Success

...on two fronts! First of all, let me tell you that last night's soup supper (the Italian Escarole Soup, see yesterday's blog entry) was scrumptious. I don't usually like to have last night's leftovers for today's lunch, but in this case I really didn't mind one bit. When raw, eaten in salads or whatever, escarole tends to be bitter, like many leafy greens. But something happens when you wilt it in chicken broth. It's like Ebenezer Scrooge the morning after his fitful night with the ghosts of Christmases past - that escarole went from bitter to happy in about 3 seconds flat.

The second success story is that my Aerogarden has started to sprout! (See the earlier entry in my blog about what the Aerogarden is.) I have removed the plastic caps on all but 2 of the plants now. The chives so far seem to be the most hearty of the gourmet herbs. The basil and purple basil are up, too. The cilantro and mint have germinated but aren't quite as big as the others yet. The last to arrive, it seems, will be the parsley and the dill.

Moving on from achieved successes to things I hope I will be successful in doing eventually...

I went to Borders last night and picked up a few things to read. Thanks to an article about heritage pork and pork belly called "Where the Belly Meets the Plate" in the Washington Post Food section this week for a tip on a book called Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. On a whim, I thought it would be fun to learn how to make my own sausages, proscuitto and pâté. This is my kind of self-help book! Some people's definition of success would be being able to afford to buy it rather than having to make it. I have to first succeed at getting through the book. We'll see how it goes from there!

Tangent: heritage pork. Tried it once and it was marvelous. It has a depth of flavor, luxurious mouthfeel and texture, and a visible marbled quality that is completely different than the pork you buy in the regular grocery. Ever wondered why people say frog, snake, rabbit, alligator, anything else "tastes like chicken"? I think it's because mostly, industrial chicken you buy in the grocery or order at many restaurants doesn't taste like anything. Extrapolate that to almost any kind of mass produced, homogeneous, food item. Meat and poultry should taste like the sum of its parts: what it ate and where it ate it should make a difference in the way it tastes on the plate. This is what farmers raising heritage breeds try to achieve-- not falsely or in a forced way but mostly true to the way our great grandfathers raised pigs and other animals and crops. Do you remember eating food off the farm and what it tasted like? Does our food from the grocery today taste anything like it? (The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals provides some more insight into this.)

I also picked up La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange: The Original Companion for French Home Cooking. This book is a meticulously precise guide (hm, guide seems too lenient) to everything you need to know about cooking French food at home, and I don't mean "gourmet" food. Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking, while similarly comprehensive, and which many a home cook used as their seminal text, is gourmet and La Bonne Cuisine is probably more for the gourmand who wants to cook as well as eat. I've only flipped through it so far. I imagine a person could spend a lifetime reading and referencing this tome. It has, afterall, been in print continuously in French since 1927! I'm not sure this book would be ideal for a beginner cook. Although it is painstakingly precise, someone with more experience in the kitchen would probably gain more benefit than a novice. So what success will I associate with this book? I don't know yet, but right now it just feels like something I need to conquer!