Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Instant Cioppino, with caveats, warnings, and bonus visual treats

Let’s start with a recipe, then a precaution, and then some nice visuals. That should hold you till Friday.  Unless you’re especially slippery, I guess.

My recipe is for people who like to eat but not to cook.  Caveats (not to be confused with precautions, which will follow the recipe and might therefore be considered postcautions except that they caution you before you eat the product of this recipe, so there) include:

* This recipe is ONLY for people who can shop at Trader Joe’s.  So those of you logging in from Benin or North Dakota, I am very sorry but you have to go on eating plates of damp sand.  I’ve had your damp sand and it’s fine, fine stuff.  But sometimes I need a little variety and sometimes I shop at Trader Joe’s, which still feels like *my* personal store even though it’s freaking nationwide these days, effectively.  But not entirely.  So if you don’t have a TJ’s visit in your future, you can skip to the photos.  Or to my lou.  Whatever floats your Joat. 

* This is a recipe that involves shellfish and other non-kosher seafood.  So if’n you don’t hang with the scallops, calamari, and shrimpies, well, maybe you can substitute in something else.  LIKE A LIFE.  No, like pollack or shad.  You can shad your pollack, frankly, it’s all the same to me.  I like the oceanic invertebrates and it’s not going to slow me down if you don’t. 

This recipe came about when I got home from work, tired and hungry and covered in traildust and cobwebs, and realized that nobody had made any preparations for supper.  That meant we were going to eat whatever could be microwaved in the least possible time, which I think meant chickenfingers and brown rice.  I wasn’t ready for the ricey fingers dinner, physically or mentally, so I ransacked the fridge and cupboard, found ingredients, and made a really good meal in about ten minutes. 

Here’s how I did it:

The ingredients I found were a box of organic tomato-roasted red pepper soup (ready to serve), a jar of corn-chile no-tomato salsa, a frozen sack of “seafood blend,” and a bag of orzo.  (Orzo is much more than the dyslexic brother of a famous latino swordsman, it’s also pasta in tiny rice-like pieces and it’s plenty good, though not good’n’plenty, which is not really recommended as a substitute.) First, I got some water boiling for the orzo, and added some rosemary to the boiling salted water for extra flavah.  Then, in a separate pot (yes, I have two pots, I have a head for such things) I poured some soup and chunkified it up a little with a few spoonfools of the salsa on medium high heat.  Once that was steaming, I poured in a bunch of the seafood and cooked it all together till the shrimp were a cheerful pink color.  By this time the orzo had orzo’d and was ready to drain; I used a slotted spoon to remove a bunch of the rosemary (it floats; come to think of it, a small strainer would have worked better) and then poured out the water, shook the orzo mostly dry, and poured the pasta into the soup.  Wala: instant prefab cioppino!  Plus - added bonus - it was delicious!

Okay, now here’s your warning: the salsa is not just well-spiced, but it’s got coriander in it.  I like coriander but I usually use it in powdered form - this was actual coriander seeds, which are little round suckers.  Yes, suckers is the word I use and I use it advisedly.  One of these seeds seems to have split in two, forming two tiny hemi-spheres.  As I wolfed down my supper, one of these half-seeds apparently (and without my knowledge or permission) landed curved-side-up on the very very back of my tongue, and got pressed down by my powerful manly epiglottis.  This resulted in a suction being formed underneath the half-seed - a suction more powerful than you might imagine it to have been.  I noticed it was back there within a second or two, though I had no idea what it was, but I could not dislodge it.  I couldn’t reach back to work on it without gagging, and I couldn’t wrestle it free purely by dint of tongue-action, much as I enjoyed trying.  The next morning it was the first thing I noticed when the alarm went off.  Not “damn I’m awake,” but “what’s that stuck on the back of my tongue damn I’m awake.” I spent a good part of the next day clucking and thrusting my tongue in fruitless efforts to remove the mystery object from the upper margins of my throat.  I must have looked like a goddamn chicken on the bus ride home, straining to fix whatever it was that was so irritating me.  It wasn’t till more than 24 hours had passed that the blasted seed fell apart and I could pluck it with my fingers without invoking nausea.  “Oh,” I thought as I finally examined the foreign object I’d removed from my oral cavity, “a cardamom seed.  (I get cardamom and coriander mixed up.  But it was coriander.  So sue me.) Delicious.  But dastardly!” And that’s your warning.  Now, eat hearty!

FINAL TREATS AND DELIGHTS: I recently gained the ability to process RAW images.  For those of you who know what I mean, you may deride me for my lingering ignorance; for those who don’t know, don’t worry - it just means I can make some of my photos a little sharper and more “pro” looking.  As examples, here are some I took a few weekends ago at and around the Golden Gate Park Conservatory of Flowers:

the Arguello Gate:

a spherical capital from the fence surrounding the dahlia garden:

inside the conservatory, which is a really magical place:

evidence of a recent rainfall, and of a young person eager to disturb the placid surfaces of standing water:

further evidence of the second item mentioned immediately above - please note the height to which Zach’s pants have been puddlesoaked:

Now, to finalize the mix for his birthday party and burn a disk for his friends at daycare, where he’ll be feted tomorrow.  You’ll get his official birthday poem on Friday.  Yes, of course you can wait that long.  Stop pestering me.