.  For that, I simply wet the meat in the vinegar and then sprinkled on the spices, the undried end product coated similar to a pretzel.  Although it’s very different from jerky, some may recognize those as the same seasonings used in biltong, everything working in harmony to keep away flies and germs.  In Laos, they seem to often use fish sauce, sugar, lemongrass, garlic, and ginger.  It looks as though salt is their weapon of choice for germ killing.  Look up Laotian Dried Beef. It’s good.  I also used simple beer once, and that tasted excellent.  But, while I didn’t get sick, I’m not sure if the alcohol content was really high enough for sanitation.  Finally, memorable to my wife was the time I prepared some jerky with straight tabasco.  Go ahead and try to tell me that something may have lived through that.

A good sharp knife makes slicing the meat easy.  Usually starting with a bit of flank steak, I’ll first get rid of any visible fat.  Fat goes rancid in storage.  Then, to get some good, wide strips, I cut diagonally at perhaps a 75 or 80 degree angle.  I’m told that cutting it across the grain like that also makes it more tender.  I haven’t really noticed.  But you want your strips thin, absolutely no more than a quarter of an inch thick.  failing that, your jerky case hardens, producing a mummified outside, trapping a raw inside that will spoil.  It’s just a few simple things to keep in mind.

Having done that, you’re ready to go about drying, low and slow.  I turn my dehydrator all the way down with almost no heat.  Again, simple air circulation does the trick.  Overnight is usually long enough.  If I start it in the morning, it’ll be finished when I get home.  8 to 12 hours is adequate.  Again, you’re looking for something that’s just a little bendy, not brittle. Perhaps, picture a good, stiff shoe leather.

Your next task is storage, and many people think differently than me on this.  For some reason, glass mason jars seem to be popular.  If you’re going to be eating it and finishing it over the course of a month, that’s probably fine.  Remember though that mason jars trap air and moisture and allow in light, all of which are your enemy.  Historically, Pioneers stored their jerky in burlap bags, hung in a secure, dry places.  A simple brown paper bag would probably also work, keeping out light and allowing moisture to escape.  You want it some place dark , away from pests, where it won’t mold or rehydrate.  Anything accomplishing that is fine.

One big advantage here to all of all this is the cost.  In the store, a small bag of commercial jerky costs about six bucks.  I saw some earlier today.  Even a simple Slim Jim now costs over a dollar.  Regarding the quality of ingredients, I won’t even begin to speculate.  But the good sized flank steak I used to make the jerky shown above didn’t cost much more than seven.  I’d suspect that, using high quality grass fed beef, you’d still come out ahead.  This is one of the many cases where it really does pay to do it yourself.

And again, this is all useful.  It’s protein that doesn’t need refrigeration or cooking.  If society fails, it’s a meal you can have squirreled away.  It’s a low carb, high protein snack.  All told, it’s definitely something worth making.  Please give it a try.

 

 

A Really Decent Marinade

This is good on chicken or beef.  It was phenomenal on venison, and it really shines on pork.  Vegetarians, please let me know how it works on tofu or mushrooms.  Here are the ingredients, enough for perhaps a pound of meat.  Adjust accordingly for the amount you have.

• 1/4 cup quality soy sauce or tamari
• 1/4 cup whiskey
• 1 palm full of brown sugar
• 3 cloves of chopped garlic
• 3 or 4 chopped scallions
• 1 inch of fresh ginger, shredded
• 1 tablespoon of korean chili flakes OR sambal oelek
• 1 Tablespoon Thai fish sauce (optional)
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke (optional)

Putting it together from there is really pretty basic.  Just whisk it all together and pour it over the meat.  After that, it’s just giving it time and letting it impart its flavor.  Generally, the longer you soak things, the better.  I suppose there’s a point of diminishing returns.  Remember that, on top of giving flavor, part of a marinade’s job is also to tenderize.  Mindful of that, I’m told that excessively marinating chicken will turn it to mush.  But I’ve never had that happen to me.  I usually do mine overnight, on up to a full day.  I get good results.

You’ll see in the picture that I used it on some chicken thighs, cooking them up on a grill kebab style.  While it turned out awesome and is in my summer grilling rotation, be aware that this marinade does contain a fair amount of sugar.  If you’re not cautious, it will burn.  Be sure to carefully manage your heat and flame.  Be respectful of your fire.

I first ran across something like this recipe on the cooking and food section of a homebrew forum.  The author called it a Korean marinade.  Intrigued, I did some research.  I really couldn’t find anything much like this in Korean cuisine anywhere.  I even think that I was the one who added the Korean chili flakes.  The original recipe just called for sambal oelek.  Now, I’m not one to commit a No True Scotsman fallacy.  I’ve posted this recipe elsewhere on the internet and there may be some dude in Korea that uses it.  But I’ve stopped calling it a Korean marinade.  I figure now that it’s its own thing.  I accept it for what it is and judge it on its own terms.

But people who are familiar may see that this is really close to a Japanese Teriyaki.  Take out the hot stuff and the fish sauce, substitute the whiskey for some mirin, then swap the brown sugar for white, and there you go.  This is all just showing you that everything’s just variations on a theme.  Figure out what role each ingredient plays, then see what you can swap out and substitute.  It’s ideas building on ideas.  That’s how progress is made.

Very few deep thoughts today.  I’m not feeling like tearing down the man or trying to build the dream.  Today I’m more about just sharing some food.  I hope you find this useful.

My Crockpot: Spontaneous Order In My Kitchen

Every time I use my crock pot, I wonder why I don’t do it more often.  Right now I’m making a pot roast, and the smells coming from the kitchen are fantastic.  I’m anticipating dining tonight on a tender, fall apart piece of meat, swimming in gravy, probably served over polenta that my wife will make.  Tomorrow I’ll be complimented by my coworkers as I eat the leftovers for lunch.  Right now it’s just seeming to embody everything that is right and good about the world.

In my household, this is pretty routine when we’re pressed for time.  If my wife has a busy day ahead and I’m going to be late with meetings, this helps.  We throw something in in the morning.  We come home that night to our kitchen smelling fantastic and a delicious meal all ready that night.  I hear people complain all the time that they don’t have time to cook.  As I’d rather light a candle than curse their darkness, this is totally worth trying.

For those of you just starting out, pulled pork is pretty easy to accomplish.  Surfing around, I’ve seen a lot of long and drawn out blog posts and recipes on the matter.  While many are worth reading, I’ll save you some time and just tell you to rub some salt on a pork shoulder roast and throw it in for the day.  You can cut some slits in the meat and shove in some garlic cloves for flavor if you want.  I do, and it’s excellent.  But that’s pretty much it.  Take it out after ten hours or so, shred it all with a fork, and serve it with a vegetable.  There’s nothing too complicated about it.

My pot roast is just a tad more hands on.  I brown the outside in a frypan  and prepare a mirpoix of diced carrots, celery, and onions to cook along with it.  I might have ten minutes worth of prep or so invested.  Can you spare ten minutes before you rush off to work?

Chicken does well too.  For this, I’d suggest you remove the skin.  I’m not a low fat guy at all.  However, chicken skin in a crock pot just turns into a gooey mess, and all the fat is just going to render out of it anyway.  I’ve also been warned not to attempt a whole chicken.  The danger here seems to be its sitting too long at too low a temperature, increasing the risk of salmonella.  I often just do bare chicken thighs or legs, never once finding them too dry or having any problems with safety.  A little barbecue sauce finishes them off nicely.

A lot of recipes, not originally intended for a crock pot, are still pretty easily converted.  As a special feature on one of his DVDs, Robert Rodriguez put out video once for making Puerco Pibil.  Calling for a long, slow roast in the oven, everything wrapped in banana leaves and foil to seal in the moisture, that translated easily.  Maybe try some ribs?  Anything slow cooked or slow roasted is worth considering.

And for the black belt home chefs looking for a pro tip, consider this.  When you make a roast, or some chicken, or what have you, try cooking rice in the resulting liquid.  When I do this, I just drain it off and throw it all in my rice cooker.  The ratio is of two parts liquid to one part white rice.  It’s excellent.  I suspect you’ll like it too.  I must warn you though that the flavor is intense.  You may wish to add some water to moderate it all.

It’s simple.  It’s low stress.  Like so many things in life, the only way it can go wrong is if you mess with it.  You’ll want to stir things.  Don’t.  You’ll want to lift the lid to give it a whiff or a taste.  Don’t.  Just leave it alone.  Everything’s taken care of.  I’m not going to get all sappy about some kind of balance of nature or anything like that.  I understand that the Naturalistic Fallacy is a thing.  But this is at least one instance where karma and all the innate forces of the universe are working in harmony and conjunction.  You can’t improve that.  Please understand that your need for control is an attachment that can only bring you pain and misery to everyone around you.  Come to accept your place in the universe.  Coercion and violence never produce anything good.  Abandon them.  Really, just set it and forget it.

 

Seeing The Matrix Code In My Dinner

In this installment, I’m going to talk about how authority is clumsy, awkward, restricting, and dangerous.  I’m going to give you a very decent recipe for a rice pilaf.  But I’m also going to explain how you shouldn’t necessarily follow it.

Having visited Russia a few times, I went through a phase of being really into the old Soviet Union and its cuisine.  A while back, I came across this recipe for a Georgian Rice Pilaf.

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 stick celery, diced
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 1/3 cup walnuts
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 2 cups rice
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1/4 cup parsley
• 1 teaspoon ground sage
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

I cook this on the stovetop in a dutch oven, starting by melting the butter and then browning the onion, carrot, and the celery.  I add the raisins and walnuts, then sautee everything for another minute or two.  Add the tomatoes and the rice, I continue stirring it all until the rice is a golden brown.  Next comes the chicken stock and the spices, simmering for about twenty minutes until the rice is done.  I let it sit another ten before serving.

I’ve made this dozens of times.  It’s always excellent and I’d always been awed by it.  The recipe originally came from a high end restaurant in New York.  That’s gotta make it special, right?  This has to be the pinnacle in rice cooking.  It’s perfection.  Genius.  How could it be improved?

Then I got looking at it.  I started seeing it for its parts.  Sauteed onions, carrots, and celery?  That’s a mirpoix.  In cooking, you see it all the time.  And cooking rice in broth is nothing special.  The spices are different than I’d seen, but they could just as well be any other.  Really, if you swap out a few ingredients, you’re not that far from a Jambalaya or a Paella.  It’s all just variations on a theme.  There is nothing in this recipe that any one of us couldn’t have come up with on our own.

It’s pretty common, when teaching someone how to cook, to start off making a batch of cookies.  And people’s hearts there are in the right place.  Cookies are good and someone making them does get exposed to a lot of technique.  The problem I see though is that it focuses on following a recipe.  Gather these ingredients and follow these steps.  Let the recipe be your guide.  You learn the how.  How many people get past that though and into the why?

And you have to understand that recipes can be situational and only give you what was written down.  My family makes a really good peanut butter fudge, originating from my grandmother.  But anyone following the recipe as written is doomed.  Peanut butter has apparently changed over time and now only certain brands will work.  Likewise, as good as that rice pilaf is, how much better would it be with quality and fresh ingredients?  The recipe I wrote is ambiguous on the matter.  There’s a whole lot more to cooking than just the ingredients and steps.

Historically, some recipes have even been dangerous.  Betty Crocker once famously published a recipe that was explosive as written.  They apparently told readers to add a can of cream of mushroom soup, never saying that it should be opened first.  A bad recipe can get you killed, and yet we give them our complete trust.

But why do recipes and cookbooks even exist?  By and large, I submit that it’s because people want them and depend on them.  I’d like such and such for dinner.  Let me find a recipe.  The soup calls for parsley and we’re out.  Guess we can’t make that.  People want to be led.  People need some kind of authority in their lives.  Being told what to do just makes things easier.

But no matter how good, or how well written, or how well intentioned the recipes are, they’ll always be a hinderance.  I have a shelf full of very good cookbooks.  They’re bureaucracy.  They taking up space.  They’re stuff in my way.  They cost me money.  I spent valuable resources and hours of my life to buy them.  But they’re not directly needed for the task at hand.  These days, I mostly do without them.  They are simply unnecessary.

Perhaps these particular arguments aren’t quite valid in the world of the internet and e-readers.  Maybe it’s all not as intrusive or cumbersome as it once was.  Maybe the Transhumanists are actually onto something in that regard.  Technology may streamline bureaucracy.  But wouldn’t it ultimately be better to just know how to cook?

And holding to recipes keeps us stagnant.  That rice pilaf could have been the last one I made.  This is it.  This is perfection.  There shall be no argument or variation.  But every recipe came from somewhere and they are all the result of generations of exchange and adaptation.  That’s the very nature of our existence and what makes humanity great.

You don’t need a recipe.  You don’t need authority.  Learn the tools.  Go on from there.  There’s so much more to life than and cooking just following directions.

An Anarchist’s Gumbo

An Anarchist can’t help but love Gumbo.  At it’s heart, it’s a frugal refrigerator cleaner.  It gives a dignified end to leftover meats and vegetables about to go bad.  As it allows you to stretch your food budget further, that’s that much less money you give to The Man.  It’s adaptable.  With Thanksgiving coming, try it with turkey stock and leftover turkey for a more earthy flavor.  Looking deeper, being from the Louisiana melting pot, it’s a magnificent product of multicultural exchange.  Sure, some of that exchange wasn’t voluntary.  Okra was slave food.  But, as we all understand that collective guilt is a fallacy, we aren’t concerned with that and won’t be held responsible.  Gumbo is a great idea.  And an idea, once voiced, belongs to all.

Now, I have to be honest.  I have only ever tasted my own gumbo and some would deem me unqualified to write this article.  I don’t have any Cajun ancestry.  Living in the Northeast, I’m as far from the bayou as you can get.  A friend who had lived in Louisiana for a time once tasted my gumbo.  He said that it was as he remembered.  But I’m ultimately not really worried about it.  This is my interpretation.  I think it’s good.

And I won’t even get into the quagmire of noting the differences between Cajun food and Creole.  I understand that they are two distinct cultures with their own unique history and traditions.  As far as the food goes, they’re apparently different in that one uses tomatoes and the other doesn’t.  When you boil it down, that’s about it.  I’ve included tomatoes in mine, but I don’t want to be pegged into any particular collective.  I’m not shooting for any sort of Platonic ideal.  I’m just trying to make a soup.

As I dive into the recipe, let me say that I find this dish is really affected by the ingredients.  If you can get fresh herbs and peppers and tomatoes from your garden and make the thing with some good, homemade chicken stock, you’re in for something special.  Produce from your grocery store along with stock from a can will still turn out.  Just understand that you can take it to another level.

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup lard
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1 or 2 diced onions
• 1 or two diced green peppers
• 3 or four sticks of celery, diced
• 1 kielbasa sausage, sliced
• 1 or 2 pounds chicken, fresh or leftover.  (meat from about half a small chicken)
• 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes, or a similar amount of crushed fresh tomatoes.
• 1.5 quarts chicken stock
• 2 cups white wine
• 2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce.
• Tabasco to taste
• 1 package frozen okra
• 3 or 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon Basil
• 1 tablespoon thyme

Starting out, there are two ways you can go about making this.  You can make this as a one pot meal, cooking it all in a 7 quart stock pot.  That’s what I usually do and I get good results.  The issue is that you’ll be making the roux first and then cooking everything in it.  Things don’t brown well when they’re covered in flour.  You may want to take the time to brown and caramelize the onions, peppers, celery, and the sausage in a fry pan first.  It’ll potentially give you that much more flavor at the expense of another dish to wash.  Either way is fine.  If you’re going the frypan route, chop up everything I mentioned and do that first.  Remember to deglaze the pan when you’re done, perhaps with a bit of the wine.

The roux takes a little forethought and planning.  You’re cooking the flour in the lard, browning it to cook out the flour taste and give it it’s own, unique flavor.  Lard is ideal because it has a high smoke point.  Some use peanut oil instead.  When you’re doing this, shoot for something peanut butter colored.  The darker the better, but burnt is ruined and you need to throw that out and try again.  Some recipes have you cooking it on a low heat, stirring slowly as you reach your desired color.  It takes forever.  If you follow Paul Prudhomme’s recipe though, he’ll have you crank up the stovetop to eleven while you whisk it for all you’re worth.  Doing it that way, it only takes a couple minutes.  Just yank it off the heat the moment you get what you’re looking for.

From there you’ll put in your peppers, onions and celery.  If you didn’t pre brown them, cook them in the roux until the onions are translucent.  Then throw in the sausage and the chicken if you’re using it fresh.  If you’re using pre cooked leftover chicken, save that until the end.  The long slow cooking will make it fall apart.  But you may want that.  It’s up to you.  Then you put in your tomatoes, your chicken stock, and your wine, add your Tabasco and your Worcestershire, bring the whole thing up to a boil, and then lower it down to a simmer, stirring occasionally.

I let mine simmer for four hours, although I don’t know that’s necessary.  I’m sure the flavors marry and mingle and that it serves a purpose, but four hours may be excessive.  It’s what I read in the first recipe I tried.  Use your judgement and feel free to experiment.

Near the end, I’ll add the garlic and the okra.  Adding the garlic at the end preserves the flavor and aroma.  It also acts as a thickener along with the okra.  I use frozen okra.  I can get fresh okra around here, but I’m dubious of the freshness and quality.  In this, I just take it out of the package and throw it in and stir.  At this moment, you’ll usually see the pot thicken dramatically.  Enough to coat the spoon is about right.

Then the herbs go in.  Thyme is the main flavor.  The original recipe I took this from asked for a teaspoon.  I use a tablespoon.  Again, adding these toward the end preserves flavor and aroma.  They go in last.

It’s usually served over rice.  Paleo people, disregard.  Like many stews, it improves with age.  I’d heard of some deemed just about right after nine days.  Mine never lasts that long.