Garbure

I'm making a French peasant soup, Garbure, that sounds like a cross between garbage and ordure. We've had it before and found it quite tasty. Of course, Dr. Atkins would NOT approve, since the soup contains beans and potatoes and bread. Did I say peasant? Hearty fare. I used a slice of ham instead of ham hocks which the store doesn't carry anymore. A head of cabbage is another ingredient. Even more common.


We're doing the yin/yang thing with some delicous stuffed apples from Gourmet. Actually, the garbure is also from Gourmet, a magazine not adverse to the random food of the people recipe.

In my latest work in process, In Flight, I have three characters (man, woman, child), eating a casual meal on a patio, with a contrast between the two bad guys who are having lunch at Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach. The baddest one has a terrible hangover and just about loses it when a waiter splashes soup on his expensive pink shirt.

Significant Other found a CNN video with the Columbian (I guess) marines taking over a drug submarine being loaded with cocaine. Very cool, and I got a close up of the sub, which plays a small but important part in the new book and an even bigger part in the short story of my CIA robot fish. The short story and the book are cross-polinating each other right now. Of course I had "seen" the bad one in my mind's eye, but imagine my surprise when his photo turned up in the newspapers the last few days, the spitting image of Obama's chief of staff, who is supposed to be rather pugnacious and very smart--very rich, too. Writing bad guys, antagonists, whatever you call them is fun, as well as challenging, but I like my anti-heros be believable and my bad guy is good to his old mum. When I had his "voice" all wrong, I wrote him in the first person and that worked wonderfully well. He swears too much, but whatchagonna do?

Off to Handel & Haydn tonight at Symphony Hall. No rain in the forecast. Haven't had any culture for ages. La-di-dah.

Grapeshot

Links to Outstanding Recipes + Politics But Not As Usual

Below are links to the recipes in yesterday's photos with some notes about Chicken Marbella.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/BAKED-APPLES-STUFFED-WITH-HONEY-ALMONDS-AND-GINGER-232891

http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001175chicken_marbella.php
Notes for Chicken Marbella: I used legs, thighs and breasts. Meat with bones always tastes better, likewise skin, even if you remove it later. Used French olives with Herbes de Provence instead of the called-for olives, which the store did not have. Everything else pretty much the same. Parsley and oregano from the garden. For the wine I used white vermouth, my standard white cooking wine.

If anyone has the Silver Palate Cookbook (the original), apparently the recipe is from there.

My friend Joan brought the most fabulous cookies, cookies supremely tasty and not too sweet. We have old-time taste buds that like sugar, but not overpowering sweetness. I'm finding that some of the current dessert recipes are too damn sweet. But not these. Don't know where they are available. Effie's Cookies. Don't they even sound old fashioned. They look totally plain, but zowie, what a nice flavor. One could even say comforting.

http://www.effieshomemade.com/

We were six at dinner Monday, and the table was quite jolly with good conversation. Writers always carry on in a spirited manner. Annie the cat schmoozed shamelessly. Thisbe, of course, was under the bed.

Last, but hardly least is a link to the New Yorker recommendation for Barak Obama. It's so thoughtful and reasoned, so unlike the Republican campaign of vituperation and slander.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/13/081013taco_talk_editors?yrail


Onward,

Grapeshot