Of Christmas Lights and Strozzapreti

We currently have Mark's sister and her husband staying with us for a few days. They live in the Portland, Oregon area and have never been to Salt Lake City around Christmastime. So we decided they must see the lights on Temple Square.

Mark on right with his sister Deb and her husband Neil

After partaking of some Petit Basque cheese (see yesterday's post), we put on parkas, scarfs, gloves, etc., and headed for downtown Salt Lake City. If you're ever in Salt Lake over the holidays, the best time to see the lights are *after* Christmas. Then, the crowds are much smaller and there is a far lesser chance of getting run over by armies of strollers.

When I was married to my former wife, we always made a point of taking the kids downtown in December in order to see the Christmas lights. Here I am in 2006 with part of our brood. You can see I know whereof I speak when it comes to "armies of strollers."

After a while, it got a little boring to go down and see the same thing every year. Yet we did it. But the highlight became not the lights but going to the Lion House Pantry afterward for pie, carrot cake and other goodies.

That being said, the lights looked a bit different this year, and it's always more interesting taking someone who has never been there before. It was a beautiful evening.

Now moving on the Strozzapreti. After seeing the lights, we went out for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Salt Lake, the Oasis Cafe. This is actually where Mark and I met in August 2011. "I parked behind the building," I later wrote, "then came in the back door and walked down the stairs. I could see a tall, lean, blonde-haired man at the base of the stairs, and as I approached, he turned around, looked at me, and a huge smile spread across his face. From that very moment, I was smitten … I was afraid he might say goodbye after I told him I had ten children, but he stayed … and he’s been staying at my side ever since."

Getting back to the other night, I decided to have a dish that I had never heard of before made with a pasta called Strozzapreti. The server explained that, translated, the name of the pasta means "priest choker." I was intrigued and decided to try it. The Oasis Cafe calls the dish "Mushroom Strozzapreti," and it features (besides the pasta) caramelized shallots, brussels sprouts, fresh thyme and parmesan. It was tasty, satisfying and perfect for a cold winter night.

When I got home, I did some research on Strozzapreti. Wikipedia says that there are three legends that explain the name of the past:

"One is that gluttonous priests were so enthralled by the savory pasta that they ate too quickly and choked themselves, sometimes to death. Another explanation involves the "azdora" ("housewife" in the Romagna's dialect), who "chokes" the dough strips to make the strozzapreti: '... in that particular moment you would presume that the azdora would express such a rage (perhaps triggered by the misery and difficulties of her life) to be able to strangle a priest!' Another legend goes that wives would customarily make the pasta for churchmen as partial payment for land rents (In Romagna, the Catholic Church had extensive land properties rented to farmers), and their husbands would be angered enough by the venal priests eating their wives' food to wish the priests would choke as they stuffed their mouth with it. The name surely reflects the diffuse anticlericalism of the people of Romagna and Tuscany."

The pasta is apparently typical of the Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Marche and Umbria regions of Italy. My attention grew when I read that it is found in Umbria because that is where Mark and I planning on going on a cycling tour next September.

There are loads and loads of recipes on the Internet for Strozzapreti. I will look forward to trying some of them.

Basque-ing in Sheep's Milk Cheese

If he had told me it was sheep's milk cheese, I think I would have been reluctant to eat it. As it happened, I didn't ask about the cheese until I'd already had several pieces and had fallen in love with it.

We had been invited over to the house of some good friends of ours to share in their Christmas dinner. Kurt does most of the cooking in that family, and on Christmas his equally knowledgeable mother and sister joined him. While he worked on various aspects of dinner – including checking on the magnificent aged prime rib that he had prepared – Mark and I sat at the counter, sipping delicious champagne and eating cheese and salami.

We were fortunate indeed to be invited to share this bottle of delicious bubbly

Perhaps I should insert at this point that I, ummm, don’t know much (anything, really) about cheese. But I’d like to learn. And there’s no better place to start from than where I now am. So I asked Kurt what kind of cheese it was.  He showed me the label and proceeded to educate me. It was called Petit Basque, a cheese made from sheep’s milk in the Basque area of France at the western end of the Pyrenees Mountains. 

Our son Nathan playing with Julia's son before dinner

The cheese is made using traditional methods (which I haven't been able to learn more about), but marketed by a huge French company to North America and other markets. According to greatcheese.com, 

"Traditionally, shepherds made this small cheese from the leftover curd set aside after milking their ewes. Today Istara® P’tit Basque is still hand-made from pure ewe’s milk, using the same traditional methods established by local shepherds centuries ago ... Made with 100% pure sheep’s milk, P’tit Basque is aged for a minimum of 70 days. The Spanish influence on this cheese is noted by its resemblance to Manchego, but its flavor is milder and more delicate. P’tit Basque has a distinctive aroma of sheep’s milk, and a smooth, sweet flavor with a nutty finish. Its creaminess is unique for a semi-hard cheese."

The "discovery" of Little Basque is portrayed in this video that was made as a TV commercial. A more complete description of the cheese is available here.

I had read that natives of the Basque region where this cheese is produced like to have it with a black cherry jam that is made from local sweet cherry trees. We tried this last night, and it was a big hit.

The distinctive rind of Petit Basque

Since Basque Black Cherry Jam is not readily available at the local grocery store, I went with two options: a can of sweet cherries in heavy syrup - which my sister-in-law liked - and a jar of sour cherry jam, which we all liked. Combining the cheese and a bit of cherry jam with almond crackers was, in my opinion. delicious.

My brother-in-law also brought some of his homemade sausage to share. That was a big hit. Some of my older kids were here for the sampling, and they all liked the Petit Basque, which is saying something.

Mark, at right, with his sister and her husband, visiting from Portland, Oregon

What's In a Spice: Cinnamon

Cinnamon is cinnamon, right?

Well, that depends, as it turns out.

When I prepared to make my second iteration of Dad's Holiday Pie, I knew I had to get some new spices. Both our nutmeg and our cinnamon had expiry dates of up to two years. So I went cinnamon and nutmeg shopping. 

My destination was Whole Foods, only because I thought I could get spices in bulk there. Turns out they were out of cinnamon and didn't carry nutmeg in bulk. I turned to the spice section and picked up a container of organic Korintje cinnamon. I didn't know what the word "Korintje" meant, but it sounded exotic, and the container said it is a product of Indonesia.

The spice seemed to work just fine in my pie, but I became curious about what the difference is between Indonesian and the "Saigon" cinnamon that had been in our spice drawer expiring.

This curiosity led to my discovery that what most North American cooks use as cinnamon is technically not even cinnamon at all, but is "cassia." The only "pure" cinnamon is grown in Sri Lanka. Cassia is grown in China, Vietnam and Indonesia. It turns out, not surprisingly, that Saigon cinnamon is the Vietnamese cassia.

Korintje Indonesian "cinnamon" (cassia) is widely used by commercial bakeries in the US because of its consistent familiar flavor and lower cost. But, it turns out that there are also different grades of Korintje: grade A with 3% cinnamon oil (the most flavorful and aromatic), and the lower grades B and C. It turns out that most grocery stores usually carry these lower grades which have a much lower cinnamon oil content and are considered to be the cheapest and least flavorful of all the cassia.

Although I turned down my nose at the Saigon Cinnamon that I first used in making my pie, it turns out that this variety of cassia has the highest amount of both essential oil and cinnamaldehyde, which makes it the most rich, sweet, spicy, and strong cassia. Looks like maybe I should have stuck with the Saigon ...

Thoughts, anyone?

The first book in my cooking library.

Salted vs. Unsalted Butter

The whole salted vs. unsalted butter thing had been a mystery to me for a very long time. When I would go to the store and stare into the case, I would be confronted with a bewildering array of various brands and types of butter (i.e., salted vs. unsalted). What was the difference? Was it a chemical reaction thing? I really was clueless.

Until recently, that is. 

I confronted it head on while making Dad's Holiday Pie. The recipe called for butter, but it didn't specify salted or unsalted butter. What does one do when the recipe doesn't specify? Further, the recipe didn't call for spices of any kind, including salt. 

The first time I made the pie, I used unsalted butter because that's what we had on hand. But when I tasted the pie for the first time, I felt that it could have used a pinch of salt. This is when I turned to the Internet to do some research about the difference between the two types of butter. Here's what I learned.

Salt vs. No Salt

The basic difference between salted and unsalted butter is that salted butter contains salt. Sounds like a pretty ridiculous statement doesn't it? That much should be obvious, right? But the fact is, I didn't know this before. Clueless? Yes. That's why I'm writing this blog.

Salt in butter acts both as a preservative and a flavor enhancer. According to material I read, salted butter is typically considered the "default" butter: if a recipe calls for butter but doesn't specify which kind, one typically uses salted butter. Because it contains a flavor enhancer, salted butter is also typically used over vegetables, on toast, over pasta, etc.

However, many cooks prefer to use unsalted butter because doing so allows them to control the flavors in whatever they are making. No salt unless added. Because my original pie recipe didn't call for salt, I used salted butter for future pies.

About Salted Butter

I also learned that there are issues with salted butter. Because of the preservative quality of salt, the butter keeps longer (and is generally cheaper than unsalted butter). Because of this, one should be aware of the freshness of the salted butter being used. (Unsalted butter has a much shorter shelf-life.) Furthermore, the amount of salt in the butter varies from brand to brand. For example, a Good Housekeeping article lists the following levels of salt content in four well-known brands of butter:

• Organic Valley: 600 mg. sodium, per 1 stick butter
• Trader Joe’s Store Brand: 720 mg. sodium, per 1 stick butter
• Land O’Lakes: 760 mg. sodium, per 1 stick butter
• Horizon: 920 mg. sodium, per 1 stick butter

That's a lot of salt. Who knew? And who knew of the variation between brands? Next time I go to the store, I'm going to check the salt levels. Meanwhile, I checked the salt content of the Whole Foods' brand I have been using:

If I'm figuring this correctly, since there are 75 mg of salt in one tablespoon, there must be approximately 600 mg of salt in one stick of butter (8 tbsp x 75mg). That puts this butter at the lower end of the salt content spectrum.

Bottom Line

The bottom line, after all my research, is that using salted vs. unsalted butter is a matter of personal choice. If I ever get to the point where I become a connoisseur of various brands of butter, I'll let  my readers know. Meanwhile, at least I now know the difference between the two types, and I will no longer stand bewildered and intimidated in front of the dairy case, staring at boxes of butter. I am now a butter initiate.

Dad's Holiday Pie: Pumpkin Chocolate Pecan Pie

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through old files on my computer, and I stumbled across a Word document containing a recipe I had, at some point in the last ten years or so, found on the Internet. When I saw the words, "Chocolate Pumpkin Pecan Pie," I knew I had to try making it. 

For you see, I had long been in love with the combination of chocolate and pecans in a pie. My ex-wife had found a recipe for chocolate pecan pie when we lived in Canada featuring essentially a pecan pie with a solid layer of chocolate on top. But when our family went to southeastern Ohio in the fall of 1995 and went to "Amish Country," we discovered a new creation: a fudgy pecan pie. It was served at the Homestead Restaurant in Charm, Ohio (which, yes, was very charming), and they called it a German Chocolate Pie. We eventually found a comparable recipe, and I loved it.

Our children in front of the Homestead Restaurant in 2000.

So when I saw this recipe that added pumpkin, I was keen to try it. I tried to find it on the Internet to give proper credit to the author but was not able to find it. I ended up altering the recipe a bit, so I'm just going to take credit and call it "Dad's Holiday Pie."

Here is the original recipe:

Chocolate Pumpkin Pecan Pie

1     cup chopped pecans

1/2  cup mini chocolate chips

1     tsp vanilla

1     cup canned pumpkin

4     tbsp melted butter

1/2  cup sugar

1     cup dark corn syrup

3     eggs

1     9-inch unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 350. Meanwhile, beat eggs well. Mix in the corn syrup, sugar, butter, pumpkin and vanilla on low until well-blended. Arrange 1 cup pecans and 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips in the bottom of the pie shell. Slowly pour egg mixture over them. Bake for 1 hour or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean. Let cool completely before serving to allow the filling to set up.

I have learned from what little past experience I have in baking to make sure I have all the ingredients measured out and placed in separate containers. I have to do this; otherwise I would be quickly overwhelmed and stressed out.

A note about the ingredients I used to make the original recipe. I used raw sugar because that's what we had on hand. Not sure that was the best for flavor, so I switched to regular white sugar for the second attempt. I used Kroger chocolate chips and packaged pecans, along with Libby's canned pumpkin.

The shell was a Whole Foods white flour frozen crust in an aluminum tin. As I said in my first post, I am doing this cooking thing on my terms, and my terms dictated getting a frozen pie crust. Other cooks I know wouldn't dream of using anything but a homemade crust ... but I'm just not there yet. Us neophyte cooks have to accept ourselves where we're at.

The result was the pie pictured in the lead photo. While it was good, it was rather bland. We all felt it needed some spices and that it needed more chocolate, so I went back to make another attempt.

These are the changes I made on my second go:

• Add some spices: 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg.
• Put in a full cup of mini chocolate chips, instead of 1/2 cup, and changed to Whole Foods' brand of chips
• Changed to white sugar
• Changed to Whole Foods organic canned pumpkin
• Changed the corn syrup about to approximately 3/4 cup
• Added 1/4 cup of pure maple syrup (which we had on hand)

The result got very good reviews. The difference in the taste of the organic pumpkin was noticeable, for the better. The addition of spices made all the difference in the world. But there were some issues. The crust was very thin, and the additional chocolate chips and the maple syrup combined, I think, to make the filling a bit too liquid. And the cinnamon taste was a bit too strong.

The next time I made the pie, I decided I'd better check my vanilla and spice bottles for expiration dates. Ummmmm, it's a good thing I did. The vanilla had a date of sometime in 2011. The nutmeg had a September 2012 date (see below), and the cinnamon wasn't much better.

I'm going to write another post about things I learned from making this pie, including some lessons about spices. For now, I'll just say that I went to the store and got fresh spices and vanilla to use on the next go-round.

The next go-round was two pies for our family Christmas party. The only things I changed were using the fresh spices and reducing the amount of cinnamon to 1/2 tablespoon.

These were enjoyed, but I learned one more thing from this attempt. This pie needs not only time to cool, but it should also be refrigerated a few hours prior to serving in order for the filling to completely set. I'm also thinking the amount of chocolate chips should be reduced to 3/4 of a cup, and I'm also going to use Pillsbury's frozen pie crusts that can be unfolded into a glass pie plate instead of a frozen crust in a tin. I'll try these changes on Tuesday while Mark's sister and brother-in-law are here for a few days' visit. Then, it will be time to publish the definitive version of my recipe for Dad's Holiday Pie.

A Beginning

I make no guarantees how often I will post to this blog or even how long it will be here. But, I’m making a start. A beginning.

I have made a New Year's resolution to learn how to cook during 2015 and, hopefully, to come to enjoy it. This blog will chronicle what, if any, progress I make toward fulfilling that resolution.

As the name of my blog suggests, I am a gay man. I was married to a woman for over twenty years, but unexpectedly came out of the closet (something I had never intended to do) after our marriage had broken down. 

My ex-wife was a good cook and enjoyed preparing food and was always on the hunt for recipes. I, on the other hand, had never embraced the joy of cooking. I didn’t need to do it and wasn’t particularly drawn to it and was busy with a lot of other things - like making a living. When we separated, I found myself preparing my own meals for the first time in many years.

Me (on the left) and my husband Mark at our family Christmas party

Then, a number of months later, I met the man I fell in love with and eventually married. He, unlike me, had prepared his own meals for most of his life. Since we got together, we have made regular forays into the kitchen – and Mark is a pretty good cook; well, he knows a lot more about it than I do. But frankly, we have tended to rely heavily on Mother Kirkland (i.e., Costco).

Recently, however, I have become more interested in cooking and baking - something I'll write about in my next post. I have looked at some of my attitudes about cooking and have made some realizations that may allow me to pursue this interest on my own terms – instead of someone else’s. Isn’t it true in life that so many problems are caused when someone tries to live his or her life according to someone else’s terms?

So, here I go. I suspect that this blog – if it survives – will focus on learning about cooking but will also feature posts about food. Mark and I travel a lot, so I’m sure I will be writing about food experiences we have while we’re on an adventure.