Belly Lore - Picnic

Manet's painting, Le Dejuener Sur L'herbe (the luncheon - I prefer picnic - on the grass) when shown in 1863, was considered, well, not acceptable.  A nude nymph with eyes cast down to show shame was one thing, but a woman looking the viewer squarely in the eye was, apparently, quite another.  It was also the first time a painting showed a nude female sitting with fully clothed males.  Now with that I can see a problem...

Picnic

Happy May Day!  After all, everyone knows that (hooray, hooray) outdoor...picnicking starts today.  Yea, that's how it goes, right?  I decided to do a few salads instead of the usual fried chicken or sandwiches for this picnic.  Not because I wanted to keep it light, but because I didn't.  Strawberry rhubarb shortcake is involved.   But first the veges:

Really Yum Green Bean, Walnut and Feta Salad

1 C toasted walnuts (Bake at 350 degrees for about 8 min.)
3/4 C olive oil
1/4 C white wine vinegar
1 T chopped fresh dill
2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1  1/2 pounds fresh green beans
1/2 of a red onion, sliced
4 ounces crumbled Feta cheese

Combine the oil, and next 5 ingredients in a jar.  Snap the green beans into 3 inch pieces and steam for 10 min.  Shock the beans in cold water, drain and pat dry.  Toss walnuts, beans, onion, and feta together.  About an hour before you serve, toss that with the vinaigrette.

The other salad is just some red leaf lettuce, strawberries (blueberries are good too), toasted walnuts, and blue cheese vinaigrette.

Blue Cheese Vinaigrette

1/4 C white wine vinegar
1 clove minced garlic
1/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1 T Dijon mustard
3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 C blue cheese

Mix all ingredients except blue cheese into a jar and shake well.  Add cheese and dress salad.


For shortcake, I like to use a basic biscuit recipe and top with sugar before baking.  My aunt gave me some Bakewell Cream leavening from Maine and I like the recipe on the can.  You can use any biscuit recipe you like.  If you want whole grain biscuits, just substitute 1/2 of the white flour in your recipe with whole wheat flour.  After I formed my biscuits, I tried carefully cutting a few apart and adding  2 teas. of jam in between the layers before baking.  Yummy but not pretty.

I adore strawberries and rhubarb this time of year so I filled the shortcake with both.  I cut 2 cups of rhubarb into chunks and added about 1 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar.  I simmered that until the rhubarb was done and then drained the juice into a small saucepan to further cook down the sauce until syrupy.  I prefer to top my shortcake with this syrup rather than whipped cream.  Not that whipped cream isn't always welcome.  I tossed the rhubarb, strawberries and a bit of syrup together, broke apart a biscuit, and heaped the bottom with the fruit mix.  On goes the top to be drizzled with the rhubarb syrup.  Great picnic dessert, just don't forget to be equally as clothed (or better yet, unclothed) as your picnicking partner.  Hooray, hooray!

Belly Lore - Asparagus

Nicholas Culpepper, a 17th century herbalist, wrote that asparagus "stirs up lust in man and woman."  In 19th century France, bridegrooms were served 3 courses of asparagus at their prenuptial dinners (not absolutely necessary, I hope, but asparagus lore nonetheless) to, well, you get the picture.  A French courtesan of Louis the XV, Madame Pompadour, also enjoyed using asparagus as an aphrodisiac as did those famed Arabians in the Nights.

Spring

A drop of water left behind by a Spring fog was nestled in a perfectly cupped leaf.  It was so dazzling I had to almost touch it to assure myself this wasn't a misplaced creation of ancient carbon but a new creation, among many newly created by Spring.  Nature presenting herself here as a fresh jewel,  elsewhere as, perhaps, a bolt of lightning, an emerald flash, an intoxicating breeze, a sprout, a bud, a pool, a spring.

Oh how I love Spring.  That metaphor for the start of new and hopefully better times.  That erratic, sweet, beautiful, bold, lusty Spring.  That flourishing, stream swelling, melting warmth.  It inspires me to write bad prose and cook good food.  Oh, wait, that's pretty much year round...

What could be more lusty than Spring's gift of asparagus?  That ability to grow up to seven inches a day, that sensual shape, it begs to be warmed and dipped by hand into garlicky mayonnaise!  The dipping followed, of course, by finger licking.

Aioli (Garlic Mayonnaise)

6 peeled and chopped garlic cloves      1 C olive oil (divided)
1/8 t sea salt                                          1/2 t cold water
1 t Dijon mustard                                  1 t fresh lemon juice
2 egg yolks

Put garlic and salt into a mortar and grind slowly with the pestle until a paste is formed.  Put this paste into a medium sized bowl and whisk in mustard, then egg yolks.  Very slowly, in a thin stream, add 1/2 C olive oil while whisking madly.  Keep that stream of oil thin and slow.  Give it time to insinuate itself into the other ingredients until they are one.  If you aren't wishing you were ambidextrous you had better slow that stream and speed up that whisking.  When that is well mixed and looking its creamy best, stop, and in a tiny bowl mix the water and lemon juice together.  Add this in droplets to the egg mixture, whisking constantly.  Stretch your arms a bit and add the remaining olive oil in the same fashion until you have a creamy texture.  If you could get someone to lightly rub your shoulders until you're done, bonus.

Roasted Asparagus

Fresh asparagus
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Break off the woody stems of the asparagus (they will naturally break in the right place).  Toss the asparagus with olive oil and salt and pepper.  Put on cookie sheet and roast at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. 

Now pick up a lovely spear of asparagus with your fingers and dip into the creamy Aioli.  Bite, munch, groan, and lick your fingers.  Take another lovely spear, dip and insert it into someone else's mouth.  Happy Spring!

Belly Lore - Anticipation

"An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the thing which we are capable of performing."  Samuel Smiles

Anticipation

I was watching a movie where an actor unwrapped a single sugar cube.  It struck me, somehow, as being very sensual stripping naked a sugar cube.  A sugar cube is so elemental, so deconstructed.  It doesn't need to be hidden under a wrap.  It's honest.  Simple.  Anyway, that lead me to think about deconstructed sweets.  A S'more, I think, is a good representation of a deconstructed sweet.  Simple ingredients standing nakedly as themselves yet joined to make a special treat. 

But even sugar needs a bit of help from a friend to be considered dessert (though I'm not ashamed to admit I've eaten a sugar cube as a meal finale on more that one occasion).  A hunk of excellent chocolate is great by itself also but when combined with a hint of coffee and a few other ingredients, the experience of eating chocolate is heightened.  And lengthened.  A piece of chocolate popped into your mouth takes only a minute or so to eat.  A chocolate dessert can be lingered over.  Deconstructed on your tongue. None of this one bite and done.  So here is a fairly stripped down (6 ingredients) chocolate dessert.  A coffee enhanced, sugar enhanced, bourbon enhanced, anticipation enhanced, chocolate dessert.

Frozen Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse

16 oz. Ghirardelli's Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar or other good (around 60% cacao) chocolate
1/2 C sugar
2/3 C strong coffee
1/3 C bourbon (as when cooking with wine, pick a bourbon you would enjoy drinking - ah come on, give it a try...)
10 T butter
1 1/3 C whipped (until stiff) heavy cream

Cook first 5 ingredients in a double boiler over lightly simmering water, stirring until smooth.  Cool.  Drizzle chocolate mixture over whipped cream

and fold  gently until smooth.

Spoon mixture into a plastic wrap lined loaf pan.  Freeze about 9 hours.  Anticipation, anticipation, anticipation.  Invert onto a plate and remove plastic wrap.  Beware: It looks so velvety when you unmold it you just want to lick the surface!

This doesn't freeze hard.  It slices smoothly and melts blissfully on your tongue.

 You could top this with a bit of whipped cream but I prefer it naked.

Belly Lore - Fat Tuesday

Jambalaya is a rice dish flavored with a combination of meats (especially ham since the word "jambalaya" comes from the French "jambon" meaning ham) and spices.

The word Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is a last hurrah before the Lenten Season.

Lent is from the Anglo Saxon word meaning Spring.  It's a Christian observance lasting from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday and is a time of preparation for observing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ involving giving up luxuries as a form of the repentence of sins.