Month: August 2012

Pizza! Pizza!

Published by Kathy Hunt

For years I had a problem with pizza. What I liked and what I ended up eating were two vastly different things. I wanted crunchy yet chewy thin crusts with fresh, flavorful toppings. What I got were gummy, limp slices with bland and greasy cheese that oozed onto my hands, shirt, jeans . . .. Turned off by floppy, oily take-away, I periodically tried to make my own pies. While the recipes in The Joy of Cooking, Fanny Farmer and Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking made perfectly respectable pizzas, none resulted in the crisp, wafer-thin crust that I craved. Around the time that I had resigned myself to mediocrity my husband and I had dinner at the home of our friends Rob and Brande. On that fateful night we ate Rob’s ethereal, homemade pizzas. With their firm yet light crusts, hearty sauces and fresh, wholesome toppings these pizzas ranked among the best that I’d ever consumed. With one amazing meal I rediscovered my love of this food. After months of badgering Rob for …

The Versatile Mr. Catfish!

Published by Kathy Hunt

After graduating from college and moving to suburban Philadelphia, what I wanted, more than anything, was to adopt a dog. What I got was a cat, Andy Peabody, who came with a homemade, nondescript toy called Mr. Catfish. The gentle, gray tabby became my doorway into pet ownership. His beloved, yellow-and-gray pipe cleaner toy became, in its own weird way, my introduction to catfish. Over the weekend I was reminded of Andy and his quirky sidekick when I went fishing in Marietta, Ohio. There the catch of the day was the benign, whiskered channel catfish. Of the 28 varieties of North American catfish, channel remain the most commercially important. Fast-growing and highly sustainable, they thrive in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and ponds. Although they can reach 50 pounds in the wild, the Ohio channel cats that we caught – and released – were closer to one and a half pounds. Had we kept these fish, we could have expected a meal with an earthy tang to it. Because wild catfish happily potter about in murky waters, …

Feast from the Forest and Field

Published by Kathy Hunt

Last week I owned up to my dearth of gardening skills. What I lack in ability, I more than make up for in my enthusiasm for others’ horticultural handiness. So, when a friend invited me on a foraging walk last weekend, I jumped at the chance. I mean, really, who has a greener thumb than Mother Nature? As you might expect from someone who blundered through gardening, I struggle with identifying wild edibles. Set set me loose in the forest to collect stinging nettles or chanterelles, I’m likely to pull out a clump of poison ivy or toxic jack o’ lantern mushrooms. Obviously, these are not the ingredients of a lovely soup or sauté. However, if you put me in charge of foraging, these are what you might receive. Yeah, I need to learn a bit about harmless versus deadly wild plants. Led by naturalist Steve Brill, the ecology walk featured such wholesome plants as garlic mustard, wild ginger and purslane. Things that I had dubbed “worthless weeds” and yanked from my overgrown garden likewise …

What to Do with All That . . ..

Published by Kathy Hunt

After years of kidding myself that one day I’d grow bushels of pert tomatoes and eggplants at our suburban Philadelphia farmhouse, I’m finally throwing in the towel on gardening. It’s never helped matters that I’m not there enough to consistently weed and water a garden or that every vegetable planted feeds not my family and friends but those of groundhogs and deer. There’s another reason, though, behind my bailing out on horticulture. Truthfully, I’m a lousy gardener who can’t even keep the lowest maintenance plants—garlic, onions, potatoes—alive. In spite of my black thumb each August I find myself wondering what to do with all the season’s produce. Gardeners can’t seem to give the stuff away. Well, actually, they can and do but, as the overwhelmed recipient, I often find myself wanting to give it back. Such is the case with corn. The problem with corn is that I never receive just four or five ears. Whether I drop by my favorite farmer’s market or a friend’s backyard garden, I invariably leave with at least a …

Pop on over!

Published by Kathy Hunt

They’re airy! They’re crisp! They’re buttery! They’re one of the best foods adapted from English cooks. They’re popovers! Derived from Yorkshire pudding, that puffy mainstay of the British Sunday roast, popovers date back to 19th century America. Unlike their English forbearer, which was baked in a rectangular pan with a layer of meat drippings, popovers were cooked without beef fat in individual cups. As a result, instead of a fluffy souffle-like dish, you ended up with golden, crusty yet velvety rolls. Similar to Yorkshire pudding, popovers come from a simple combination of eggs, milk, butter and flour. The ratio of liquid to dry ingredients gives the batter its levity or “popover-ness.” In the oven the liquids create steam, which causes the rolls to puff up. Tear into a popover and you’ll find a perfect hollow center, the lovely side effect of all that steam. Steam also provides these baked goods with their name. As the steam increases, it pops the batter over the sides of each individual baking cup. Hence the moniker “popover.” Although some …